Silence Listening: A Midwest Truth-Telling Exhibition

Ron Bradfield Jnr is a saltwater artist and curator from Bardi Country, north of Broome who grew up in Geraldton. As the CYO (Chief Yarning Officer) of Yarns R Us; Ron facilitates cultural conversations across all levels of our communities, helping Australians to revisit and explore their own personal stories – so as to better consider their own connections to this place.

The late Uncle Dr Brian Dodd McKinnon (1957-2023) Was born to an Amungu mother and Wongai father and grew up in a Geraldton fringe camp named Blood Alley at the foot of Mount Misery. He left home at the age of 12 to work along Western Australia’s coast wherever he could. At 18 Uncle Brian settled in Geelong, Victoria. Since 1996, McKinnon has exhibited nationally and internationally showing powerful work that addressed his experiences of growing up in Western Australia’s Mid-West and the ongoing challenges of Aboriginal people. Uncle Brian was the inaugural Vice Chancellor’s Pre- Doctoral Indigenous Research Fellow at RMIT University’s School of Art.

Born in Eradu, Charmaine is a proud Wajarri, Badimaya and Wilunyu woman of the Yamaji Nation. Charmaine is a multi-media and esteemed poet who incorporates woodblock printing, painting, collage, video and installation work that challenges colonial narratives giving voice to the silenced histories of her people.

George Criddle (b. 1984) is a conceptual and socially engaged artist whose colonial ancestors played a central role in in frontier violence and nation building in Jambinu, (Geraldton). Their work interrogates the privileges inherited by their family as a result of colonial dispossession, acknowledging the impact of their own lineage.