Reko Rennie: How He Rolls.

In this comprehensive interview, the acclaimed Australian contemporary artist explains his motivations, inspirations and why “Aboriginal art isn’t just dots.”

Reko Rennie has exhibited his art across the world, from Venice to Paris, Los Angeles to Jakarta. This interview took place at the inaugural edition of Singapore art fair ART SG, held in January this year, where a series of Rennie’s paintings — exhibited by STATION — were swiftly snapped up by Asia-based collectors. Clearly, there’s something about this Indigenous Australian artist’s work that strikes a chord internationally.

Part of that, he puts down to the unfortunate fact that people globally have suffered the predations of colonialism, a subject Rennie frequently explores in his art. “This common thread or common experience has been shared by many cultures, whether it’s Indigenous people, whether it’s other nations and communities,” Rennie says. “And I think the understanding of loss, of genocide, cultural loss, dispossession, these things are unique geographically, but they are unfortunately very shared, internationally.”

Beyond the deeper meaning of his art, Rennie says, “There’s the aesthetic, I suppose, of the work. With me having a graffiti background, and then combining that with Australian Aboriginality, I think it’s just something a little bit fresh. People are warming up to the idea, and also becoming more educated, that Aboriginal art isn’t just dots.”

A member of the Kamilaroi people, one of Australia’s largest Indigenous nations, Rennie grew up in the rough Melbourne suburb of Footscray, where he took up graffiti in his teens. “I’ve come from painting on the street. I never went to art school,” he says. “And so graffiti, that was my artistic apprenticeship. I have to stay true to those roots. I’ve evolved, of course, I’m not doing the same stuff, but it’s nice to have that link there.”

“I’m a contemporary Aboriginal man that lives in an urban environment... We’re doing amazing things and living cross-cultural, international lives.”

Reko Rennie at the STATION booth at ART SG, with works 2 Regal, right, and Regent OA, left (both 2022).

While he has the utmost respect for the type of paintings that most readily spring to mind when conversation turns to Aboriginal art, Rennie feels it’s important that the modern, metropolitan Indigenous experience be represented artistically, too. “We’re doing amazing things and living cross-cultural, international lives,” he says.

“The reality is, I’m a contemporary Aboriginal man that lives in an urban environment. Of the three percent of the Australian population that is of Aboriginal identity, the majority of that collective lives in urban environments, not on the fringes of the desert or in regional communities,” Rennie explains. “So I use all these bright colours, because it links back to those early graffiti days, but more so, more importantly, to avoid this very romanticised notion of Aboriginality, a stereotype that exists, particularly internationally, where people judge authenticity on what someone looks like, what style of work they do.”

There’s a broad awareness of traditional dot paintings, however, as Rennie points out, only around 15 communities are legitimately able to practice that art form. “There are 350 different Indigenous language groups of Australia, and then you’ve got multiple dialects, patrilineal or matrilineal societies, countless differences,” he says. “Yet we get linked into this singular monoculture where it’d be like saying all Southeast Asia or all of Europe is one community, one culture, one identity.” Rennie says, “I’ve never wanted to have that kind of stereotype forced on me. That’s why I use these saturated, bright colours” — to reflect the urban environment he grew up in and continues to inhabit.

“A stereotype exists, particularly internationally, where people judge authenticity on what someone looks like, what style of work they do.”

Playing with lurid hues and patterns — like the psychedelic camouflage that’s a recurring motif in Rennie’s work — is also a way to proudly stand out, to stand up. “I wanted to recontextualise camouflage,” he explains. “The application of camouflage in military terms, it’s about concealing, blending in, having an element of surprise. By using camouflage within these really bright, colourful works, what I’m saying is, this is about being visible rather than being invisible.”

The geometric diamond pattern found in Rennie’s work is “almost like a coat of arms would be, in the western sense,” he explains. It’s one of the traditional symbols used by the Kamilaroi people to demarcate country, family, dialect. “Of course, I’m not traditionally initiated,” Rennie says, “but I’ve been given this symbol by my maternal grandmother, and what I wanted to do was create work where I could pay homage to that traditional identity through these geometric forms.”

