Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey has been creating artwork for more than three decades. Describing his style as pictograms of a scenario, with images and symbols connecting a sprawling narrative, Hookey’s work is imbued with elements of activism, pop culture and lived experience.
Surveying Hookey’s oeuvre of paintings, sculpture, and prints, A MURRIALITY includes many billboard sized works, filled to the edges with witty text, corrupt politicians and anthropomorphised native animals.
Co-curating the exhibition with Liz Nowell, José Da Silva reveals, “While Gordon is deadly serious about his concerns, his practice includes plenty of bawdy caricatures and jokes. He is a master of political satire and enjoys a good bout of silliness to disarm viewers.”
Commissioned specifically for the exhibition is a collection of freestanding paintings set up on orange traffic cones with wheels, appearing like a visual procession of flags or placards marching through the gallery. A callback to a series of banners Hookey created in 2021 for public rallies, Da Silva points out the new commissions evoke the concept of protest through their form and subjects. “The resulting works cover a broad range of ideas surrounding inequality and injustice, including Aboriginal survival through colonisation (and gentrification) and the housing crisis in Australia as a material consequence of greed and government policy.”
At the final stop of a national tour that began in 2022, A MURRIALITY presents the oeuvre of an artist keenly aware of art’s ability to communicate. “One of the strongest impressions we had putting this exhibition together is Gordon’s genuine and steadfast belief that art can still be a catalyst for encouraging communities to act on not just civil and political rights but economic, social, and cultural rights,” Da Silva says. “The exhibition reminds us that his works exemplify the idea of change, showing us possibilities for civic resistance, and ways to feel mobilised and ready to effect change.”
A MURRIALITY
Gordon Hookey
Plimsoll Gallery
8 June—11 August
This article was originally published in the May/June 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
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