Fiona Foley (born 1964) is a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist from K'gari (Fraser Island), Queensland. Foley is known for her activity as an academic, cultural and community leader and for co-founding the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.
Her practice encompasses many media including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, textiles and installation, and her work addresses contemporary political issues facing Indigenous Australians. It is held in the public collections of many Australian state, national, and university collections, including the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art as well as the British Museum in London.
Biography
Fiona Foley was born in Maryborough in 1964 and raised in nearby Hervey Bay and (briefly) Mount Isa.
In 2017 Foley completed a Doctorate of Philosophy. Her research focused on the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. A number of her artworks have referenced this act and its effect on the Badtjala people. which won the 2021 Queensland Premier's Award for a work of State Significance.
Career and artistic practice
Community engagement is pertinent to Foley's art practice. She contributed to the emergence of urban Australian Indigenous Art through her participation in the seminal Koori '84 group exhibition at Artspace.
Political issues are central to Foley’s practice. One such example is Edge of the Trees, a 1995 collaboration with Janet Laurence - the first major public artwork by both an Indigenous and a non-Indigenous Australian artist. In 1995 it was awarded the Lloyd Rees Award for Urban Design. The work utilises both Western and Indigenous iconographies to evidence historical conflict - both on its site (the Museum of Sydney, formerly Australia’s first Government House) and across Australia. and references the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 as well as the impacts of the British colonial opium trade on both Chinese and Indigenous communities. By exhibiting these works within the context of Western cultural institutions, Foley aims to evidence and embed oppressive Australian histories where they have previously been excluded. Positioning herself as both subject and author, Foley rectifies power imbalances and reconstructs an oppressive history. Works such as 1994’s Native Blood and Badtjala Woman demonstrate an aim to undermine and challenge the historical and "scientific" sanctity of such images, whilst highlighting the West’s idealisation, sexualisation and exploitation of Indigenous culture as an exotic aesthetic.
In 2020 Foley was awarded State Library of Queensland's inaugural Monica Clare Research Fellowship for her project Bogimbah Creek Mission: The First Aboriginal Experiment and The Magna Carta Tree. From her research fellowship, Foley produce her publication Bogimbah Creek Mission: the First Aboriginal Experiment and a Research Reveals lecture on the subject.
Foley is represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne.
- Eliza’s rat traps, 1991