Lisa Roberts
Dark Tabular (year unknown)
mixed media (acrylic on canvas, framed)

89.5 x 70.5cm

I dance, draw and make animations. Born on Norfolk Island in 1949, my heritage is Aboriginal Australian and European. My totem is Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill) who works as both an individual and a swarm. I grew up in Victoria in the house built by my ancestors, artists Lillie Williamson and Tom Roberts. My mother Jean worked in Bill Onus's Aboriginal Enterprises studio. My father Noel built and operated radio communication systems. Like many people dispossessed of cultural knowledge of their Indigenous forebears, I work with my community to reconnect diverse ways of knowing that sustained Aboriginal Australia for tens of thousands of years. By community I mean the entities that interact to sustain Life.

I work both independently and as a collaborator. In the summer of 2001-2 I worked in Antarctica as an artist in with the Australian Antarctic Division and then in the University of Technology Sydney’s Faculty of Science. I completed Aboriginal Studies at Eora College and then a PhD at the University of New South Wales. These explorations led me to reconnect with my Aboriginal family in Victoria and to recognise the primal forms in nature, art and scientific data, as languages of relationship, change and transformation, that are available to everyone.

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