Onespace

Darren Blackman 

Darren Blackman is a proud Gureng Gureng/Gangalu man from Queensland’s central coast with Kanak South Sea Islander heritage from Vanuatu. Darren grew up in the Sunshine Coast town of Nambour and has been living and working throughout the Far North and Western Queensland since 1995.

Darren graduated from the Contemporary Indigenous Art Program at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University in 2024. Throughout 2024 and 2025 Darren has experienced quite a career acceleration having works acquired by several major institutions including the Queensland Museum (textiles), State Library of Queensland (prints and textiles), Queensland Children’s Hospital (prints), the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (painting). Recently, Darren has been acquired by several international private collectors, from New Zealand to Switzerland.

Darren was part of the exhibition, We Are Still Here, presented by the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair at Parliament House in 2024, and more recently has been curated into a major survey exhibition, Say Our Name in August 2024 at the Queensland Museum. Onespace was proud to present his first major solo exhibition, Language of Intent, in 2023 during the national conversation and referendum on the Voice to Parliament. Post Truth marks Darren’s second major solo exhibition with Onespace, which will be at CIAF 11 – 13 July 2025 and then tour to Brisbane from 25 July – 23 August 2025.

Through this work, Darren 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, Darren channels personal observations and his lived experience, to witness a wide range of Aboriginal perspectives and mainstream political and media inference.