Weniki Hensch

Merinda Campbell

Weniki Hensch is a Papua New Guinean born multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her contemporary translation of cultural connection has been informed by ongoing collaborations with institutional collections of cultural material including Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) , Melbourne Museum and the National Gallery of Victoria. The impetus to work with cultural material in archived collections has been to connect and awaken stories of traditions untold. To enliven the embers and activate family stories and country. Weniki’s investigation of working with mixed mediums such as clay, painting, metal and installation has been an evolving lens transmuting the continual process and navigation of the unpeeling of the ‘self’.

Wominjeka (Welcome). We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. Yaluk-ut Weelam means ‘people of the river camp’ and is connected with the coastal land at the head of Port Phillip Bay, extending from the Werribee River to Mordialloc. The Yaluk-ut Weelam are part of the Boon Wurrung, one of the five major language groups of the greater Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the land, their ancestors and their elders—past, present and to the future.