Please join us on Wednesday 23 June, 5.30pm for a special event with Carol Mcgregor, current exhibiting artist in the Myall Creek and beyond exhibition, and Mary Williams Spiers, Sub Dean Indigenous Studies College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU.

Carol McGregor is of Wathaurung, Kulin Nation and Scottish descent and works with multimedia including ephemeral natural fibres, paint, clay, metal, and paper. Her recent art practice involves the revival of the traditional possum skin cloak as an art form and a way to strengthen community and individual identities. McGregor has worked extensively with south-east Queensland Aboriginal communities facilitating workshops teaching and sharing the knowledge and skills around possum skin cloak making.

McGregor has exhibited widely and her work features in national and international collections. Recent solo exhibitions include Art of the Skins: un-silencing and remembering, Griffith University, Brisbane (2019) and Repositories of Recognition, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Charlottesville, USA (2018) and she has participated in many group exhibitions such as Rites of Passage, QUT Art Museum (2020), New Woman, Museum of Brisbane (2019) and So Fine, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra (2018). She is currently the Program Leader of the Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art unit at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

Mary Spiers Williams is the Sub Dean of Australian Indigenous Studies. She currently teaches introductory courses in Australian Indigenous Studies, and convenes courses in decolonising research.

Prior to joining academia full-time, Mary researched in criminology, practiced criminal law in NSW and the NT at all levels, was a senior policy officer in criminal law reform for the NSW Attorney General's Department, facilitated law and justice projects with and for Warlpiri people, and conducted community legal education for Aboriginal communities in central Australia.

Mary began teaching at universities in 1999, initially undergraduate criminal law course. Since then she has continued to teach criminal law and procedure, as well as advanced courses in criminal justice and sentencing, courses on the impact of state laws on First Peoples, youth law, criminology, penology, evidence, advocacy, and legal ethics at the ANU and other leading Australian universities, and convened clinical legal programmes.

Her research interests are in the impact of state laws on First Peoples, and centring the knowledge and insights of Australian First Peoples on sociologic studies and legal anthropology.

Registrations are essential.