The show titled Stolen Wages is part of Boorloo Contemporary, a new commissioning program for Indigenous artists in Western Australia as part of the Perth Festival.Â
Street, a Gooniyandi man from the country around Fitzroy Crossing, has been painting life in the Kimberley for decades.
But he's perhaps best known for leading a class action against the state's government to recover wages withheld from Aboriginal people between 1936 and 1972.
Artist Mervyn Street led a class action against the WA government to recover withheld wages. (Richard Wainwright/AAP PHOTOS)
A $180 million payout for thousands of eligible workers and their families was approved in 2024.
Street himself worked on remote stations most of his life but was not paid a wage until he was in his thirties.
Stolen Wages will be held at the Fremantle Art Centre from February, with a series of new commissions that explore the harsh realities of the Kimberley pastoral industry.
"He has this extraordinary talent for the colour and drama of the Kimberley and its cattle stations," Perth Festival artistic director Anna Reece said.
In her inaugural year at the helm of the city's arts showcase, Reece felt it needed a platform for visual artists comparable to other festivals.
"We have the most extraordinary First Nations visual artists across Western Australia," she said.
"But we don't yet have something that really profiles and celebrates them in a way that other states do."
She is keen to point out that Boorloo Contemporary has been guided by a board of Indigenous curators and artists, and creative producer Yabini Kickett.
One element of the program that will be hard to miss is a series of projections lighting up the disused East Perth Power Station by Noongar artists Allan Yarran, Ilona McGuire and Daniel Hansen.
It's the first ever projection artwork for 27-year-old McGuire, who is working on a collage of drawings and archival images.
A series of projections will light up the disused East Perth Power Station for the Perth Festival. (HANDOUT/PERTH FESTIVAL)
Like Reece, the artist has high hopes for the future of Boorloo Contemporary and the power station site.
"It's got the potential to bring people together on a site that's been quite overlooked, and it's a chance for people to re-imagine a place that has an interesting history," she told AAP.
As well as solo exhibitions and commissioned work, in its inaugural year Boorloo Contemporary features a nose-to-tail feast.
Killa: Pindan to Plate is an eight dish meal that will be prepared by the head chef of the Double Rainbow kitchen in Northbridge.
It's designed to explore the Kimberley diet, with Killa the name for bush cattle shared by families, as well as seafoods, bush honey and fresh offal.
Tables will be decorated with art from the Kimberley's remote Aboriginal art centres, while a cinematic installation will show diners - as they are eating - how the cattle are butchered and prepared for cooking.
At $230 a head, it's an experience for those with cash to spare, a reality that Reece acknowledges as a provocation by the artists involved.
It's part of a festival the Fremantle-born director hopes will change people's perceptions of the state.
"Hopefully it really offers to everyone this vision of Western Australia as a contemporary, diverse and richly cultured place," she said.
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