bayad'yu budyari dharuggu yiyura
yiyura ngurrabirang
bayad'yu budyari dharugg warangad baranyi, yagu, baribagu yiyuragu

I speak well of the Dharug People, 
The People belonging to Country
I speak well of the Old ones past, present and the future people

For more than 60,000 years Aboriginal generations have held deeply spiritual knowledges,
values  and skills as - Country.
 

Warimi - Hello, my name is Venessa Possum, and my kinship is Muringong Ngurra (Country), acknowledging seasonal paths through many waterholes connecting Georges and Nepean Rivers in a region of southwest Sydney.

 

My paternal ancestor, Budbury, was a significant Indigenous intermediary of our homelands. As such, I acknowledge our connection to the Dharawal and Gundungurra Neighbours, and to Yuin Peoples Country further south. I also acknowledge my Irish ancestry, which traces to the same region as my Irish ancestor John Walsh from Kilkenny, Ireland, who married my maternal ancestor Mandagary (Mary) in 1837.

 

Aside from my positionality as a Muringong custodian, I am an early-career academic and an artist based in Gulamada, the Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia. My interdisciplinary cultural research is rooted in a lifetime of innovative approaches, culminating in a Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts and Indigenous Studies from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University (2020). Previous studies include a Bachelor of Contemporary Indigenous Art (CAIA) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), including being awarded the Chancellor's University Medals in 2017 and 2018. Prior to my Indigenous studies, I was awarded a Certificate in Visual Art with Honours at the National Art School (1986-88).

 

All aspects of my professional life are relational and highly symbolic, demonstrating a continuity of Indigenous intermediary practices. As a contemporary artist, I utilise significant material cultures to design public art and curate sensorial art installations. My art-making, project work, consultancy work and teaching are intermediary in revealing a legacy of lesser-known Indigenous kinship philosophies. I am a sessional academic in the Department for Critical Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, teaching in the unit titled Dharug Ngurra. I am also a current recipient of a Macquarie University Fellowship in Indigenous Research (MUFIR) alongside established professional art and regional curatorial practices.

 

QUOTE

"The living languages of the Country, footsteps and voices of ancestors and more than human kin, are my teachers, guiding my muru (path) of intermediating knowledges".

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