Tony Albert’s art practice interrogates contemporary legacies of colonialism in a way that prompts the audience to contemplate elemental aspects of the human condition. Weaving together text appropriated from popular music, film, fiction, and art history, along with clichéd images of extraterrestrials, photographs of his family in Lucha Libre, and an immense collection of “Aboriginalia” (a term the artist coined to describe kitschy objects and images that feature naive portrayals of Aboriginality), the artist presents a tapestry of ideas that makes us question the flimsy line that inscribes and ascribes difference.

Albert has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Musée d’Aquitaine, France; Singapore Art Museum; National Museum of China; and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. He was also included in the 10th Biennial of Havana, and the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. In 2014 he won the Basil Sellers Art Prize and the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. He is well represented in collections within Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Australian War Memorial, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of Western Australia and QAGGOMA. This year he unveiled a major new monument in Sydney’s Hyde Park dedicated to Australia’s Indigenous military service men and women.