Matt Poll
Curator Indigenous Heritage and Repatriation Project, Macleay Museum
Grad Cert VCA BA
BA Communications, University of Technology
Biographical details
Matt Poll has worked in museums and art galleries for nearly 20 years. For the past seven years Matt has worked as the Assistant Curator of the Macleay Museum Indigenous Heritage Collections as well as being the University of Sydney Repatriation Project Officer.
Matt has previously worked as the Artistic Director of Boomalli Aboriginal artists cooperative as well as other positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Wollongong City Gallery. His current masters by research project seeks to further develop methods of understanding the ways contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists have used museum collections, historic records and archival materials in the reconstruction of cultural identities, exploring how visual artists, in particular, have developed auto-ethnographic methods of engaging with historical information outside of academic frameworks.
Research interests
- Indigenous Community cultural development
- Repatriation of ancestral remains and secret sacred artefacts
- Aboriginal art produced by New South Wales artists
- Historical collections of New South Wales Aboriginal cultural materials
- Translations of Indigenous historical archive material by contemporary artists
Grants and Awards
|
2016 |
Delegate, Australia Council First Nations curatorial tour to the United States |
|
2014 |
Recipient, Harold Mitchell Curator exchange Program at Musee du Quai Branley, Paris |
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2005 |
Winner, New South Wales Local Government Association Cultural Award for the Warali Wali project |
Exhibitions
|
2016 |
Curator, Written in Stone, Macleay Museum, 17 August 2015 – 8 August 2016 |
|
2013 |
Curator, EORA College class of 2013, Verge Gallery |
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2013 |
Curator with Zanny Begg and Boyd D, The Transit of Venus, Tin Sheds Gallery |
|
2011 |
Curator with Katie Yuill, Freedom Riders: Art and activism 1960s to now, University Art Gallery, 3 July – 5 September 2011 |
|
2010 |
Curator, Peoples of the Rainforest, Macleay Museum |
|
2009 |
Curator, ‘Outlines’: Koori artefacts from the Macleay Museum, Macleay Museum |
|
2008 |
Curator, ‘Re-inscriptions’, Aboriginal + China connections, Gallery 4A |
|
2008 |
Curator, Contemporary Indigenous Aboriginal Photography, Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative |
|
2008 |
Curator, Harry J Wedge solo exhibition, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne |
|
2007 |
Curator, Twentieth anniversary exhibition, Boomalli founding members |
|
2007 |
Curator, Guangzhou international art fair, China |
|
2006 |
Curator, Indigenous Landscape Design + fibre and texture in New South Wales |
|
2006 |
Curator, The Pink the Black and The Beautiful, Mardi Gras Festival satellite exhibition |
|
2006 |
Curator, Guangzhou international Art Fair, China |
Publications
|
2017 |
'From out of nowhere, now here' in Open Spatial Workshop: Converging in time, Monash University Museum of Art |
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2016 |
'Presence through absence' in The Museum of Dissensus, Erasure and Memory, Sydney College of the Arts |
|
2015 |
Written in Stone, Sydney: University of Sydney |
|
2015 |
'Written in stone: Understand Aboriginal stone tools', Teaching History, vol 49, no. 3, Sep 2015: 26-30 |
|
2014 |
Jason Wing, Sydney: Artspace |
|
2011 |
Freedom Riders: Art and Activism 1960’s to now, with contributions by Matt Poll, Katie Yuill and Ann Curthoys, Sydney: University Art Gallery, [available online] |
|
2010 |
'Islands Apart - Worlds Away, Review of The Others / Les autres', Pacific Arts NS 10: 52-54 |
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2009 |
Badger Bates. Artist profile in ‘Menagerie’: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture. Sydney: Object Australian Design Centre and the Australian Museum |
|
2009 |
Garth Lena. Artist profile in ‘Menagerie’: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture. Sydney: Object Australian Design Centre and the Australian Museum |
|
2007 |
Harry J Wedge. Artist profile in Culture warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia |