Jody Rallah

A yuggera and biri, First Nations Australian artist from Magandjin-Meeanjin/Brisbane Rallah creates 'knowledge vessels' using various mediums and practices across object making and painting, sculptural installation, facade and thoroughfares, soundscape, and collaborative intergenerational approaches. She creates large-scale and intimate forms to embody living histories and explore an evocative sensibility with material creations, and iconography. Rallah investigates how the aliveness of place is encoded in memory spaces, and how a haptic hands-on approach to art making and design can foster inclusive conversations, by inviting curiosity about relationships with Country, the built environment, and our place within it.

In 2024, Rallah was the third Galang residency recipient based in Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts as part of the Powerhouse initiative to support Australian-based First Nations creative practitioners. Her project explored the impact of tactile language systems in immersive environments, investigation the Braille systems transformative impact in empowering social change for individuals with vision impairments. She found there were connections between her culture and the Braille system, both linked to tactile language. By engaging with Ancestral creations in museum collections her research highlighted the role of haptic practices in healing, connection, and cultural continuity. Integrating these systems into public artworks, where she actively works. She emphasised their potential to reshape collective experiences and deepen our understanding of place and how these systems facilitate cultural resurgence, foster healing, and support intergenerational knowledge sharing.

In the last few years, the artist has created a series of large-scale clay paintings, culminating in a 22- metre-long performative work at the Museum of Brisbane in 2023. Rallah graduated with a Bachelor's in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art (CAIA) from the Queensland College of Art - Griffith University in 2019. In 2020 Rallah participated in the Hatched National Graduate Exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) as one of twenty-four artists selected Nationwide. In 2021 she held a solo exhibition at Milani Carpark Gallery. Rallah debuted her work Guides in the Brisbane City Centre as a part of the Indigenous Art Program - Outstanding 2022. She has been a panelist for the QLD Museum during the World Science Festival, Apmere Mparntwe - Australian Ceramics Triennial, Australian Ceramics Journal, Sculptors QLD, Women of the World, and more.

Rallah will begin the 12-week residency in late May concluding with an exhibition at the Gallery in August 2025.

Images: Jody Rallah. Photo courtesy of the artist