Join this yarn with two young Indigenous leaders, Dominique Chen and Guy Ritani, who hold space for what needs to be spoken - embracing and navigating the absurd, while being grounded and guided through cultural logics, ethics and language.

Register for this event, and all other events https://www.permacultureday.org/listing/international-permaculture-festival-of-wild-ideas/

Curated in collaboration with Humanize Media, join us for an evening with First Nations women leaders who are transforming our regional food system. This incredible panel will explore Aboriginal food sovereignty, the native food industry and the cultural significance of food, plants, medicines and cultivation practices. Guests will be served delicious canapes, featuring native ingredients from the region.

This event has something for every foodie and community member, but will be particularly valuable for those working in food (hospitality, farming or otherwise) or social enterprise.

Tickets are $40 for general admission, and free for First Nations people.

https://events.humanitix.com/indigenous-food-sovereignty-in-seq

Engage in an exchange of ideas and potent discussions on how permaculture education could evolve to address current issues. Featuring:

Morag Gamble: award-winning permaculture teacher and designer, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute. Morag has led programs in 22 countries and is an international leader in the permaculture movement for change.

Dominique Chen: proud Gamilaroi woman, and interdisciplinary researcher, living on Jinibara Country in SE Queensland. Dominique is the co-founder of Yuruwan, an Aboriginal-run not-for-profit supporting learning opportunities for culturally-centred, urban-based food and medicine growing, by and for Aboriginal people.

Guy Ritani: Creative Director of PermaQueer, is a proud Takatāpui Māori Food systems specialist, systems designer, & Permaculture teacher based on Bundjalung Country. Their work is centred around building relationships, networks & systems to achieve climate justice, bio-regional food security & culturally appropriate & sovereign food systems.

Ticket and further information at https://www.nscf.org.au/winter-solstice-festival-2024/

Join local laundros Libby Harward (Quandamooka) and Dom Chen (Gamilaroi) for a Blak Laundry takeover—a warm and gentle blakwash to sort through your delicate whites, remove stubborn stains from your social fabric, and to help launder cultural capital (and raise real live money!) to support First Nations artists and community. The Blak Laundry is a functional laundromat, living artwork and ‘relational enterprise’ celebrating all things Blak. 

Bring your washing, bring your banggu ($$) and help share the load.

This agitation session will be held in Richard Bell's Embassy, an itinerant roving embassy made in homage to the audacity and strength of the first Aboriginal Tent Embassy pitched on the grounds of Parliament House, Canberra in 1972.

Presented for OCCURRENT AFFAIR, a UQ Art Museum exhibition touring with Museums & Galleries of NSW. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.

Tickets at: https://events.humanitix.com/the-blak-laundry-takeover-richard-bell-s-embassy

Join us for Meanjin’s (Brisbane) inaugural Urban Agriculture Forum (UAF) on the lands of the Yuggera & Turrbal peoples. We’re excited to hold Queensland’s first UAF at the heritage listed ‘Old Bishopbourne’ (St Francis Theological College) in Milton on Monday 20th November. At this event, we’ll begin to chart a thriving future for urban agriculture in the South-East Queensland region and across Australia.

Keynote presentation - Dominique Chen

Urban spaces are still, and always will be Country. While over 81% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia live in urban environments, they are often spaces where First Nations people and communities are overlooked, marginalised, and disenfranchised. This presentation will explore some of the specific social, cultural and political histories and ongoing realities of urban spaces for First Nations people, and dream into the possibilities and necessities of culturally centred, First Nations-led, urban food initiatives.

Book tickets here: https://events.humanitix.com/brisbane-urban-agriculture-forum

Artist and researcher Dominique Chen (Gamilaroi) discusses making space for cultural ethics within institutional frameworks, and creative and collective futures.

The talk will be held as part of, and within Daniel Boyd’s current exhibition Rainbow Serpent (Version).

Daniel Boyd’s exhibition ‘Rainbow Serpent (Version)’ is accompanied by a program of talks, peformances, and workshops which take place on its expansive mirrored-stage installation.