Untitled #7, 2019

Making art that celebrates his culture and heritage in the loudest manner possible is Rennie’s way of redressing the silence forced upon his ancestors. “My grandmother and many other people in the communities — unfortunately, it’s a very common story — Aboriginal people were persecuted for their identities, made to feel ashamed. Their culture and their land were stripped away,” Rennie says. “It’s a really important thing for our generation now, where we don’t have that fear of persecution for speaking out, to make a proud declaration of identity.”

Using retina-searing Op Art patterns and punchy pigments, coupled with traditional symbols and slogans such as ‘Always was, always will be (Aboriginal land)’, which has been used in Indigenous rights protests for a century, “I’m visible and I’m saying: Here we are. This is who I am,” Rennie says. “I’m a proud Kamilaroi man, coming from one of the oldest living, continuing cultures in the world, and there’s a proud declaration of identity there, that no one can deny.”

“Language is a really fundamental part of my art... But I use the words in an abstract formation, so they’re not easily readable.”

From simple tags to the most intricate wildstyle pieces, graffiti is based around words, so it’s no surprise that Rennie habitually integrates text into his work. There’s a deeper cultural significance to this, though — beyond Rennie’s graff background, and the fact that he earned a living as a journalist with publications such as The Age newspaper before becoming a full-time artist in 2009.

“Language is a really fundamental part of my art, because only recently, the original Kamilaroi language has been returned to the community and kids are able to learn through the school syllabus and programs in northern New South Wales,” Rennie says, referring to the Australian state superimposed over Kamilaroi country. “Not long ago, in the 1950s and ’60s in Australia, people weren’t allowed to speak the language — if they did, they were jailed, or persecuted for it.”

Rennie says he felt an obligation to weave this once outlawed language into his work. “It’s empowering, returning to that cultural identity and putting it out there in an international context,” Rennie says. “But I use the words in an abstract formation, so they’re not easily readable. There’s a nice form to them, I think, and that really resonates with me, coming from doing graffiti.”

Around the age of fifteen, Rennie experienced an artistic epiphany upon discovering the work of Australian artist Howard Arkley. “When I was younger, I spent a lot of time in a lot of galleries,” Rennie says. “I come from a very working-class background and when my mother was working, I’d be taken to the gallery, just because it was a free space.” Arkley’s art, depicting familiar scenes of Australian suburbia, was rendered in lush airbrush — in technique, not a world away from the work Rennie was then creating illegally on walls.

Rennie and 2 Regal (2022).

Three decades later, Rennie continues to feel the urge to ‘get up’ — the term used by graffiti writers to describe placing a piece in a particularly prominent location — and more importantly, to ensure art is accessible to all. “Going back to my roots, I’ve always wanted to have work in a public forum, on the street, or in a public environment,” Rennie says. “It’s nice to still have that connection, to have work in a public forum that is free, where everyone of any background has access to it. I think that’s important, and I really enjoy doing public art, sculptures and murals,” Rennie says.

“An art fair like this,” he says, gesturing at the cavernous halls of ART SG, “it’s amazing, but you’re limiting the work to a certain demographic, a clientele that are obviously educated, aware and interested, and have the means to come in here. Whereas, you know, there are a lot of people that don’t have those means; I used to be one of those people, I grew up one of those people.”

Today, Rennie is in the enviable position where he enjoys the success, renown and resources to make his grandest artistic fantasies a reality. His work has been projected over the Sydney Opera House, splashed across a Melbourne basketball court and down the side of a functioning tram. It’s been painted fifty feet high in the atrium of the Nevada Museum of Art and jazzed up the exterior of LA’s Standard Hotel. Rennie’s art has dressed a stack of a hundred-plus shipping containers in Delhi, adorned the trackside at the Melbourne Grand Prix, and been suspended from the ceiling of museums from Canberra to Cuenca, Ecuador.

Rennie’s work projected on the Sydney Opera House during the 2016 Vivid Festival.

“I’ve always had that attitude where, when someone says you can’t do something, I want to have a go.”

“It’s really important for me, and for many of us younger, contemporary, Aboriginal artists to be in the international arena,” Rennie says. “The reality is, in Australia, apart from being close to Southeast Asia, we are so geographically removed from many of the largest-scale institutions, and spaces where art has been around for centuries, particularly those Eurocentric spaces and the United States.”

