Kent Morris

Kent Morris is an artist and curator of Barkindji and Irish heritage living on Yauk-ut Weelam Country in Melbourne. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Monash University and a post-graduate Diploma in Fine Art from Victorian College of the Arts and is an alumnus of the National Gallery of Australia’s Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership Program. Central themes in his art practice are the connections between contemporary Indigenous experience and contemporary cultural practices and their continuation and evolution.

Kent has exhibited widely throughout Australia and has worked on large scale architectural commissions for building interiors at UTS, Sydney, and Australian Unity, Melbourne. He has also completed public works including billboard projects for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and the City of Moonee Valley and was commissioned to design one of the Melbourne Art trams as part of the 2019 Melbourne International Arts Festival. His work is also included in numerous major collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank, The University of Technology Sydney, Australian Unity and the Parlia- ment House Art Collection.

Kent’s photography practice reveals the continued presence and patterns of Aboriginal history, knowledge and culture in the contemporary Australian landscape by re-imagining and reconstructing the shapes and structures of the built environment to reflect the rhythms, form and geometric designs of the First Nations people of Australia.Through digital photographic processes, Kent engages audiences by manipulating technological structures and nature into new forms that reflect Indigenous and western knowledge systems merging together reinforcing shared histories and First Nations cultural continuity since time immemorial.

One of the central motivations for Kent’s work is to provide a dedicated and considered public space for the exchange of stories, histories, images and insights and to give visual representation to that which is often unseen. His art practice explores identity, connection to place and the continuing evolution of cultural practices whilst engaging audiences to question long held frames of reference.

Kent is also leads The Torch, a not for profit organisation that provides art, cultural and arts vocational support to Indigenous offenders and ex-offenders in Victoria through its Indigenous Arts in Prison and Community Program which he began in 2011.

Kent Morris is represented by the Vivien Anderson Gallery.