Miriam Charlie joins N.Smith Gallery

Sydney gallery welcomes Garrwa/Yanyuwa photo artist Miriam Charlie to growing stable.

Words: Charlotte Middleton

A proud Garrwa/Yanyuwa woman, Miriam Charlie has lived her entire life in Borroloola, 1,000km southeast of Darwin. Armed with a polaroid camera, Miriam documents her surroundings, revealing the reality of community life and her Country in a form traversing documentary and art photography.

The intimacy of Miriam’s photos reframes the experience of life in a remote community, through a lens of compassion, dignity and respect. This low-fi technology removes the need for bulky equipment and editing, allowing the artist to retain complete agency over her projects. Each polaroid is a unique object – not to be replicated and entirely original, inscribed with Miriam’s own handwritten notes.

N.Smith Gallery, which opened its doors in 2021, continues to grow a stable of cutting-edge practitioners, with Miriam joining an already impressive contingent of notable Indigenous artists.

Miriam was included in Tarnanthi 2019, PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography, and exhibited a solo presentation of work at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in 2020.

Miriam Charlie’s first solo exhibition at N.Smith Gallery is scheduled late 2022.

This article was posted 15 February 2022.

Main image: Portrait of Miriam Charlie by Rhett Hammerton. 

Thumbnail feature image: Installation view of Miriam Charlie, You Are Here, 2020, PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. 

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