Libby Harward

ISEA2024

A descendant of the Ngugi people of Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) in the Quandamooka, Libby Harward creates artworks that break through the colonial overlay to connect with the cultural landscape, which always was and always will be here. Harward’s political practice, in a range of genres, continues this decolonising process.

Harward describes her practice as a process of simultaneously listening, calling out to, knowing and understanding Country. Harward’s art practice spans over twenty years, initially as a community, street and graffiti artist. During the past seven years, her focus has been on developing a conceptual arts practice, resulting in regular invitations to exhibit works both nationally and internationally.

Major recent works include ALREADY OCCUPIED series on Yugambeh Country (Gold Coast), and DABIL BUNG (Broken Water) with First Nations along the Bidgee and Barka (Murray-Darling River system). These works engage a continual process of re-calling, re-hearing, re-mapping, and re-contextualising, to de-colonise, cultural landscapes, utilising low and high-tech media with elements of sound, image, installation and performance, to engage with politically-charged ideas of national and international significance.