Darren Blackman: More Than Words
Image credit: Embellysh Photography. Courtesy of the artist and Redcliffe Art Gallery.
Words are powerful. They have the power to move people, to provoke emotion, to generate love, to incite violence. The use of words, text, or language as forms of visual art is relatively new in the history of Western art, but, for Aboriginal people, words and text have been a fundamental tool within post-invasion art practices as a means of telling our truths.
Darren Blackman, a multi-disciplinary artist of Gureng Gureng and South Sea Islander heritage, has rapidly drawn attention for his bold and direct text-based works. His text installations are politically charged while socially and culturally astute, providing insights into the contemporary condition of our nation. In his latest installation Post Truth, Blackman moves beyond text-based paintings and textiles of previous exhibitions and engages with advertising-style, LED, neon-light sculpture, allowing for a wicked mingling of the political and the popular.
Blackman’s Truth Hurts, a double-sided neon-light sculpture, plays on the idea that there are two sides to history, a concept that he seeks to subvert; for Blackman, truth is singular. In a settler-colonial society, however, truths are often ignored in favour of grand historical narratives that omit truths harmful to the making of these nationalist myths. Of course, these actions are not restricted to the past; over the past few months, governments have continued to censor or cancel dissenting or difficult artists. These actions are part of an ongoing culture war, waged for the rights to exclusively record a future history. Today, it is as important as ever for artists to continue to tell these inconvenient or hurtful truths and not be silenced, for the authenticity of the history of the future relies heavily on a cacophony of voices to ensure those who inherit the earth from us are left a rich and full understanding of our contemporary realities.
Image credit: Darren Blackman, Advance Austraya Where, 2025, LED-neon light with silver mirror back board, two sizes available, 100 x 91cm, 2AP + Edition of 3. Image: Michael Marzik. Courtesy of the artist and Onespace.
At the 2025 ANZAC Day dawn ceremony at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, an Australian neo-Nazi heckled the Acknowledgement of Country, sparking caustic commentary from right-wing news sites that further emboldened attacks against this unique Australian protocol. The site and significance of this symbolic act of racism are not subtle: in the same moment that many were repeating ‘Lest We Forget’, the iconic slogan for the ANZACs, many right-wing conservatives were calling for the forgetting of thousands of generations of Aboriginal existence. Blackman’s Black Armband History, featuring the text ‘lest we know’, was created in the months before this flashpoint and captures the tenor of this dialogue. Whenever the suffering, dispossession, or sacrifice of First Nations peoples is mentioned, the resounding response from Australians is to forget or get over it.
Poetic, poignant, and political, Blackman’s neon text works illuminate the dichotomy between the white remembering and black forgetting that underpins so much of our national myth making.
At the heart of many of these issues is a strong sense of anti-intellectualism, which continues to pervade our national conscience and dialogue. Instead of mature and informed conversation, agendas or policies, Australia has often relied on a lowest-common-denominator approach to important cultural matters. This is perhaps best typified by the Australian deference to the ‘pub test’—what a bunch of half-cut white men sitting at a bar would think—as setting the standard for Australian morality. Blackman’s Anti-Intellectualism, which reads ‘skool sux’, highlights the lack of maturity in national cultural affairs that continues to resonate in mainstream politics, with slogans such as ‘If you don’t know, vote no’ in response to the referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament being worn like badges of honour for the wilfully ignorant.
Image credit: Darren Blackman, White noise, 2025, White LED-neon light with silver mirror back board, two sizes available, 63 x 75cm, 2AP + Edition of 5. Image: Michael Marzik. Courtesy of the artist and Onespace.
In Make Austraya Great Again, which is emblazoned with the text ‘Advance Australia Where?’, Blackman asks, where are we going as a nation? Constant culture wars continue to waste so much time, energy and resources that could be better invested in advancing our cultural understanding, embracing our diversity and propelling our artists to take a greater seat at the table of international culture.
While some may see Blackman’s political works as an attack on White Australia, in reality, they are a call for peace, self-reflection, mutual respect, and understanding. Few problems are ever solved through wilful ignorance, but rather through a critical investigation and taking action. In the same way that only someone who cares for you would point out the snot hanging from your nose, so Blackman brings these poignant issues to light not to denigrate, but in the hope that it will ultimately make us all pay attention and take action.
Onespace will proudly showcase Darren Blackman’s Post Truth exhibition at the 2025 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF). The exhibition then travels to Brisbane at Onespace after the Fair, ensuring Blackman’s poetic words are seen across Queensland. Post Truth responds to the 2025 CIAF theme Pay Attention! by embracing the call to stay alert, informed, and critically engaged with the political and social forces that shape our lives. Blackman’s politically charged works are grounded in cultural practice and reimagined as LED neon text-based sculptures that disarm the viewer through wit, vibrancy and his unique play on words.
CAIRNS INDIGENOUS ART FAIR
CIAF Dates | 11 – 13 July 2025
Opening Event | 10 July 2025, 4 - 10pm | Ticketed Event
Where | Booth 10 Tank 3, Tanks Arts Centre, 46 – 64 Collins Avenue, Edge Hill, Cairns, Australia
ONESPACE
Onespace Exhibition Dates | 25 July – 23 August 2025
Opening Event | 26 July 2025, 5 – 7pm | Artist Talk 4 - 5pm
Onespace Gallery Hours | Tuesday to Friday 10am – 5pm, Saturday 12pm – 5pm
