I first met the late Josh Muir when when the 23 year old won the new Youth Prize at the 2015 NATSIA Awards. He went on to take out the People’s Choice Award as well for his artwork, Buninyong (2015). As I wrote at the time, “Telstra Youth Award winner, Josh Muir from Ballarat certainly identifies. Just 23 now, his teens went awry with drink and drugs, but an art based on graffiti gave him new direction. Art is a way of decorating space, he announces boldly in front of his digital print on aluminium, which is as complex in its story-telling as any desert canvas or Arnhem bark. Details poured from his eager tongue involving the Gold Rush, the introduction of Western clothing, graziers’ flocks stealing the Myrnong yam from his ancestors, the Post Office versus the scar tree, and the corrupting payment of Aborigines in alcohol and tobacco”.
Tragically, his busy career came to an end only seven years later, dying from natural causes. Now, belatedly, JXSH MVIR: Forever I Live is his first solo retrospective exhibition, open at the Koorie Heritage Trust (KHT) in Federation Square, Melbourne until 14 July 2024.
Josh was born and raised on Wadawurrung Country in Ballarat, Victoria. The exhibition title is taken from an artwork of the same name – Forever I Live (2015) – and is a reference to the ongoing legacy that continues to live in Josh’s artwork beyond life itself. JXSH MVIR: Forever I Live is co-curated by Josh’s partner Shanaya Sheridan, his mother Justine Berg and the curatorial team at KHT.
During his relatively short, yet prolific career, Josh produced a vast range of paintings and digital artworks that were characterised by a unique contemporary iconography developed by the artist. Muir embraced digital methods of production and a visual language influenced by street art, a pop aesthetic, incorporating various forms of design. His works simultaneously maintain the continuous tradition of storytelling that is inseparable from his cultural identity as a Gunditjmara, Yorta Yorta and Barkindji man.
He drew on a range of themes including cultural identity, the impacts and legacies of colonisation, extending to more personal experiences of mental health, addiction, loss and grief. Throughout his career, Muir frequently commented on the important role art played in an ongoing process of healing for himself. His used a vibrant use of colour and geometric patterning across a range of media, including painting, digital prints on aluminum, neon, animated video works and augmented reality experiences.
Muir first exhibited with the KHT in 2013 as part of a group show The Ballarat Four. However, Josh really came into his own in 2014, as the winner of the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards People’s Choice Award for his work Heaven’s Gates. In the same year he also won the Creative Victoria Excellence Award in the Koorie Heritage Trust’s 2nd Koorie Art Show, for his work The Throne (2014), as well as the Ballarat Youth Awards Visual Art and Design prize.
In 2016, Muir produced a large format public art commission in the form of an animated projection titled Still Here (2016) on the façade of the National Gallery of Victoria for White Night Melbourne 2016. This work tells the story of First Peoples in Victoria before and after colonisation – “Life has changed, we have struggled, been treated badly… but we are still here – and growing stronger with each generation,” he declared at the time.
In 2017, Muir was one of eight artists (the only First Peoples artist) selected for the Melbourne Art Trams project, which was revived for the 2017 Melbourne Festival program. In 2018, Muir held his first solo exhibition Josh X Muir at the Koorie Heritage Trust. In the same year, Muir was the recipient of the Lendlease Reconciliation Award in the 6th Koorie Art Show at KHT for his digital print on aluminum with neon work Journey to Liberty (2018). In 2019, he was offered the inaugural ‘Going Solo: First Nations’ exhibition at Bendigo Art Gallery, titled What’s on your mind? featuring an eight-part installation by Muir in collaboration with digital animator Isobel Knowles and experiential design consultancy Art Processors.
JXSH MVIR: Forever I Live is proudly supported by Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne, the Australian Government Indigenous Visual Arts Industry Support, the Australian Government through Creative Australia, and the ANZ Bank.
