Kamilaroi artist Dennis Golding has created the National Portrait Gallery's first etching — a collaborative portrait of Redfern Elder Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo OAM that transforms a simple cup of tea into a permanent monument of community and belonging.
Born and raised on Gadigal land in Redfern, Golding grew up on The Block watching his mother and grandmother paint, learning early that art lives in the everyday.
A former student at a school Aunty Beryl helped establish, he was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to immortalise his elder. He chose etching — an intaglio process — because its collaborative nature mirrors her ethos: he gathered her family and former students for a morning tea workshop, inviting the community to shape the portrait through shared memory.
Aunty Beryl is all about community and all about empowering community... I thought this was an important way to share that, not just through the stories, but also in the process of the artwork.Dennis Golding
The result is an installation: Aunty Beryl at her table with tea and biscuits, surrounded by smaller prints bearing symbols like the emu and lemon myrtle pie. It is the gallery's first etching — a milestone for an artist who has spent his career turning urban Aboriginal identity into powerful cultural narrative.
Golding is Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay and Biripi; his acclaimed Future Is Here superhero cape series reimagines Indigenous iconography through pop culture; and he co-founded the Re-Right Collective with Carmen Glynn-Braun.
