Grab a cuppa and settle in for a five minute chat with Janet Bromley, contemporary aboriginal artist and City of Greater Bendigo's First Nations Arts Officer.
Janet Bromley is a proud Yorta Yorta women, artist, mother and grandmother. She grew up in South Gippsland, spent years raising children in Melbourne and now the local creative community in Bendigo is lucky that Janet has come to call this home. She has become a powerhouse and inspiration in the community having completed formal studies at Bendigo’s LaTrobe University and most recently finishing a Master of Visual Art.
Janet has been forging an extensive career as an artist and storyteller bringing her indigenous heritage together with her creative practise and formal studies. She uses traditional methods of gathering and weaving and incorporates recycled clothing, plastic waste, found objects and bush materials to weave and build, telling stories in her small works and large installations.
Those Who Follow Us (2019) Recycled materials, found objects, yarn
Her passion for the environment and how we can all better live on Country, lessening our harmful impacts and improving where we live, work and play is an obvious facet in all her endeavours, Janet is also not reserved in her passion for issues like displacement, loss, heritage, separation from family, place and Country and how people can become invisible in our society, many aspects of her lived experience as a grand-daughter of the stolen generation.
Janet is also involved in Emerge Cultural Hub where she has a studio, has exhibited at the Koorie Heritage Trust, organises the Knuldoorong NAIDOC week art exhibition and is in the Digital Regional Arts Park – Central Victoria. Janet has recently and notably joined the City of Greater Bendigo as our first ever First Nations Arts Officer and she shows no sign of slowing down!