First Nation artists Cheryl Moggs and Jen Martin explore country and tradition in this exhibition, Art from the Heart.
Cheryl Moggs creates a sense of oneness with her art, taking cues from country, story, heritage, culture, history, and her people by challenging western ideologies, mapping country and place, and constructing identities and connections.
Jen Martin loves to paint: to tell her stories and her attachment to country. Part of the stolen generation, art is her self-care and well-being and an acknowledgment of her culture.
Works by Jen Martin
Works by Cheryl Moggs
Jen Martin
Jen Martin loves to paint: to tell her stories and her attachment to country. Part of the stolen generation, art is her self-care and well-being and an acknowledgment of her culture.
She began painting in the early 90s and attended Toowoomba TAFE attaining a Certificate 3 in Indigenous Arts in 1999. Four years ago, Jen continued her cultural journey by attending private professional art tuition from the Elders. Her dedication, practice and skill has been rewarded with several prestigious awards and a strong client following.
Find Jen on Instagram: @jenmartinart
Cheryl Moggs
An elder, cultural leader, artist, teacher, designer & weaver
I am an artist creating a sense of oneness, taking cues from country, story, heritage, culture, history and my people. Challenging western ideologies, mapping country and place, constructing identities and connections.
About
Nationally renowned senior Aboriginal artist Cheryl Moggs, descendant of the Bigambul people of Goondiwindi, Southwest Queensland, was born into a long ancestral linage of Aboriginal women, her mother, grandmother and two great grandmothers. Cheryl is the daughter of Bigambul women, Joan Turnbull and granddaughter of Bigambul women Emily Armstrong. Her father is of Irish and Scottish heritage.
She was raised on her traditional lands living a fringe dweller lifestyle in bush camps, without electricity or running water on farming properties, towns and the Toobeah Reserve.
Her Aboriginal lifestyle took on hunting, gathering, following seasons, story and mapping country. Her mother was her first teacher of symbolic language represented upon traditional lands (black soil). Her art captures the very essence of her mother’s and First Nation people’s signature style of storytelling, visual symbolic language. These traditional values of knowing and learning influence her artistic practice, grounded in constructing identity, cultural transmission, connection to country, education and social justice for all peoples.
She grew up in a time when her mother’s family and First Peoples of Australia was controlled and removed by government policies. A strong advocate for social justice and change, in 2008 with support from her family and people she stepped into the arena of Native Title and in 2016, leading her family and people to achieve a Native Title Consent Determination of the very lands she grew up as a child.
Secondary school was not offered to her, with four children in tow and a passion for lifelong learning and a dream of becoming a teacher, she entered into university achieving an Early Childhood Teacher degree and a Masters in Special Education, following on with TAFE Queensland to take up further studies in Aboriginal art, fashion, textiles, photography and printmaking. Following the success of educational achievement, in 1998 she ventured into the University and TAFE sectors to teach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Visual Arts, Culture, Conservation and Land Management disciplines spanning 30 years.