Matt Poll
Curator Indigenous Heritage and Repatriation Project, Macleay Collections
BA UTS, GradCert VCA
Matt Poll has worked in museums and art galleries for nearly 20 years. For the past seven years, he has been the Assistant Curator of the Macleay Museum Indigenous Heritage Collections as well as the University of Sydney Repatriation Project Officer.
Matt 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 master's 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. It's exploring how visual artists, in particular, have developed auto-ethnographic methods of engaging with historical information outside of academic frameworks.
- 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 archival material by contemporary artists
- Delegate, Australia Council First Nations curatorial tour to the United States (2016)
- Recipient, Harold Mitchell Curator Exchange Program at Musee du Quai Branley, Paris (2014)
- Winner, New South Wales Local Government Association Cultural Award for the Warali Wali project (2005)
2016
- Curator, Written in Stone, Macleay Museum, 17 August 2015–8 August 2016
2013
- Curator, EORA College class of 2013, Verge Gallery
- 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
- Curator, Contemporary Indigenous Aboriginal Photography, Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative
- Curator, Harry J Wedge solo exhibition, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
2007
- Curator, Twentieth anniversary exhibition, Boomalli founding members
- Curator, Guangzhou international art fair, China
2006
- Curator, Indigenous Landscape Design + fibre and texture in New South Wales
- Curator, The Pink the Black and The Beautiful, Mardi Gras Festival satellite exhibition
- Curator, Guangzhou international Art Fair, China
2017
- 'From out of nowhere, now here' in Open Spatial Workshop: Converging in time, Monash University Museum of Art
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
- '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 1960s to now, with contributions by Matt Poll, Katie Yuill and Ann Curthoys, Sydney: University Art Gallery.
2010
- 'Islands Apart - Worlds Away, Review of The Others / Les autres', Pacific Arts NS 10: 52-54
2009
- Badger Bates. Artist profile in ‘Menagerie’: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture. Sydney: Object Australian Design Centre and the Australian Museum
- 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
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