Image: Danny Eastwood 2022, by Liza Moscatelli
I Talk Through My Art and My Art Talks Through Me
This event has now ended.
Blacktown Arts is thrilled to present a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition by influential and ground-breaking artist Danny Eastwood.
I Talk Through My Art and My Art Talks Through Me is an exhibition curated by Danny Eastwood’s son, Jamie Eastwood, featuring a broad selection of paintings, prints, cartoons and ceramics spanning over four decades of artistic practice.
Danny Eastwood is a proud Ngemba Elder and prolific artist practicing as a cartoonist, ceramicist and painter. He is well-known for his murals across Sydney walls, floors, hospitals and trains, and his iconic cartoons which have been featured in the Koori Mail for over 40 years.
His extensive art practice continues to be an inspiration to many generations of artists. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to join Danny for a yarn and take place in regular workshops held in conjunction with Blacktown Arts’ weekly Elders in Residence program.
As the exhibition progresses, Danny Eastwood will be adding new creations to his featured ‘cartoon wall’.
Danny Eastwood
Danny Eastwood is a descendant of the Ngemba group of western New South Wales. His mother came from Brewarrina. He was born and grew up in the Eora area of the Gadigal nation. For the past 43 years he has been a proud member of the Darug area of western Sydney.
Danny Eastwood has been working in the Blacktown community in western Sydney for over 30 years. At 80 years of age, he has retired three times – but unable to say no, Danny finds himself continuing at a tireless pace. He is also a very modest man who has won the Parliament of New South Wales Indigenous Art Prize in 2008 for his entry My Reconciliation, a pen, ink and watercolour on paper, depicting a scene from the back lane where he grew up as a small boy in Waterloo/Redfern. Danny has also received the NAIDOC Poster Award.
Each fortnight Danny has to complete a cartoon for the Koori Mail – something he’s been doing for the last 20 years. In between these deadlines he travels across Sydney teaching art to inmates from Long Bay jail, Aboriginal Elders, school kids and community groups, as well as working on new public art works.
Image: Danny Eastwood 2022, by Liza Moscatelli
Jamie Eastwood
Jamie Eastwood is the son of highly regarded artist Danny Eastwood. Jamie inherits his Australian Aboriginality from his traditional Grandmothers Country, Brewarrina, far western New South Wales Ngemba tribe, his spiritual Birth Place, Gadigal Land, and his ancestry of his Mother, who is a descendent of King Bungaree of the Hawksbury Kuring-Gai Darug people.
Stylistically Jamie utilises both traditional Aboriginal techniques such as ‘dots’ but also incorporates unorthodox non-traditional techniques with the use of imagery, colour, and contemporary narratives. His art is a fusion of the past, present and the future and represents Aboriginal artists who have been influenced by both their Indigenous history and current western upbringing.
Image: Jamie Eastwood 2022. Photography: Liza Moscatelli
Artworks on loan to the exhibition courtesy of Boomalli Artists Cooperative.
This project is presented by Blacktown Arts and supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Content warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that the exhibition contains images of deceased people.
The exhibition includes paintings of nudity and confronting issues.
