Artist
Nicholas Currie

https://www.instagram.com/nicholascurrie

“As an indigenous artist, I battle the ideas set by primitivism and fetishism, and to reclaim those styles in a high art form”

Nicholas Currie is a 19 year old artist and performer currently studying visual arts at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). As a Iningai man from his father’s side, Currie’s work looks at masculinity, race, identity and humanity in contemporary form.

Due to isolation, Currie works in his parent’s garage in Diamond Creek, Wurundjeri land, and works in painting, sculpture and performance to his mother’s fear of him being too cold. Currie’s work is autobiographical in nature depicting not only himself, his father and his friends, but everything around him.

Old Man (2020), Acrylic on Board. “I used continuous lines and the colours pink and orange to symbolises the continuous pattern in situations. The old man figure is in reference to a state ward priest and the danger they have on the kids they have in the state wards. My father being a boy in a boys home, he told me stories of a priest sneaking into bed with other kids and throughout my childhood I was always scared of older men, even when I was at the pool once and a man was getting changed and turned to me I ran out crying. The end of the line was in reference to the BLM movement that was happening in June and I was just expressing my gratitude for the people learning and changing their ways. I, as a white passing Bipoc person I mostly depicted colourful people as a form of reconciliation for myself as a coloured person.”

“This piece as well is me running from the older man when I was younger, inspired by Spanish line rock drawings as I studied them for uni. As an indigenous artist I battle the ideas set by primitivism and fetishism so as to reclaim those styles in a high art form.”

Artist Nicholas Currie

Artist
Nicholas Currie