Conversation: Melissa Lucashenko & Judy Watson

Join us for a conversation between two extraordinary voices as author Melissa Lucashenko and artist Judy Watson explore how their respective practices destabilise dominant colonial myths, celebrate resilience, and delve into the impact of historical narratives on contemporary understanding.

Lucashenko’s latest novel, Edenglassie, unfolds across dual stories set in Brisbane, in 1854 – when First Nations people still outnumbered colonists – and in 2024, while Watson’s current career-spanning exhibition, ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri’, is a comprehensive survey of the artist’s incisive meditations on colonial, social and ecological concerns.

Hosted by Sandy Harvey (a descendant of the Kalkadoon people from Mt Isa) Project Officer, Public Programs, QAGOMA.

Melissa Lucashenko is a Goorie author of Bundjalung and European heritage. Her first novel was published in 1997 and since then her work has received acclaim in many literary awards. Killing Darcy won the Royal Blind Society Award and was shortlisted for an Aurealis award. Mullumbimby, a darkly funny novel of romantic love and cultural warfare, won the Queensland Literary Award for Best Fiction in 2013, and her sixth novel, Too Much Lip, won the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of State Significance. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Stella Prize, two Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, two Queensland Literary Awards and two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Melissa is a Walkley Award winner for her non-fiction, and a founding member of human rights organisation Sisters Inside. She writes about ordinary Australians and the extraordinary lives they lead. Her latest book is Edenglassie.

Judy Watson is a highly respected artist whose practice has both local and international reach and significance. For more than four decades, Watson has created powerful, ethereal works of art channelling the stories of her family’s Waanyi Country in north-west Queensland. The artist refers to her research-driven practice as ‘rattling the bones of the museum’, exposing dark histories from her perspective as an Aboriginal woman. Her exhibition ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson’ is on display at the Queensland Art Gallery until 11 August 2024.

Host or Publisher Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)