Press: A 'permanent acknowledgement of country' installed at Melbourne's St Paul's Cathedral

In 2021, Loughrey became the first Indigenous canon in the 142-year history of St Paul's Cathedral, the Anglican church in the heart of Melbourne's CBD.

Being appointed canon recognises Loughrey, an artist, author and vicar of the St Oswald's Anglican Church in Glen Iris, for his service to the Anglican church.

Now, that role has allowed him to bring together two of his life's passions.

Loughrey has designed a series of glass panels for the narthex screen, or cathedral entrance, depicting the traditional lands on which the cathedral stands.

Read the full article on ABC News here.

Upcoming exhibitions: February-March 2022

Melbourne
February-March 2022

• Molecule - 11 Feb to 27 March 2022, Belconnen Arts Centre, Canberra, ACT

• Opening of Murnong Gallery at St Oswald’s Anglican Church, Glen Iris, VIC

• ‘Contested Space’ at Murnong Gallery by Glenn Loughrey

Art contribution for Book Launch: “Forgiveness: A Study Guide”

St Peter’s Eastern Hill, Melbourne
December 2021

I had the pleasure to be invited to contribute art to this forthcoming book.

It will be launched by the Archbishop on Sunday 5 December at St Peter’s Eastern Hill in Melbourne, at 12noon following High Mass, followed by lunch. You’re welcome to join us.

Hard copy versions will be available soon, details to be updated soon. The book will also be made available in due course for free on the ACC&C website: https://about.csu.edu.au/community/accc/home 

An additional book launch will happen at St Mark’s Theological College in Canberra, 2.30pm on Tuesday 7 December.

Installation: Canon - Artist in Residence at St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne
November 2021

These are some highlights from my installation as a Canon - Artist in Residence at St Paul's Cathedral in November 2021, the first Aboriginal to be a Canon in 141 years. I am wearing a possum skin cloak made in Healesville and smoked in ceremony by a local elder, and accompanied by my wife.

Exhibition: ‘Love Letters to Country’

Hearth Galleries, Healesville
June 11 to August 31, 2021

LAUNCH EVENT: 2pm, Saturday 19th June - Please RSVP via official Facebook Event.

Wiradjuri artist, author and minister, Glenn Loughrey will join Kath Wilson, journalist, author and former co-editor of Overland, in lively conversation. They will neither shirk nor make light of the profound or disturbing, but the delight factor will be guaranteed!

Loughrey's work is both a lament and celebration of Country. His overriding concern is for the ongoing impacts of colonisation and the resilience and resistance of Aboriginal people, not as victims or survivors, but as Sovereign Peoples of this land.

Loughrey’s art practice is an exploration of his journey into his family, his mob and his country, and his preoccupation is with the interaction between dominant ‘white culture and the oldest living culture on the planet’. His work explores the impact of that interaction from an Indigenous man’s point of view and Glenn’s purpose is always to engage, challenge and initiate action leading to unification and reconciliation.

He uses combined perspectives; an aerial view of country, with European landscape traditions. He is intrigued by pattern thinking, ‘there are intertwined patterns below above and across the country; the past present and future are connected in one place, the place where you are, and in terms of the art, on the canvas.’

​He applies his acrylic paint thickly, one dot at a time, usually with raised, texture to invite touch and interaction. He works so that the individual pieces are not stand-alone, but are viewed as a part of a longer, continuing conversation, ‘reflecting a continuum of deep listening and a personal anthology’.

Loughrey’s recent personal story has been one of returning to his culture. Growing up in Ulan, NSW, he was called ‘Black Fella’s Young Fella’ as a boy, with his family generally avoiding acknowledgement of their Aboriginality because of the violence inherent in the story of Jimmy Blacksmith, and the distinct possibility that Blacksmith, whose real name was Jimmy Governor, was Loughrey's great-grandfather, The inaccurate portrayal of Jimmy Blacksmith as being the instigator of violence brought about a journey by Loughrey, from shame about the stories of the past, to embracing his identity as an Aboriginal man. Having Aboriginal culture denied to him as child, lead Loughrey to find spiritual expression elsewhere and he became an Anglican minister in the white conservative suburb of Glen Iris in Melbourne.

