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Website of Louise Daniels

Visual artist based in North West Tasmania, Australia

Drawings

Paintings

Sculpture

Louise's Art Practice

My my art practice incorporates drawing, painting, and wire sculpture.

My landscapes celebrate the colours, land-forms and watercourses of beautiful North Western Tasmania where I grew up and currently live. As a Palawa woman I feel a strong family connection with this place and I express this personal connection through my paintings. Much of my work features the rolling, multi-coloured farmlands around Forth with the Dial Range to the west or the Great Western Tiers soaring up in the east. I also make figurative aluminium wire sculpture and enjoy creating sculptural narratives.

I exhibit regularly and have been a finalist in a number of state and national art prizes, held numerous solo exhibitions, and participate in group exhibitions across Australia. My work is held in public and private collections in both Australia and overseas, and my body of work, Nungu - Box 25, was acquired in 2023 by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery for its First Nations Art and Culture Permanent Collection.

I am a Tasmanian visual artist of Trawlwoolway/Palawa heritage, with Irish and British ancestry. Much of my work references Country and cultural histories, incorporating a deep exploration and re-telling of the experiences of my ancestors, contextualised in the present. Also a researcher and co-author of publications on Aboriginal family history, most of my recent art practice explores my connection to the palawa ancestors who endured the brutal colonisation of Tasmania in the early nineteenth century. My 2019 Bachelor of Contemporary Arts Honours exegesis, Giving Voice, was a journey into the remarkable life of my matriarch, Woretemoeteryenner (1795–1847), which led to an interpretation and visual representation of her story.

I have completed many public and private commissions and I manage my own professional arts practice. I am currently experimenting with natural and mixed media, including kelp, found charcoal and ochres, and working towards upcoming solo exhibitions.

Curriculum Vitae

QUALIFICATIONS

2019 Bachelor of Contemporary Arts (Honours) University of Tasmania

1997 Master of Education Studies (Intercultural Communication and Education) University of Tasmania

CURRENT AND UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS/PROJECTS

2024 Solo Exhibition, The Gallery, HIVE, Ulverstone Cultural Precinct Tasmania

2022-24 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, Grafton Regional Gallery, NSW 7& touring NSW & Qld

2021 ongoing SWARM, Public Art Project at HIVE, Ulverstone Tasmania, permanent sculptural installation.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022 Hearth, First Space, Sawtooth ARI, Launceston Tasmania

2022 Solo, Rialto Gallery Restaurant, Burnie Tasmania

2019 Solo, Penguin Creek Gallery, Penguin Tasmania

2017 Lush, Gawler Gallery, Ulverstone Civic Centre, Ulverstone Tasmania

2016 Landscapes, Brunswick St Gallery, Melbourne Victoria, , Under the Oak, Ulverstone, Store & Co Hobart Tasmania

2012-16 Unravelling, Burrinja Gallery & Brunswick Street Gallery, Victoria, Atrium Gallery, UTAS Burnie Campus Tasmania

KEY GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023 Contemporary ATSI Art Prize, King & Wood Malleson’s Award, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane

2023, 22 &21 National Capital Art Prize, Canberra ACT

2023 Collie Art Prize 2023, Collie Art Gallery, Western Australia, 03 Mar - 30 April

2022-23 taypani milaythina-tu (returning to Country) Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery Hobart, October 2022 – May 2023

2023 TERMS, Devonport Regional Art Gallery Tasmania, Co-Curator & exhibitor

2022-24 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, Grafton Regional Gallery, then touring regional NSW & Qld

2022 Women's Art Prize Tasmania, Launceston, Devonport and Hobart Tasmania

2022 Huon Valley x Sawtooth x Artsbox, Multiple Sites, Tasmania

2022, 21 & 20 Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize, Ravenswood School for Girls, Sydney NSW,

