Michael Riley

Take a look at the objects in these works. What do you think they symbolise? The images in cloud series all have personal meanings for the artist Michael Riley, and are also significant to the broader First Nations community. For example, the image of the Bible reflects the influence that Christianity had in his childhood, but also symbolises the role religious missions had in government programmes which displaced First Nations people from their Ancestral lands. Meanwhile, Riley described the feather in his work as ‘a sort of messenger,’ which could point to a spiritual connection between the sky and the earth. Michael Riley was a photographer and filmmaker, and part of a pioneering group of contemporary Aboriginal artists in Gadigal Nura/Sydney who were active during the 1980s. Along with nine other artists—some of whose works are featured elsewhere in this exhibition—Riley established the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, which hosted exhibitions showing new art by First Peoples.