Simon Munro / National Regional Arts Fellow '26

Tamworth, New South Wales
Artform: Cultural Heritage
Project Title: Learning Places: Re-Indigenising Public Space Through Cultural Practice

Creative & Professional Development Fellowship

This fellowship project explores relationships between material practice, regional identity, cultural visibility, and contemporary Aboriginal visual arts practice within regional New South Wales. Developed through sustained studio production, observational work on Country, material experimentation, and regional engagement, the project will support the creation of a cohesive body of work informed by Anaiwan perspectives and contemporary cultural practice. Working primarily across painting and exhibition development, the fellowship will support exhibitions, artist talks, and public engagement activities that encourage dialogue surrounding Aboriginal cultural presence, connection to place, and regional identity. The project investigates how contemporary Aboriginal visual practice may contribute to greater cultural visibility within regional community and gallery contexts.

Simon Munro’s practice is grounded in Aboriginal cultural knowledge-making through material processes, mark-making and relational ways of learning. As an Anaiwan cultural practitioner from the New England Tablelands of New South Wales, his work explores relationships between Country, memory, cultural continuity and contemporary Aboriginal experience. Since graduating with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1997, Munro has maintained an active regional practice across studio, gallery, community and educational settings. His work includes contemporary painting and material cultural practice, with an emphasis on creating works that carry relationships to place, knowledge and lived experience.