TIARNIE EDWARDS

Edwards uses these native animals to challenge the way they have often been flattened into mascots, logos and national imagery, returning them instead to a position of agency and kinship. In Accomplices, they become active participants in the narratives Edwards constructs, carrying the experiences of First Nations people within contemporary Australia while also developing identities of their own. The title reflects this shift: the figures are not simply subjects within the work but accomplices in acts of resistance, humour and storytelling.

Works such as (Un)civilised and Riff Raff use satire to question who is granted authority, whose voices are marginalised and how social hierarchies are maintained. Live Laugh Light It Up pushes this tension further, transforming a familiar decorative phrase into something far more charged through the image of a balaclava-clad dingo carrying a flaming bottle. Across the exhibition, Edwards repeatedly sets playful form against political content, allowing humour to operate not as an escape from the seriousness of the subject matter but as a way of sharpening it.