The surface of ‘Untitled’ (2023) draws from the dot motif that is repeated in the artist’s paintings. Boyd considers these dots to act as ‘lenses’ through which audiences can access distinct points of knowledge, experience, or perspectives.

Casting a vast web of lenses across the gallery floor, the stage will be activated by First Nations collaborators throughout the exhibition, highlighting the plurality of First Nations cultures and worldviews, and creating space for a multitude of First Nations voices and histories.

Find out more: ima.org.au/ima-events/.

Join Caitlin Franzmann, Dominique Chen and Libby Harward in a participatory gathering to celebrate, remember, and connect with the diverse stories of three plants, and three women.

For ‘the stories we water’, Libby, Dominique and Caitlin will each contribute a personally significant plant into an unfolding recipe of tales. To realise the recipe, participants will be invited to join into processes of cracking, grinding, seeping, unforgetting, smelling, tasting and listening.

Plants carry stories of place and people. Some of these stories are embedded with deep cultural knowledge, some offer moments for truth-telling and others prompt us to consider what it means to live sustainably. They are life, in all its delight and mayhem. And when all is mixed together, we can ask, which stories will we water?

All First Nations mobs are welcome to come along and enjoy a morning of sitting, talking, sharing and learning around urban-based bush foods and medicines.

The events will be held every three months, and will include sharing around propagating from seeds/cuttings, soil health, foraging and ‘guerrilla gardening’, connecting stories, and sharing resources.

There will also be some native grain damper cook-ups, native grass weaving, and cups of tea by the fire.

BYO seeds, cuttings or foods/medicines to share, or just come along and take some plants home.

Join Frankie the flying fox and learn about all the amazing things she and our other Little Aussie BATtlers do to keep our environment healthy.

Book now for the eighth Annual Australasian Bat Night – a free, family friendly event Saturday October 15 from 3 pm at Maleny Showgrounds.

Register now to join in the fun free activities on offer.

Watch a video of last year’s Bat Night here.

Join Dominique Chen for a presentation on Food Sovereignty and Food Security from an Indigenous perspective.

For more information on the expo, including the program, click here.

All First Nations mobs are welcome to come along and enjoy a morning of sitting, talking, sharing and learning around urban-based bush foods and medicines.

The events will be held every three months, and will include sharing around propagating from seeds/cuttings, soil health, foraging and ‘guerrilla gardening’, connecting stories, and sharing resources.

There will also be some native grain damper cook-ups, native grass weaving, and cups of tea by the fire.

BYO seeds, cuttings or foods/medicines to share, or just come along and take some plants home.

Join Morag Gamble of the Permaculture Education Institute as she ‘yarns’ about permaculture with Tracy Hardy and Dominique Chen, who are members of the Institute’s Permaculture Educators Program, and Jacob Birch.

We will be yarning about the healing power of connecting to foods (particularly our native bushfoods) and Country, and the role permaculture plays in facilitating that healing for Country, Mob and non-Indigenous folks. We’ll be asking questions such as - How can we talk and walk together meaningfully in looking after Country? What might the role of permaculture be? Where might permaculture need to go within that space?

We hope you will join us!

Register here.

In The Revolution Will Not Be Aestheticised, artist Warraba Weatherall considers the way that scientific and cultural perspectives inform contemporary cultural knowledge systems and forms of representation.

Researched through archival materials, Australian politics, and Indigenous knowledges, the exhibition encourages a deeper insight into the construction and transmission of Indigenous knowledge systems and their direct influence in shaping social, political and cultural futures. In assessing how cultural archetypes are maintained throughout society, Weatherall builds on an existing dialogue of contemporary cultural identity to consider what encourages a healthy cultural continuum.

Including film and paintings, the artist juxtaposes the complexities of his own Kamilaroi heritage and prescribed cultural aesthetics.

Artist Talk | Sat 30 July, 4pm

Join us in Gallery One for an in-conversation event with Warraba Weatherall and special guest interdisciplinary, arts-based researcher Dominique Chen.

Please note: 

The Metro Arts Gallery is closed on Wednesday 10 August due to the QLD Public Holiday.

