Darren Blackman is a proud Gureng Gureng/Gangalu man from Queensland’s central coast with Kanak South Sea Island heritage from Vanuatu. Blackman grew up in the Sunshine Coast town of Nambour and has been living and working throughout the Far North and Western Queensland since 1995. Through this work, Blackman speaks to some of the issues at the centre of the Australian Government’s Close the Gap campaign, that set intent to achieve health, education and employment equality by 2030 and reduce the seventeen-year life-expectancy gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous peoples. Touching on oral history from his Elders and reworking those messages, Blackman channels personal observations and his lived experience, to witness a wide range of Aboriginal perspectives and mainstream political and media inference.
