Born 1955

Kooma clan, of the Uralarai people, South West Queensland

Lives and works from her studio workshop near Keppel Sands on the Capricorn Coast in Central Queensland, Australia.
Dr. Pamela Croft Warcon has practised as a visual artist since the mid-eighties. She is an academic who has worked extensively in Queensland and the Northern Territory, Australia. She facilitates and coordinates various community cultural development projects, curates exhibitions, worked in curriculum design, implementation, evaluation and various other community consultancies and projects. She is an active member and representative for Indigenous and community art groups advocating for artists rights, social justice, self-determination and empowerment. She is the first Indigenous person to gain a Doctor of Visual Arts.
Dr. Croft Warcon's visual narratives are constructs of a land-centred, Bothways philosophy to create alternative story sites for identity and displacement, histories, sense of place and the effects of colonisation. Croft Warcon has been producing prints and works on paper, paintings, sculptural assemblages, and installations with mixed media including found objects. Pamela has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and internationally in solo, group and collaborative projects including public art. She was awarded artist-in-residence status in Australia, the USA, Holland, France and the Philippines. Her artwork is represented in public and private collections both nationally and internationally. In 2004 Dr Pamela Croft Warcon was recognised with a Public Art Award of Excellence with the Atlanta Urban Design Commission in the USA and Central Queenslander of the Year by the Queensland Government. Many publications include her work. She was also invited by AusTrade and the Australian Consulate of Atlanta to represent Australia in the Macon Cherry Blossom Festival in March 2004. In 2003 to 2005, Croft held very successful solo exhibitions and community art projects in Houston Texas, and Atlanta Georgia in the USA and during 2006 and 2007 in Zoetermere, Zouterwoulde, and Utrecht in Holland. The Australia Council for the Arts awarded Croft with a Fellowship Grant in 2007. Pamela has recently returned from Samoa for the 10^th Pacific Arts Festival 2008 as a delegate member chosen by Arts Qld and Australia Council for the Arts.

‘I am an artist wanting to reconnect to the social. I am interested in fine art narrative that is visionary and inspiring. I need to create meaning for a wider cultural context to explore and feedback into the community. I portray the importance of tradition, recognition of ancestors; respect for uniqueness in spiritual expression acknowledgement of history and culture; a sense of place; and the strong connection to family and community. Through my work, I am committed to and educational and social transformation that empowers the inherent strength of Aboriginal peoples and cultures. I tell stories highlighting similarities and differences. The challenge is to embrace those differences rather than reject them. I ask people to truly listen and absorb in order to move to a place of understanding of our world.'

The Pacific Arts Alliance

Core Members

Registered Artists

Directory

Pamela Croft Warcon