Vernon Ah Kee facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Vernon Ah Kee
Born	1967 (1967) (age 58) Innisfail, Queensland, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Education	Queensland College of Art
Known for	Painting, text art, installation art, mixed media
Notable work	Tall Man
Movement	Urban Indigenous art
Awards	2012 Finalist, Archibald Prize 2012 Visual Artist of the Year, Deadly Awards 2014 Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize 2018 Australia Council Visual Arts Fellowship

Vernon Ah Kee (born 1967) is a famous Australian artist and activist. He is one of the people who started ProppaNOW, an art group. Vernon Ah Kee lives in Brisbane, Queensland. He is an Aboriginal Australian man with family ties to several Indigenous groups in Queensland.

His art often explores his Aboriginal Australian identity and how it fits into modern Australia. He looks at ideas like skin color, race, and racism. Ah Kee's art has been shown in many galleries in Australia and around the world. He even represented Australia at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Vernon Ah Kee uses many different art styles. These include painting, installations, photography, and text-based art. He is well-known for using old language and pictures to show problems with racism in Australia. His artworks are kept in collections all over the world.

In 2003, Ah Kee and other Indigenous Australian artists started ProppaNOW. This group helps Indigenous artists in Brisbane. It also works to fight against old ideas about Indigenous people.

About Vernon Ah Kee's Life

Vernon Ah Kee was born in Innisfail, Queensland, in 1967. His parents, Merv and Margaret Ah Kee, worked to support Indigenous rights. For a long time, Indigenous people were not counted in Australia's population records. This changed in 1971.

Ah Kee also has some Chinese family history from his great-grandfather. But he feels most connected to his Indigenous background. He once said, "I think of myself as a Rainforest Aboriginal."

His family moved to Cairns when he was 12. He loved to sketch a lot during this time. He went to Catholic schools in Cairns.

The Queensland College of Art where Vernon Ah Kee studied.

After learning screen printing at Cairns TAFE, Ah Kee began studying art. He started his Bachelor of Visual Art at Queensland College of Art in Brisbane in 1996. He focused on modern Indigenous Australian art and finished his degree in 1998. He then continued his studies, earning an honours in fine art and later a doctorate.

During his studies, he had two art shows at his college's gallery. These shows were called whitefella normal blackfella me in 2000 and con Text in 2007.

In 2014, his father passed away. In 2017, Ah Kee drew Portrait of My Father. He said this drawing was a "labour of love." In 2016, Ah Kee had a heart attack. But he got better in time for his 2017 art show, Not an animal or a plant.

Vernon Ah Kee's Art Career

How Vernon Ah Kee Makes Art

Vernon Ah Kee uses many different art forms. These include drawings and video installations. A main idea in all his art is looking at racism in Australia. Ah Kee says many artists have influenced him. He especially looks up to other Indigenous artists like Kevin Gilbert and Richard Bell. He feels he can see his own life in their art.

These artists helped him try new things beyond drawing, like text art. Text art is a common style among artists in the ProppaNOW group. He also gets ideas from the political views of Malcolm X and James Baldwin. These were important African American activists.

Many of his text-based artworks, also called "word art," use words from the past. He changes them to create new meanings. For example, his 2003 work austracism plays on the word "ostracism." His 2009 work becauseitisbitter uses a poem by Stephen Crane. It shows an Indigenous experience of Australia today.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia says his text art "points to unfair ideas in Australian society." They say his wordplay makes people think deeply about these issues.

Ah Kee also uses drawing and painting to show the modern Indigenous experience. fantasies of the good (2004) is a series of 13 detailed charcoal drawings. They show different members of Ah Kee's family, named in the art. The drawings look like official photos. This reminds people of how some scientists in the 1900s took pictures of Indigenous Australians. Those people were often not named, just given numbers. Ah Kee wanted to show Australia's history of racism. He said, "These drawings... are my evidence."

His 2012 portrait, I see deadly people: Lex Wotton, shows a man named Lex Wotton. Ah Kee used strong paint strokes. Wotton was shown in a bad way by the media after events on Palm Island in 2004. Ah Kee wanted Wotton to look "bold and brave" in his portrait. In 2012, Ah Kee also showed large charcoal and crayon portraits in an exhibition called Transforming Tindale. These were based on old photos of his relatives.

Ah Kee has also used video art. His exhibition Tall Man shows strong ideas about Australian racism. For Tall Man, Ah Kee used videos from the Palm Island protests in 2004. These protests happened after an Indigenous man died while with police. Ah Kee told the story from an Indigenous point of view. The video played on four screens. It showed peaceful scenes of Palm Island next to the chaos of the protests. It ended with protesters holding signs with Christian sayings. This was to show how some white Australian Christians treated Indigenous people unfairly. In 2021, Tall Man was part of an exhibition at Tate Modern in London.

His recent work, the island, also uses video. In it, Ah Kee talks about Australia's tough immigration system. He shares the story of an Afghan refugee couple. This shows he cares about more than just Indigenous Australian experiences.

ProppaNOW Art Group

Vernon Ah Kee is a founder of proppaNOW. He started it with Richard Bell, Jennifer Herd, and Joshua Herd. All these artists live in Brisbane. Richard Bell once said that the Aboriginal art world was controlled by white people. Ah Kee agreed.

The ProppaNOW artists want to show that Indigenous people living in cities are just as important as those in remote areas. They started the group because a government agency seemed to focus more on rural Indigenous artists.

In 2007, at a ProppaNOW show in Canberra, Ah Kee displayed his art You Deicide. A curator from the National Museum of Australia said this work talked about how Christian religions affected Aboriginal people's culture. Changing colonial language is a common way ProppaNOW artists make their point.

Dark + Disturbing Art Project

Dark + Disturbing is an art project led by Vernon Ah Kee. In August 2015, he put on a show called Dark + Disturbing: Gordon Hookey for proppaNOW. It featured art by Gordon Hookey, another artist from ProppaNOW.

Vernon Ah Kee in Media

In 2020, Ah Kee was one of six Indigenous artists in an ABC TV series. The series was called This Place: Artist Series. It was a project between the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the National Gallery of Australia. The show visited artists to share stories about their work and communities.

In 2010, Ah Kee was also in an ABC Arts documentary. It was called "Not A Willing Participant." The film followed his art show at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Art Exhibitions

As of December 31, 2019, Vernon Ah Kee had shown his art in 30 solo exhibitions. He also participated in 100 group exhibitions around the world. He continues to create and show his art.

In 2010, Vernon Ah Kee was interviewed for the State Library of Queensland's James C Sourris AM Collection. In this interview, Ah Kee talked about his art, his family, the ProppaNOW art group, and being an Aboriginal artist.