Loughrey’s works have been both finalist and shortlisted in the Doug Moran Portrait Prize (2017, 2018) and he has held a number of solo exhibitions. In 2020 Loughrey become finalist in the Paddington Art Prize , the Mandorla Art Prize, and the Blake Art Prize, and he is currently working on a large glass installation at St Paul's Cathedral.

• Visit website - Christine Joy Curation & Exhibitions

Interview: Leaf Bookshop 30 Authors in 30 Days series

Leaf Bookshop, Melbourne
March 2021

I had the pleasure of being interviewed about my most recent book by the Leaf Bookshop, my local bookshop, for their YouTube series, “30 Authors in 30 Days”. Learn more here: leafbookshop.com.au

Finalist: The 66th Blake Art Prize 2020

Paddington Art Prize
November 2020

My art piece "Covid 1770 - What Happened When Cook Sneezed" has been accepted as a finalist in the 66th Blake Art Prize.

Since 1951, The Blake Prize has engaged artists, nationally and internationally, with ideas of spirituality and religion. The prize takes its name from William Blake, the world-famous 18th Century artist, and poet who threaded the religious and artistic throughout his practice. Building on this history, The 66th Blake Prize continues to encourage contemporary artists of varied styles and religious and spiritual allegiances to create significant works of art, which engage in conversations and negotiations concerning spirituality, religion and/or belief.

Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre has proudly presented The Blake Prize as a biennial event since 2016, ensuring the future of this landmark prize. Casula Powerhouse is ideally positioned in Liverpool, a community of people from over 150 different birthplaces, speaking over 140 languages with an equally diverse range of faith backgrounds. We are committed to supporting emerging and established artists to create work that reflect Australian communities.

CPAC will maintain the guiding principles of The Blake Prize, continuing to engage contemporary artists, both nationally and internationally, in conversations concerning faith, spirituality, religion, hope, humanity, social justice, belief and non – belief. The Blake Prize presents an aesthetic means of exploring the wider experience of spirituality and all this may entail through the visionary imagining of contemporary artists.

Finalist: Paddington Art Prize 2020

Paddington Art Prize
October 2020

The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually for a painting inspired by the Australian landscape. Established in 2004 by Arts Patron, Marlene Antico OAM, this National prize takes its place among the country’s most lucrative and highly coveted painting prizes. The prize encourages the interpretation of the landscape as a significant contemporary genre, its long tradition in Australian painting as a key contributor to our national ethos, and is a positive initiative in private patronage of the arts in Australia.

Feature: Kurrajong Dreaming on The Cooperative

The Cooperative
August 2020

When reading this painting, you will discover key ideas to understanding Aboriginality or the Aboriginal way of seeing, what you may call spirituality. It is a vertical slice through the universe or country – sky, water and the earth above and below the surface. Country is every thing you see…

// Read the article.

Shortlisted Finalists: The Mandorla Art Award 2020

The Mandorla Art Award 2020, Melbourne, Australia
May 2020

The Mandorla Art Award employs a thematic spiritual inspiration that changes with each exhibition. It is considered Australia’s most significant thematic Christian art prize.

The Finalists exhibition has been postponed until 2021 due to the current restrictions around COVID-19. Further updates will be announced. In this difficult time the Mandorla Committee encourages everyone to live in the spirit of Micah by loving kindness, doing justice and walking humbly with your God. Where you can, please support the arts. We will be providing sneak peeks for the Finalists artworks on social media to inspire.

// Find out more.

Speaker: Transitions Film Festival, March 3, 2020

Transitions Film Festival 2020, Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday 3 March 2020

“Glenn Loughrey is the son of a farmer, an artist, the vicar of St Oswald’s in Glen Iris, Victoria, and a proud Wiradjuri man. He was ordained in 2009 in Grafton Cathedral. His career has been diverse, pioneering, people-focused, risky and lately academic and artistic. His latest work “Water and Earth Are All One Thing” explore explores themes of regeneration and how old wisdom about water can help us understand water and earth are interconnected as one.”

