DENNIS GOLDING: My name is Dennis Golding.
I'm a Gamilaraay man from the Northwest of New South Wales,
born and raised in Sydney.
And I've developed a practice,
a creative practice that explores identity
through many different ways in terms of experience, childhood memory.
And what I aim to do is decolonise a lot of the histories
and knowledges that people have
and these perceptions of Aboriginal identity.
So, my work really focuses on re-representing a stronger identity
to empower our contemporary experience,
empowering our culture as Aboriginal people.
My first experience with art came around when I was three years old.
I do remember living in Redfern on Eveleigh Street
in my grandmother's house.
My mum was painting at the back.
And she had this large canvas
and also a large cushion that she started to paint on.
And I was very interested at that age
and curious to know what she was doing.
So, I was watching her paint with a paint brush
and using different coloured paints.
And that was the moment where she started to teach me.
Yeah. So, where she handed me the paint brush
and said, "Paint a picture."
So, from that point, I've been really interested in art.
And growing up in Redfern, I've been influenced
by a lot of my family, my culture and the community,
having grown in Aboriginal community,
which has inspired me to create more storytelling through my work
and ways that I can reference my stories.
I've continued to make work because I feel that it is my strength as a person
to be able to make and produce stories
as a way of referencing culture, referencing my own identity.
I feel that's a strong point for me
in being able to offer something in this world
is that I'm a creative thinker and I'm a maker, I'm an artist.
And I'm really enjoying this new realm of curating artwork as well.
It's been a very enjoyable experience
that I can think of art in many different ways
and how it also forms a conversation with another piece of artwork.
I think that's a interesting part of being a practitioner
is that you are immersed in culture and place
because we identify as so many things...
as a parent, as an artist, as an uncle, as a football player.
It's something that a lot of people say every day
that they identify as this,
where I'm quite interested in that idea of identity
and how people really reference themselves.
I feel practitioners, artists, curators
who are really coming to the emergence of
after finishing tertiary education
or any of their education in the arts,
is that they need to be well supported.
They need to be well taken care of and mentored in a way.
So, I feel that people in the arts who are established practitioners
also should hold a responsibility
to nurturing and mentoring the emerging practitioners
who are coming through.
Emerging practitioners really need to find
a sense of safety and security
in the way that they can be nurtured and mentored into this space
because it's important that they feel confident
instead of feeling like they need to really, really work hard
as a way of forming a foundation.
It's important that they work hard,
but I think it's also an important part of this process
that we have the great support from our mentors
and people who are working in the arts
to give greater opportunities for those working in the fields
and among the emergence of their practice,
to feel a sense of confidence and safety
as they continue developing in their practice. Yeah.