Reko Rennie's Art Is "Politically Inspired"

17 July 2015 | 5:23 pm | Cyclone Wehner

"I certainly haven't ever felt like I should limit myself to one area or worry too much about limits that other people might try to impose on me."

Melbourne's Reko Rennie explores his Indigenous identity, and the interplay between the personal and the political, within an urban paradigm. Now he is one of the visual creatives commissioned for the 2015 Splendour In The Grass arts program, sharing his graffiti-influenced Flash. "I'll be adding my lightning flash symbols to the existing mural over the entrance tunnel to the festival," Rennie explains. "It has been worked on by other artists in previous years, so that it is becoming a layered piece created by individual artists at different times."

Rennie was born in Melbourne, coming of age in the city's inner-west. Yet he belongs to the Kamilaroi people of NSW and Queensland and uses their diamond emblem in his pop art, likening it to a family crest. Curiously, Rennie started as a graff artist. "Graff was the means to an artistic apprenticeship for me and opened up opportunities for expressing my identity." Indeed, he doesn't have an art school background. Has this liberated him from conventions in the contemporary art world? "I guess so — I certainly haven't ever felt like I should limit myself to one area or worry too much about limits that other people might try to impose on me. If I want to try something new, I learn everything I can about it and give it a go." As such, Rennie is active in a variety of mediums, from painting to sculpture to installation. He often namechecks Jean-Michel Basquiat.

"It's important for a range of different voices to respond. I try to add my own to the conversation through my work."

Rennie was a 2012 Archibald Prize finalist. His poly-panel Initiation then formed part of the acclaimed Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery Of Victoria. Already this year Rennie has assembled the installation Regalia for Personal Structures: Crossing Borders, a collateral event at the Venice Biennale. But he is most famous for his urban murals — notably one on the T2 building in Taylor Square, Sydney, that caused a sensation.

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Nevertheless, Rennie has incredibly only been a full-time artist for five years. Prior to that, he was a journalist at The Age. "I was always interested in art, and grew up in an artistic household, but I thought once I got older that journalism would be my main focus. After a while I found myself constantly being drawn back to making art — and I had to juggle days as a reporter with long nights in the studio. The balance was definitively tipped in 2009 when I was awarded an Australia Council For The Arts residency in Paris. I left journalism behind for good." Art has emboldened him. "My work has always been politically inspired. Working as an artist has given me a more powerful voice to talk meaningfully about Indigenous issues and other topics than journalism was able to." Rennie enters salient debates in Australian politics — especially those concerning Aboriginal sovereignty. "When political discourses work to crush the identities of various groups of people to suit a populist agenda, it's important for a range of different voices to respond. I try to add my own to the conversation through my work."

Rennie's streetwise art can be viewed on Tumblr globally. "I don't take the digital endgame into account when I'm creating works, but I do appreciate seeing my work shared across different platforms once they are completed. I've made some really interesting artistic connections through social media."