Destiny Deacon

Destiny Deacon HonFRPS (6 February 1957 – 23 May 2024) was an Australian photographer, broadcaster, political activist and media artist. She exhibited photographs and films across Australia and also internationally, focusing on politics and exposing the disparagement around Australian Aboriginal cultures. She was credited with introducing the term "Blak" to refer to Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders' contemporary art, culture and history.

Early life Deacon was born on 6 February 1957 in Maryborough, Queensland and was of the Kuku Yalanji of Far North Queensland She had 6 siblings, 4 from her mother's other relationship.

Deacon relocated to Port Melbourne in 1959 with her mother Eleanor Harding, who was then married to Destiny's father wharf labourer and unionist Warren Deacon. Soon after, Deacon's parents separated and she and her siblings were raised by her mother with the help of a close Indigenous community. Growing up, Deacon and her family lived in various Melbourne inner suburbs including commission housing, which influenced her world views greatly. and her studio was at her house in Brunswick, Victoria.

Deacon's interest in photography started at a very early age. However, instead of pursuing photography, Deacon decided to attend university and study politics, a field that her mother had been very active within, being involved with the United Council of Aboriginal Women. After attending the University of Melbourne and completing a Bachelor of Arts program in politics and obtaining a Diploma in teaching from La Trobe University, Deacon moved on to first become a history teacher across various community and secondary schools around Victoria, and then to a tutor and lecturer in Australian Writing and Culture, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Production at the University of Melbourne. that she decided to move into professional photography, after holding an exhibition with a few friends.

Using what she had learnt about politics through Perkins, the "Angels", and her upbringing, Deacon started taking photographs of her culture using her trademark "black dollies" and other kitsch items as props to expose racism in Australia.

Aesthetics Deacon said in an interview published in the Biennale of Sydney in 2000: "Photography is white people's invention. Lots of things seem really technical, for example the camera, the darkroom.. I've started taking the kind of pictures I do because I can't paint..and then I discovered it was a good way of expressing some feelings that lurk inside".

Deacon worked across a spectrum of different mediums including photography, video, installation and performance, but the one she was most noted for was her use of dolls to convey her message about the racism that exists within Australia.

In the Oz (1998) series Deacon incorporated Koori kitsch dolls and showed the construction of identity is an old game that she could play too. Using The Wizard of Oz as a starting point for her re-presentation of Aboriginal culture and identity, she recognised the fictionalising of history, identity and nationhood in Australia's past – a reminder that things are not always as they appear, nor what we have been made to believe; that history is written much similar to a story.

It is also suggested that Deacon was using a term possibly appropriated from American hip hop or rap, the intention behind it was that it "reclaim[ed] historical, representational, symbolical, stereotypical and romanticised notions of Black or Blackness", and expressed taking back power and control within a society that does not give its Indigenous peoples much opportunity for self-determination as individuals and communities. Deacon herself said that it was "taking on the 'colonisers' language and flipping it on its head", as an expression of authentic urban Aboriginal identity.

Where's Mickey? (2003) shows the large difference between how Indigenous people are perceived by the white Australian population and the reality of her family and friends' lives. Deacon said about her work that the "Humour cuts deep. I like to think that there's a laugh and a tear in each".

Deacon was the director of the in 2010. She was a staff member of the RMIT School of Art from 1999 to 2012.

Deacon's work was featured in numerous local and international exhibitions such as Perspecta (1993, 1999), Havana Biennial (1994), Johannesburg Biennale (1995), Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (1996), Melbourne International Biennial (1999), Biennale of Sydney (2000), (2001), Das Lied von der Erde by (2001), Documenta 11 (2002), the Salzburger Kunstverein (2004) and most recently the Sharjah Biennial (2023).

Walk & don't look blak was Deacon's first large retrospective held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, in 2004, encompassing the past 14 years of her work and practice. From there it toured the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, the Adam Art Gallery and the City Gallery Wellington, the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Noumea, New Caledonia, and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. For 2004: Australian Culture Now at the ACMI in Melbourne, Deacon was commissioned to make a film for the programme Neighbours (the remix). Russell-Cook also edited the mammoth Destiny, a monograph celebrating her art and life.

In 2009, she was awarded the Visual Artist of the Year Award by The Deadlys in 2009. She was also awarded the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award that year. In 2019, she received an honorary doctorate in education from La Trobe University. She was also awarded the Red Ochre Award in May that year, along with Stephen Page. Deacon was awarded the by the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in 2023. Deacon photographs at a museum in 2022. The one on the left is Smile (2017) and the one on the right is the one in this article above. In June 2024, Destiny Deacon work Arrears Window was featured on a "First Peoples Melbourne Art Tram", presented as part of the RISING: festival in Melbourne. According to The Guardian, Deacon had "faced significant health challenges over the past three years" by May 2022.