Presented with Perth Festival.
Dianne Jones created the photographic series Australian Photography more than twenty years ago, using analogue processes to insert herself into Australian art history and in doing this, subverting the white national imaginary. Jones’ black and white images depict the artist in a variety of renowned Australian photographs, repositioning the gaze through acts of embodiment and repossession.
Her seminal works Sunbaker and Beach Scene rework iconic Australian beach photographs by artist Max Dupain and Harold Cazneaux. In her joyful and powerful work, she is seen smiling and waving at the camera at Bondi, at Newport and Culburra beach. Jones’ presence on the beach placed contemporary First Nations Peoples identities into Australian narratives and art history. Jones provokes questions around sites of colonisation – who is seen as ‘Australian’ and also the importance of imagery in popular culture.
Two decades on, Dianne Jones has created a new work at Manjaree (Bathers Beach) in Walyalup / Fremantle. After reflecting on the continuing significance of beaches and borders as sites of national identification, Jones’ Beach Party continues Jones’ technique of referencing as a framework. She has chosen another iconic Australian image, Australian Beach Pattern by artist Charles Meere (1940). Meere’s work has provoked critical attention in light of controversy about its connection with race ideology, eugenics and imagery of idealised bodies in art. In placing her own family on site at Manjaree, Jones disrupts this ‘Australian pattern’, talking instead about Noongar stories, living and belonging. As the artist describes, it’s a Noongar beach party.
‘THE BEACH’ EVENTS
Perth Festival 2025: Curator Tour, Sun 16 Mar
ABOUT DIANNE JONES
Dianne Jones is a Ballardong artist from Noongar Country in Western Australia. Jones utilises photo-media to reposition the representation of Aboriginal Peoples and enact creative resistance to historical and contemporary colonial ideologies. Storytelling, family histories and decolonising archives are an integral part of her visual practice. Jones’s art reveals what is missing from pervasive Australian narratives and art history, highlighting the multifaceted nature of contemporary Indigenous identities and the importance of truth telling. Jones has completed her Masters at Victorian College of the Arts and is currently completing her PhD.
Her work is part of a growing movement by Indigenous artists to explore generational traumas and expose the ongoing impacts of colonisation. Jones’s work is held in many important public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Parliament House Perth WA, Edith Cowan University and the Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht, The Netherlands