2021 Koori Mail Indigenous Art Award 2021, Lismore Regional Gallery NSW,

2021,19 &18 The Henry Jones Art Prize, the Henry Jones Hotel Hobart Tasmania,

2020 Tidal.20 Tasmanian Art Award, Devonport Regional Gallery Tasmania

2018 Contemporary ATSI Art Prize, King & Wood Malleson's Award, Parliament House Sydney

2018 XX, Nolan Gallery, Dark Mofo Show Salamanca Place Hobart Tasmania

2017 TasArt, Feature Sculpture Artist, Burnie Regional Gallery Tasmania

2016 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, MAGNT Darwin Northern Territory

2015 SHE 2015, Walker Street Gallery Dandenong Victoria

2014 Glover Prize, Falls Park Pavilion Evandale Tasmania

2013 Women in the Arts 2013, Canopy Arts Space, Cairns Queensland

AWARDS AND ACQUISITIONS

2023 Nungu – Box 25 – 7 mixed media works acquired by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery for its First Nations Art and Culture permanent collection

2023 Public art Commission for Peacock Centre, Tasmanian Government Art Site Scheme

2021 Public Art Commission for HIVE, Central Coast Council Tasmania – Sculptural Installation

2017 Public Art Commission, Oral Health Services Clinic in Ulverstone, Tasmanian Government Art Site Scheme

2015 Burrinja Award, SHE 2015, Walker St Gallery, Dandenong Victoria

PUBLICATIONS

Walter, M and Daniels, L, 'Woretemoeteryenner (c.1795–1847)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/woretemoeteryenner-29701/text36773, 2019

Walter, M and Daniels, L, ‘Personalising the History Wars: Woretemoeteryenner’s Story’, International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, Volume 1, Number 1, 2008

Walter, M and Daniels, L, ‘Searching for the Mother: A Biography of Woretemoeteryenner: An Aboriginal Woman of Tasmania’, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, 2005

Gallery of Artwork
Nungu -Box 25

Nungu - Box 25 is a body of work created for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery exhibition, taypani milaythina-tu - Returning to Country

held over eight months from 1st October 2022. Over several years, twenty Palawa artists attended workshops, viewed TMAG's collection of Aboriginal artifacts, and researched the issue of Palawa objects held in institutions around the world. We then created work for the exhibition, which was a resounding success. TMAG has since acquired this body of work for its permanent First Nations Art and Culture collection.

Statement about Nungu - Box 25

Stored in Box 25 at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery is material gathered in 1964 at Nungu (West Point), Lutruwita, by archaeologist Rhys Jones.

That box contains bone and stone tools, and pierced shells, believed to be from a Palawa burial pit. Wrapped in cigarette packets, match boxes and paper roll, the juxtaposition of the ancient artifacts and the brash red, white and silver packaging is poignant.

Jones’s archaeological work in Lutruwita provided valuable information proving Aboriginal habitation for tens of thousands of years. Later, the Palawa prohibited Jones from further research of Aboriginal Tasmania due to his documentary The Last Tasmanian. That film focused on the end of the Tasmanian Aboriginal race and culture, and suggested that Palawa extinction was inevitable with or without colonisation.

Reportedly, Jones never fully understood why he was excluded. In frustration, he once exclaimed “I gave them their history!” In some ways he did, but through his film, Jones denied our existence, our recent history and our future.

My artworks represent the artifacts in Box 25 and the explored sites at Nungu. The series references Jones’s role and the incongruous colours of his packaging. Red and white paint is worked with charcoal I found on Country at Nungu. An excerpt from Jones’s documentary completes the exhibit.

The found charcoal represents Country, the ongoing cycle of renewal at Nungu, and the ever-present spirits of the Old Ones, whose treasures are kept in brightly coloured boxes in a museum storeroom.

Hearth

Hearth continues my creative interpretation of the traditional life of my ancestor, Woretemoeteryenner, and the colonial times she and her people endured.

The shells have fallen from middens in the dunes at Little Musselroe Bay in Tebrakunna, our Country. Many still contain ash from the fires of the Old Ones, and plant matter holds it together.

Our women and girls were taken from that bay by the sealers who plundered Bass Strait early in the nineteenth century. Many were cruel. Our men were shot as they gathered at their campfires, and their blood flowed red into that white sand.

The charcoal, from a campfire in Tebrakunna, is worked in the negative. This represents the having and the removal - the loss - which was a constant theme for my people during colonisation.

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