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Artist Residency

Dora Griffiths and Jan Griffiths

Dora Griffiths and Jan Griffiths undertook artist residencies at Kluge-Ruhe from October 11-25, 2024. They led an Artist Talk and an Artist-led Tour of the exhibition Our Unbroken Line: The Griffiths Family. They recorded a podcast episode for Aboriginal Art in America with Henry Skerritt at WTJU. They led a hands-on artmaking workshop for children using air-dry clay and worked jointly on two creative projects. The first was a sewing project with Marcy Linton’s UVA class using block-printed fabric from Waringarri Arts. The second was a screenprinting project at local printshop Infinite Repeats through which they produced three print editions. Dora and Jan Griffith’s residency was supported by Creative Australia.

Bio

Dora Griffiths is an artist, curator and arts administrator of the Miriwoong and Ngarinyman peoples. She was born in Kununurra, Western Australia, where she lives with her five children and fifteen grandchildren. Dora has been a director of the Waringarri Aboriginal Arts board and the Chair for several years. She completed an arts-worker extension program in 2012 in which she learned art industry skills including conservation and in 2018 she earned a Certificate in Cross Cultural Conservation and Heritage from the University of Melbourne. In 2019, Griffiths participated in an Art Gallery of Western Australia internship program, and has since curated numerous exhibitions including, The Alternative Archive (2019) and Open Borders (2022), which toured regionally throughout Western Australia. In 2023 she was awarded the East Kimberley Aboriginal Achievement Award for her outstanding contribution to culture and community.

Jan Griffiths is a dedicated and prolific artist primarily working across painting, ceramics and poetry.  Her work explores personal family narratives which have also included multi-media installations, fashion and photography. She has exhibited extensively and presented ceramic demonstrations at galleries and festivals within Australia such as the Ceramics Triennial. She was a finalist in the 2018 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), the 2020 Indigenous Fashion Awards, and exhibited at the 2021 Indian Ocean Craft Triennial.

Related Exhibition(s)

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The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia acknowledges the Monacan Nation, the traditional owners of the land and waters upon which it stands.

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