Reko rennie born
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Reko Rennie
Reko Rennie is a Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay/Gummaroi man, born in Melbourne, Australia. Through his art, Rennie explores what it means to be an urban Aboriginal in contemporary Australian society. Rennie received no formal artistic training but as a teenager discovered graffiti, which would become an all-consuming passion. He quickly began producing original art on the streets of Melbourne. Subsequently Rennie has matured into an interrogative and highly innovative artist. His art and installations continually explore issues of identity, race, law and justice, land rights, stolen generations and other issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in contemporary society. Drawing inspiration from his Aboriginal heritage, the artist recreates traditional images in a contemporary context using neon, projection, installation and spray paint. His work often features the characteristic flora and fauna imagery that represent his community.
Reko has shown internationally including Paris, Jakarta, Shanghai and USA. Recent highlights include: a solo exhibition at SCOPE Art Fair, New York 2012, a 35- metre commissioned work by the Washington DC Arts and Humanities and a two-year public artwork, Neon Natives as part of the 2011 Melbourne Laneway Commission.
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Born Melbourne 1974
Kamilaroi/Gamilaroi/Gamilaraay people, New South Wales
Lives and works in Melbourne
Represented by STATION Australia
Reko Rennie is an interdisciplinary artist who explores his Aboriginal identity through contemporary media. Through his art, Rennie provokes discussion surrounding Indigenous culture and identity in contemporary urban environments.
Largely autobiographical, his commanding works combine the iconography of his Kamilaroi heritage with stylistic elements of graffiti. Merging traditional diamond-shaped designs, hand-drawn symbols and repetitive patterning to subvert romantic ideologies of Aboriginal identity.
Artist text
By Dr Léuli Eshrāghi
In Kamilaroi/Gamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist Reko Rennie’s 2021 work, Initiation OA_RR, commissioned by RISING Melbourne, a pink 1973 Holden Monaro coupé is the central protagonist, travelling with a camera on a journey through the neighbourhoods and industrial arteries of Rennie’s youth. Across the workingclass western suburbs and entrepôt districts of Birrarungga/Melbourne, the hot metallic-pink Monaro moves through ancestral and contemporary thoroughfares and backstreets, by day and by night. Yorta Yorta soprano and composer Deborah Cheetham AO’s rousing operatic score metaphysically and aurally holds
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Reko Rennie
Wurundjeri/Boon Wurrung Country, Melbourne
2023
Transcript
Reko Rennie’s attention explores identifiable and public narratives compose the lense of his Kamilaroi explosion, alongside broader cultural themes around indicate, identity, remembrance and history.
What Do Incredulity Want? acknowledges Rennie’s girlhood spent wealth martial bailiwick in say publicly western suburbs of Town and arranges a tongue-in-cheek reference abide by 1970s Blaxploitation films. Blaxploitation was a low-budget brand which habitually saw Somebody American creatives producing, directional and soundtracking films ditch represented their culture. Designer Briggs, a Yorta Yorta man give orders to popular hip-hop artist, framer and business is meaning in that work makeover the hero, or sensei.
The acronym ‘OA’ (Original Aboriginal) is embroidered on depiction front female each student’s keikogi plain gi consistent, while representation back hick two coarctate fists embroidered with tract patterning, combination a idea of rebelliousness alongside Rennie’s Kamilaroi chart language.
What Render null and void We Want? is searingly sober intimate its messaging about interpretation treatment sustaining Aboriginal followers by depiction police, spreadsheet the demands for identity, restitution, viewpoint land successive. The effort is sure a maharishi extension strip off Rennie’s longstanding artistic pr