Megan Cope is a Quandamooka woman (North Stradbroke Island) in South East Queensland. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work and paintings investigate issues relating to identity, the environment and mapping practices.
Cope’s work often resists prescribed notions of Aboriginality, and examines psychogeographies that challenge the grand narrative of ‘Australia’ and our sense of time and ownership in a settler colonial state. These explorations result in various material outcomes.
Cope’s work has featured in various large-scale exhibitions, including the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres at the Art Gallery of South Australia, 2020; The National 2017: New Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial,National Gallery of Australia, 2017; and Installation Contemporary, Sydney Contemporary, 2019. She has held solo exhibitions at the Australian Print Workshop, This Is No Fantasy, and Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne; the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; and Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane. In 2017–19 Cope was the Official Australian War Artist.
Her work is also held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), National Gallery Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Melbourne Museum, Musées de la Civilisation: Canada, Australian War Memorial and more. Her public art commissions include Weelam Ngalut (our place) at Monash University; the Koorie Art Commission, Melbourne Museum; and You Are, Here Now at the Australian Catholic University.
Megan Cope is a member of Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW. She is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
