Exhibitions

Biography

Takira Simon-Brown is a Niyanta of Chief Mannalargenna of the Plangermairreenner Nation (Ben Lomond) and a luna of Paredareme Country where the Moomairemenner community once resided.

Takira’s art practice includes music, film and performance, painting and printmaking. She comes from a strong line of Aboriginal makers – her grandmother and mother, both shell stringers, have necklaces in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Collection, and her family includes other arts practitioners and educators.

Takira was invited to the opening of a permanent exhibit in Launceston to find her birth necklace made by her grandmother behind a display cabinet, and realised her cultural gifts were never passed down, just knowledges – creating a gap in traditional ways and adding to the theft of culture by museums in her peoples’ attempt of survival.

Artist statement

Stolen Journey (polyptych), 2022

From The Country
From Our Culture
From Our Ancestors
For Our Country
For Our Culture

Stolen Journey is the story of a shell necklace made and gifted to the next of kin. This story starts before settlement when Country was rich in Culture because Country was vibrant, clean and plentiful. Then a ship finds the shores of lutruwita, beginning the start of thefts that brought the Elders together to signal to their Communities the destruction of Country and Culture. They created the pathway for Mob to journey to knowledge and communal healing to continue to retain Country and culture.

Though the Mob stays strong keeping Culture, Country finds it harder to retain its historical native values that create our Culture. Development is taking over in the name of ‘growth’ and continues to take ‘ownership’ of the Stolen. The shell necklaces travel through hands of wanting. The shells hold a piece of spirit from the Ancestors who created them and they whisper to be returned home to family.

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