Fiona Foley Provocateur provides insights into the life of one of Australia’s most influential urban Aboriginal and activist artists. From her beginnings in Hervey Bay, Queensland, it follows her young adult life in Sydney where she co-founded Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-Operative in 1986, to her rise through the art world and, most recently, into an academic life.

This biography reveals how Foley’s life has impacted her art, and her art on her life. It explores the artist’s familial relations, her ancestral home of K’Gari/Fraser Island, and her approach to artmaking and teaching. A provocateur, the artist’s activism is captured delicately throughout. It’s a triumph in story-telling and reveals that there is no art without life.

Key points:

. An absorbing and uplifting insight into Foley’s courage and determination in confronting racism, the weight of history and the need to forge new models.

. A rare account of a friendship between artist and writer, who are also Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, which takes account of the identity politics that surround such relationships with nuanced authenticity.

. It traverses the life of one of Australia's most important artists and documents the seismic shifts that have accompanied the decades through which her work has been made.

. Wonderful insights into Foley’s heritage, and the process of her provocative commission at Brisbane Magistrates Court. An important book which records the present, before is glossed or altered by future historians.

Tabatha Saunders

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