Artist Talk: Megan Cope

Artist Talk: Megan Cope

Megan Cope 2020 | Photo by Rhett Hammerton.

Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

This event has past

8 Oct 2022

Artist Talk: Megan Cope

Megan Cope 2020 | Photo by Rhett Hammerton.

Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
DatesSaturday 08 October 2022
(This event has past)

Ipswich Art Gallery is pleased to host Megan Cope as the artist discusses her works from the Australian War Memorial Touring Exhibition Art in Conflict.


About the artist

Megan Cope is a Quandamooka (North Stradbroke Island) artist. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work, paintings and public art investigate issues relating to identity, the environment and mapping practices.

Cope’s work has featured in the TarraWarra Biennial 2021: Slow Moving Waters, NGV Triennial 2020, UNSW Galleries presentation for Sydney Festival, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art (2020), The National (2017), and Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial (2017) and many more. In 2017-19 Cope was the Official Australian War Artist.

Cope’s works are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, National Gallery Australia, Musées de la Civilisation: Canada, and more. Public art commissions include After the Flood at James Cook University, Weelam Ngalut at Monash University, The Koorie Art Commission, Melbourne Museum and You Are, Here Now at the Australian Catholic University.

Megan Cope is a member of Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW and is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane.


About the exhibition

Art in Conflict is a new touring exhibition of contemporary art from the collection of the Australian War Memorial and showcases diverse responses to war across a range of media, including painting, drawing, film, print, photography, and sculpture. Three major new bodies of work debut in this exhibition: two recent official war art commissions – Susan Norrie (Iraq, 2016) and Megan Cope (Middle East, 2017) – and a landmark commemorative work by Angelica Mesiti. Other leading Australian artists are represented, such as Khadim Ali, Rushdi Anwar, eX de Medici, Denise Green, Richard Lewer, Mike Parr and Ben Quilty. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, a collection priority for the Memorial in recent years, is featured, with works by Tony Albert, Paddy Bedford, Robert Campbell Jr, Michael Cook, Shirley Macnamara and Betty Muffler.

Supported by research from an Australian Research Council Linkage Project, the exhibition highlights how war art can lead us to consider different ways of thinking about current and recent conflicts, inviting us to consider perspectives we might not otherwise encounter.

An Australian War Memorial touring exhibition.