Totemistical

“…You create make-believe landscapes out of horrible situations, looking for some reality out of disappointments, and marvels in the images and issues that surround you.” (Destiny Deacon) 

“Destiny Deacon’s dolls are “the same but different”. Whether as self-portraiture or cathartic psychodrama, Destiny has always used dolls of all kinds in her “blak” humor photographic narrative compositions. Dolls are normally seen as life’s positive travelling companions, but they also carry a shadowy insidious Chucky-type character not so initially visible.” (Djon Mundine) 

“Humour cuts deep. I like to think that there’s a laugh and a tear in each picture.” (Destiny Deacon)

Taken from: Djon Mundine, ‘Destiny Deacon, Walk & don’t look blak’ in ‘ART iT PICKS, Tokyo’, ART iT, 11 Spring/ Summer 2006 Vol. 4 No. 2 pp. 6-7

Destiny Deacon worked as a teacher, before turning to photography and film to stimulate public ideas about Aboriginal politics. In the early 1990s she contributed to exhibitions and events organised by the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative. Her connections with Aboriginal activists such as Charles Perkins and artists including Brenda L Croft, Fiona Foley and Lisa Bellear indicate Deacon’s place as an important socially conscious artist during a period when Aboriginal civic issues were only beginning to be noticed.

Destiny Deacon’s retrospective exhibition, Walk & don’t look blak is currently exhibiting at the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo. Walk & don’t look blak was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2005 before touring to New Caledonia and. Two bilingual (French/English and Japanese/English) catalogues were produced to accompany Deacon’s retrospective. Recent group exhibitions include New 05, curated by Max Delany, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2005) and High Tide: Currents in Contemporary Australian Art, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland and Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania (2005 – 2006), Latitudes 2005, Hotel de Ville, Paris (2005), Image & Imagination, Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, Canada (2005), Talking Territory and Trauma, Golden Thread Gallery, Ulster, Ireland (2005) and I thought I knew but I was wrong: new video art from Australia, curated by Alexie Glass and Sarah Tutton, Ssamzie Space, Seoul, South Korea (2005). 

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In 2002 Deacon was the only Australian artist to be chosen for Documenta II, perhaps the most important survey of international contemporary art, held only once every five years in Kassel, Germany. Deacon has been included in numerous important survey exhibitions including in the Yokohama Triennale in 2001 (curated by Akira Tatehata), the Biennale of Sydney in 2000, the Adelaide Biennial in 2000 and the Australian Perspecta in 1999 and 1993. Her work is held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Queensland Art Gallery as well as numerous other public, private and corporate collections in . Recently major acquisitions of Deacon’s work were made by the National Gallery of , Canberra and Te Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK), Stifting Ludwig Wien, Vienna, and also the Museum Sammlung Essl, .