This SaturJoin us at the QCA Lecture theatre next to our gallery for the Symposium ‘Diffracting Photography’.

Photographic disciplines have undergone successive changes in the past twenty years, heightened with mainstream use of smartphones and social media cultures. Across a one-day event, join respected speakers from across the continent who are working at the nexus of practical, conceptual, and theoretical approaches to photography.

This event is organised around three sessions: The second of these is ‘Taking pictures or making pictures?’

This session will explore the apparent differences, intersections and possible real-world implications of taking versus making approaches to photography. The conversation will include issues pertaining to power, relationality and creative re/visioning—holding space for diverse cultural and socio-political contexts and perspectives.

Speakers: Hayley Millar Baker (Melbourne), Martyn Jolly (Canberra), Jo-Anne Driessens (Gold Coast)

Chair: Dominique Chen (Sunshine Coast)

Featuring Keynote Speakers:

r e a (artist, curator, activist, academic, cultural educator)

Michael Aird (artist, curator, anthropologist)

Any questions, please call: (07) 3735 7414 or email: artmuseum@griffith.edu.au

All First Nations mobs are welcome to come along and enjoy a morning of sitting, talking, sharing and learning around urban-based bush foods and medicines.

The events will be held every three months, and will include sharing around propagating from seeds/cuttings, soil health, foraging and ‘guerrilla gardening’, connecting stories, and sharing resources.

There will also be some native grain damper cook-ups, native grass weaving, and cups of tea by the fire.

BYO seeds, cuttings or foods/medicines to share, or just come along and take some plants home.

Join in a relaxed yarn and seed-ball making circle, talking around grass-roots, urban Aboriginal food and medicine growing.

This event is for mob by mob. Families welcome. BYO seeds or just come along and take some home.

For the full Northey Street City Farm Winter Solstice program and ticketing information, click here .

This event will explore the issues of equity and inclusion, as well as Indigenous/settler relations, in food system governance, comparing the three national contexts of Canada, the US, and Australia.

In this context, food systems governance includes, but is not limited to, policy, laws, and regulations that shape and influence the nature and orientation of our food systems. It also includes the implicit practices, customs and assumptions related to who and what are considered part of the food system, who should be included in decision-making, and in what ways.

For further information and registration, go to https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/equity-justice-and-indigenous-settler-relations-in-food-systems-governance-tickets-346861350637.

Bunma-nha mari-gal bulagaa gamilaraay-dhi, marama-ndaay bula winanga-ndaay, gumaa-li-baa, wuurriyala-y ngiyani. Ngarranma-ndaay nhalay, yana-waa-nha guwiinbarraan, winanga-li ngurrunbaa-gu. Gaay-gal ngami-li ngiyani, dhawun-dhi bula bunma-nha guwaala-y.

Bunma-nha is a group exhibition features the doctoral works in progress of Dominique Chen, Warraba Weatherall, Dianne Hall and Debbie Taylor-Worley, opening at the Webb Gallery / Queensland College of Art, on Thursday the 28th of April 5:30-7:30pm.

As part of my work contribution, I will be setting up a sharing space for mob to sit and talk/share foods/medicines. Please feel free to bring something (seeds, leaves, roots, plants etc) to contribute, if you would like.

The exhibition will run from the 26th of April - 14th of May 2022. The sharing space will be activated at 12pm each day.

Anyone in Adelaide, on unceded Kaurna lands, get along to the launch of Artlink Magazine’s issue 42:1 Art / Write / Read at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The issue features an essay Libby Harward and I put together, about her recent work Damper is a Language Word for Art. Further details can be found here.

For download access to the issue, click here.

All First Nations mobs are welcome to come along and enjoy a morning of sitting, talking, sharing and learning around urban-based bush foods and medicines.

The events will be held every three months, and will include sharing around propagating from seeds/cuttings, soil health, foraging and ‘guerrilla gardening’, connecting stories, and sharing resources.

There will also be some native grain damper cook-ups, native grass weaving, and cups of tea by the fire.

BYO seeds, cuttings or foods/medicines to share, or just come along and take some plants home.