Onespace is proud to announce represented artist Darren Blackman’s show ‘Absence’ is now showing at The Condensery, from 18 July – 20 September 2026.
Darren Blackman is a proud Gureng Gureng/Gangulu man from Queensland’s central coast with Kanak South Sea Islander heritage from Vanuatu. Blackman’s politically charged works are grounded in cultural practice and reimagined into neon text-based sculptures that disarm the viewer with vibrancy and his unique play on words.
Blackman’s most recent exhibition Post truth was presented by Onespace at the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair in 2025. Blackman presents a profound, new work for the exhibition’s latest iteration, Binambi (2026) which is centred on the artist’s deeply personal connection to the Somerset region.
Binambi is the traditional name of a freshwater spring, where the unmarked remains of Darren’s Great, Great Grandmother rests – now situated with a cattle paddock on Blackflat Station, formerly Durundur Aboriginal Mission. Her resting place, unmarked and obscured, stands as a potent symbol of how First Nations presence and memory are silenced, displaced, and overwritten. The work emerges in dialogue with Djau (Home), extending an ongoing exploration of place, memory and ancestral continuity.
The works in Absence invites viewers to consider the layered histories embedded within place and the enduring connections First Nations peoples maintain between Country, language, ancestral belonging and the phenomenolgy of absence.
Images: Phil Lister. Courtesy of The Condensery.