// Find out more.

Press: “Old wisdom can help us understand water, as well as save us from fire” in The Age Newspaper

The Age newspaper, Arts section - Interview
‘Water and Earth are All One Thing‘, Christine Joy Curations & Exhibitions, Healesville, Victoria
Sunday 9 February 2020

"Water is vital to the interaction of all life systems. If you stop the flow of water, stop the flow of life, you change the landscape. Our summer has been important in helping us … we've suddenly realised that much of how we use land has ended up creating a situation which has turned out to be catastrophic.

"If we treat water badly, it can't be there when we need it."

// Read the interview & article here.
// Featured in Photo of the Week, February 13, 2020.

Press Exhibition: ‘Water Dreaming with Glenn Loughrey’ on ABC Radio National

ABC Radio National Drive - with Patricia Karvelas on The Drawing Room
‘Water and Earth are All One Thing‘, Christine Joy Curations & Exhibitions, Healesville, Victoria
Monday 27 January 2020

With much of the country in drought and fires ravaging town after town, water is more precious than ever. Sacred, even. At least, that's what the artists behind the 'Water Dreaming - water and earth are one' exhibition believe.

One of those artists is Glenn Loughrey — he's an Aboriginal painter, an Anglican priest and a self-proclaimed "white-faced blackfella".​

// Listen here.

Exhibition: ‘Water and Earth are All One Thing‘

Christine Joy Curations & Exhibitions, Healesville, Victoria
4 December 2019 - February 2020

An exploration of water, its significance in Jukurrpa, art and culture, highlighting the interrelatedness between water, earth and aquatic lifeform, and the active character of water as creator and provider. Featuring the works of Danny Riley and the artists from Waralungku Art Centre (Borroloola), Ed Wanganeen (Yorke Peninsula) Warlukurlangu Artists (Yuendumu and Nyirripi) and from Victoria... Baluk Artists​, Young Art, Graham Patterson, Emma Stenhouse, Kim Wandin, Jacqui Wandin, Merilyn Duff, Nikki Browne and Glenn Loughrey. ​​ ​

Curator's talks: Saturday 11am, January 25th and February 22nd.

PRESS: ABC Radio National Drive, Monday 27 January 2020 (approx. 5pm-6pm).

Exhibition: On display at The Sourpuss Emporium

The Sourpuss Emporium, 375 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria
January - March 2020

Exhibition: 'In Exile Form The Edge - A Personal Journey'

Burrinja Gallery, Burrinja Cultural Centre
24 June - 23 July 2017

Glenn Loughrey is a Wiradjuri man from NSW and a priest at St. Oswald's Anglican Church, Glen Iris. He is an artist who fuses Indigenous art styles with Western forms of storytelling. In this exhibition, he presents a collection of acrylic paintings reflecting the diversity of Indigenous identity and its disconnect from the dominant culture. He explores his own journey of discovery to reclaim the sense of country on a personal and community level.

Artist Talk: Saturday 1 July, 2pm – 3.30pm

Following the talk light refreshments will be served.

Exhibition: 'An Australian Landscape - Canvas As Country'

Transept Gallery, St Paul’s Cathedral
29 May - 19 June 2017
Open daily

This exhibition explores the ideas of identity through country as explored on the medium of the canvas. For many indigenous Australians who have been disinherited of their original country by means of extermination, assimilation, the Stolen Generation and polices such as Closing the Gap, there is little opportunity to deeply reconnect with the place which holds their belonging.

As one such person, this exhibition expresses both my personal journey and the journey of the various mobs across Australia. It explores the various ideas about identity and what it means to be indigenous in this place at this time. It covers important issues such as treaty and sovereignty; the marginalisation of indigenous people in places such Alice Springs, the inability of those in urban Australia to fully understand the Australia at the centre and more.

The central piece of the exhibition is both a personal and a universal story of what it means to discover and live as an indigenous person in this country. It contains many personal ideas, experiences and places while at the same time embracing key indigenous ideas that are the universal story of mobs across Australia.