Avril Quaill (b. 1958) is a Quandamooka artist, curator and arts administrator. Two years after graduating from Sydney College of the Arts in 1985, Quaill received an Australia Council Visual Arts Fellowship to take part in workshops at the Raminginning Arts Crafts centre (later Bula’bula Arts) in Arnhem Land. A founding member of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative in Sydney, she became its chairperson in 1989. Quaill is Creative Director of the Quandamooka Festival on North Stradbroke Island and has been Artistic Director of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair and for Arts Queensland. As a curator she held positions at the National Gallery of Australia and Queensland Art Gallery. Quaill has served on many committees including the National Cultural Heritage Committee and the Indigenous Reference Committee, Museum of Contemporary Art. She is currently Acting Head of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Engagement with the Queensland Museum Network.
Michael Riley and Quaill first met at the Sydney College of the Arts in 1984. Riley's photograph of Quaill with her newborn daughter Miya was part of his Portrait by a Window series, taken at Boomalli in 1990. Quaill shared a group house in Glebe around the time the photographs were taken with artist Tracey Moffatt and dancer and actor Kristina Nehm, who also appear in the series.
Purchased 2013
© Michael Riley/Copyright Agency, 2024
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Linda Burney, Brenda Croft and Darrell Sibosado share memories of Michael Riley and his photographic practice.
Michael Riley’s early portraits by Amanda Rowell.
