JACK WILKIE-JANS | 'Sundown—you better take care' | 2025 | acrylic on canvas | H 900 x W 600 mm

"It is my hope that this work—though touched by the spooky—is welcomed by audiences as a spiritual challenge to the fears we all carry and are striving to release. At the same time, I hope it affirms the peace, love, beauty, and safety that First Nations peoples are reclaiming through our Sovereignty Re‑Realised. We all long to see more clearly in the dark. In expressing this new equilibrium in both my spirit and my art, the “spooky” pieces are deliberately chosen for their strong language (such as “cruel”) and their aesthetic of the near‑ or non‑human, the supernatural. Cruelty is here re‑formed as artwork, regurgitated and reabsorbed, so that we may recognise and name what haunts us. After all, naming a fear—naming an evil presence—is the first essential step to understanding it, and then diminishing its power. This naming is a righteous and sovereign act: a clear accusation against moral and spiritual transgressions."

- Jack Wilkie-Jans