Visual Art Exhibition Review | Brian Rope
True: Kevin Gilbert 1933 – 1993
Tuggeranong Arts Centre | 13 June – 9
August 2025
Kevin Gilbert, Wiradjuri, is best known to many Australians as an activist, a First Nations human rights defender. He was born on 10 July 1933 to the Wiradjuri Nation on the banks of the Kalara (Lachlan) river near Condobolin, New South Wales. His father’s ancestry was English and Irish, and his mother was of Aboriginal and Irish descent. His childhood was one of intimate connection with his mother’s Country. When he was seven his father killed his mother then himself. A biography of Gilbert here provides extensive background which perhaps explains the reasons why he was passionate about the need for activism.
What may be less known by many is that Gilbert is also recognised as an iconic poet, playwright and author. And his artistic talent also includes painting, printmaking, photography and producing artworks of Wiradjuri spirituality and teachings. He received the Human Rights Award for Literature for his anthology Inside Black Australia in 1988. He was awarded an Australian Artists Creative fellowship in 1992. He became the first Aboriginal/Wiradjuri poet to be published in the French language with the bilingual anthology Le Versant Noir (2018).
The pen is mightier
than the sword
but only when
it sows the seeds of
thought
in minds of men
to kindle love and grow
through the burnt page
destroyed by huns and
vandals in their rage (Gilbert 1994, 48).
The Vienna Convention defines treaties as agreements between sovereign equals as a means to promote friendly and cooperative relations among nations. For Gilbert, a treaty was about a just way forward: ‘with all domestic options exhausted, a Sovereign Treaty is our only peaceful way to justice. There can be no reconciliation without a Sovereign Treaty’ (Gilbert 1993, endpaper).
Gilbert died of emphysema on 1 April 1993 in Canberra. A memorial was held at the Aboriginal Embassy. He was remembered as the Land Rights Man, Treaty man, and Rainmaker. His final writing, dated February 1993, reads:
If we want the Dream to
come true
we must BE true to the
Dream
but all this will only
be meaningful
if there are Dreamers
who respond
and make the Dream come
true (Breath of Life 1996, title page)
32 years later, this exhibition shares the truth of Gilbert’s sixty years of life. In what would have been his 92nd year, we have an opportunity to celebrate his life and art with images and poetry created during his lifetime along with some works editioned for the first time.
Gilbert is recognised as the first Aboriginal fine art printmaker, so it is most fitting that the exhibition includes many fine art lino prints expressing his core themes of a spiritual presence enhancing the cultural survival of his People against the seemingly insurmountable odds in an oppressive colonial system. His poetry is displayed on fine silk hangings. There are books to look at.
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| Installation image - Brian Rope |
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| Installation image - Brian Rope |
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| Installation image - Brian Rope |
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| Installation image - Brian Rope |
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| Kevin Gilbert - Raising Our Sovereign Flag, Opening New Parliament House, Canberra, 9 May 1988 |
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| Kevin Gilbert - When Children March 1988 Silver gelatin Print |
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| Kevin Gilbert - Liberation of Our Nations, 25 January 1988 |
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| Kevin Gilbert, Bird Cage Reserve, Murrumbidgee. Image courtesy of Ellie Gilbert |
Reminders of events that happened, things for us to reflect on nearly 40 years later. What has changed? What has stayed the same?
This review is also available on the author's blog here.
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