Bungaan (Joanne Parfitt), Nidja Whadjuk Noongar Boodja (detail), 2026, acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.
BUNGAAN (JOANNE PARFITT) AND DARCY RANKIN
In this residency, Whadjuk-Ballardong Noongar community leader and artist, Bungaan (Aunty Joanne Parfitt) and wadjela academic and artist, Darcy Rankin will be working on artworks that tell some of Joanne’s grassroots stories of Midland.
Working together on this place-based residency, they will be following the Blackadder Creek which runs down from the hills through Midland, into Woombanung at Blackadder wetland, and into the Swan River.
Bungaan and Rankin have been working together on Whadjuk Noongar Country for the past three years on a number of projects, and this residency will also consider this creative practice of working together.
Come and have a yarn.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Bungaan (Aunty Joanne Parfitt) is a Whadjuk-Ballardong Elder, community leader and artist.
“I was born in 1962 at good old Swan Districts and I grew up in Midland, Lockridge, Ashfield and the surrounding areas. My family is born and bred Perth and we have lived on the outskirts in the suburbs and close to the river. I have a strong connection to the Swan River where we did a lot of our turtling, we caught a lot of fish in the river and crabs and we camped along there. I have got a strong connection as that’s where my ancestors come from, my father’s oldest brother was born on the banks of the river. The Parfitt family is in the history book of Bassendean, we had an old humpy at the Eden Hill shops. My dad Claude Parfitt, went to the Eden Hill Primary School and my Mum is Violet Boundry and that side is Ballardong, from York.”
Darcy Rankin is an artist and academic from Tasmania and has been living and working on Whadjuk Noongar Country for the past 5 years while undertaking a creative practice PhD at Curtin University. Rankin is also a lecturer in Architecture and Geography.
Rankin’s PhD is engaged with the question of ethical practices of undertaking research on Whadjuk Noongar Country and the creative practice of coming into respectful relationship on Country through working together, learning and following Whadjuk Noongar Elders.