Though Rennie faced scepticism early on in his career when he expressed aspirations to exhibit at the Venice Biennale (achievement unlocked, 2015), he has always had the confidence to bust out the plastic and self-fund a mission to the art heartlands. “It’s really important that we’re seen over there and the only way to do that is, you have to actually be present, you have to be there or try and get in there. And that’s something I’ve always, always tried to do. It’s now starting to pay some dividends.”

Closer to home, in 2016 Rennie travelled to the area where his grandmother was born in rural New South Wales, to shoot the cinematic art project OA_RR (the OA standing for Original Aboriginal, a play on American slang acronym OG: Original Gangsta). The resulting film sees Rennie navigating the remote landscape in a 1973 Rolls-Royce Corniche, hand-painted with his signature camo motifs, doing epic dirt burnouts as an homage to the Kamilaroi people’s practice of creating ephemeral, ceremonial sand engravings.

A still from Rennie’s OA_RR, 2017.

Rennie chose the Rolls-Royce to reclaim “a symbol of wealth, power and colonialism,” of the type embodied by Australia’s landed gentry of the 20th Century. This symbolism, and the “return to Country” represented by the film’s location are poignant, as Rennie’s grandmother belonged to the Stolen Generations, Indigenous Australians removed from their families and communities by the church or government agencies. At the age of just eight, she was taken from her family home and forced into indentured servitude on affluent white landowners’ properties.

A more recent filmed project, 2021’s Initiation OA_RR, puts Rennie at the controls of a hot pink 1973 Holden Monaro, prowling the mean streets of his west Melbourne youth. Muscle cars like the Monaro (an Aboriginal word meaning higher plain, not coincidentally) were emblems of masculinity and initiation into ‘street life’ when Rennie was growing up in Footscray. Juxtaposing this hard edge, the film features an elegant score from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Indigenous soprano Deborah Cheetham, AO. Rennie intended this as a salute to his grandmother, whose employers forbade her from accepting a music scholarship she’d won, preventing her from pursuing a career as a singer.

Rennie’s works Regent OA, background, and OA Royalty, foreground (both 2022), at the STATION stand, ART SG, 2023

Rennie says he intends to pursue even more ambitious projects in future. “I’ve always had that attitude where, when someone says you can’t do something, it’s just like, I want to have a go. And the worst-case scenario is, it doesn’t work out. That’s OK. It’s just an experience. It’s nothing negative. It’s just something that occurred.” He believes it’s vital to experiment and expand boundaries. “My work will continue to evolve over the years — that’s super important for an artist, to evolve. You still have links, context, in relation to previous works, but you have to mix it up.”

From a commercial standpoint, Rennie can see why an artist might find success working in a particular style, then stick with that. “A lot of artists are still doing the same work they’ve been doing for quite a while and, of course, there’s the financial gain and living life and being able to survive — I understand that,” he says. “But it gets boring, too. You need to evolve. You need to mix up mediums. Why be limited? You don’t have to be limited nowadays. I’ve got so many ideas about works, film and sculpture, I never have the time to do them all. Hopefully I’ll be around for a while longer,” he laughs.

This artist has got a lot more work to do. So does Australia, Rennie reckons, when it comes to recognising Indigenous rights and making amends for the gross injustices of the past. Granted, Australia has certainly made strides in recent years — for example, recognition of traditional owners is now fairly customary, there’s a widespread understanding of the concept of Country, and a growing consensus that celebrating the anniversary of Britain’s invasion of Australia is utterly messed up. “There’s definitely, in Australia’s capital cities, a general interest and engagement that is positive, about moving forward,” Rennie says.

Nevertheless, he qualifies, “We’re still miles away in terms of government and rights, retribution, repatriation, and there’s so many elements that can be sorted quite easily, but it just hasn’t occurred yet. I’m not gonna hold my breath, however it would be nice to see a more proactive approach.”

Steps Rennie says he’d like to see taken include strong parliamentary representation for Indigenous people, substantial percentages of mining rights revenue allocated to communities, and the return of crown land to its original owners.

“I think if the government were more serious about assisting Indigenous rights and community and making amends for past atrocities, there are some pretty easy fixes to do that,” he says. “But we’ve still got a long way to go.”

Interview organised thanks to STATION.