Artist-in-Residence: Ilona McGuire

Cool Change is pleased to announce Ilona McGuire as the second artist-in-residence in our 2023 Residency Program. Working between our new King’s Complex location and UWA’s School of Design, she will be in residence for two months, from 6 November.

Ilona McGuire is a Bibbulmun Noongar and Kungarakan interdisciplinary artist. Her interest in all forms of creative expression manifests through a culturally informed and open artistic practice, using printmaking, painting, sculpture, installation, writing, and performance, amongst other things.

By centralising the Indigenous experience and perspective, Ilona’s practice explores Australia’s ongoing systemic dysfunction through its historical, social, and political impacts on her families and broader communities.

Following the presentation of her drone light show Moombaki at the 2021 Fremantle Biennale, Ilona was awarded the Schenberg Art Fellowship for Hatched: National Graduate Show 2022 alongside an artist residency at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA).

Throughout 2022 and 2023, her work has been exhibited at Fremantle Arts Centre, Stala Contemporary, Goolugatup Heathcote Gallery, John Curtin Gallery, and Campbelltown Arts Centre (NSW) for The National 4: Australian Art Now.

Against the grain of bureaucratic politeness and paperwork, kept from stoking our bellies full of ancient wildfires, this reclamation of time and space is an act of protest. Yet these embers pulse with the soft breath of my Ancestors.

Melancholy, outrage, and uproar are a presence of knowledge, a sign of the times, and it has never ceased from our hearts and minds. Our rage lies dormant like the Wagyl, deep in his resting places, still here. Still here.

In the heart of Whadjuk boodja, beneath the brick and bitumen, in the breeze that drifts between skyscrapers, is a place called Guraree. An unseen place of healing, found when you speak truth with your chest, even through clenched fists, teary eyes, and fear.