Alana Hunt makes art and writes, finding ways for this material to move affectively through the public sphere and the social space between people. She has worked with journalists, filmmakers, human rights defenders and lawyers on award-winning bodies of work that unfold over many years, with gradual yet accumulating resonance in the places they take root, and beyond.
Alana’s work is driven by lived experiences and honed through a forensic approach to research. It is shaped by relationships and often materialises through video, printed matter, photography, publishing, public events and illicit interventions.
Formed by over a decade of life on Gija and Miriwoong Countries in north-west Australia, Alana’s work in Australia examines contemporary colonial culture, scratching at things not commonly recognised as colonial or violent but deeply so—tourism and leisure, development, legislation, and home. In late 2023 Alana completed Surveilling a Crime Scene, a film that examines the materialisation of non-indigenous life on Miriwoong Country in the town of Kununurra and its surrounds. Produced during a three year residency with the Kimberley Land Council A Very Clear Picture (2019-23) is a suite of works that examine the hypocrisies of the WA Aboriginal Heritage Act (1972) as words that appear clean on paper but wreak havoc in the world. All the Violence Within / In the National Interest (2019-21) is a collection of photographs that spurred conversations that were carried into a book, a radio broadcast and exhibitions.
Since 2009 Alana’s work in Kashmir has examined state violence and engaged in resistances to that through media, communication, and memorialisation; the iterative memorial Cups of nun chai (2010-20) was serialised in 86 editions of Kashmir Reader (2016–17) and published by Yaarbal Books in 2020; Paper txt msgs from Kashmir (2009-11) responded to a ban on all pre-paid mobile phones in the valley; and portions of the essay A mere drop in the sea of what is (4A Papers, 2016) appear in the Hansard Report of the Australian Parliament.
Alana is the recipient of the 2024 PICA x CAP Commission, working towards a new body of work that takes root in the final words of her film Surveilling A Crime Scene (2023). A Deceptively Simple Need will examine our settler colony – how the basic need for home is weaponised and profited from, then guarded by the irreproachability and apparent innocence of daily life.
Alana is currently based on Gadigal Country working from the Clothing Store Artists Studios at Carriageworks, Sydney. She studied art (and other things) in Sydney, Halifax and New Delhi. And is collaboratively involved with the Food Art Research Network; Womanifesto’s Lasuemo initiative; and between 2021-24 conceived and coordinated for Regional Arts Australia the online artist studio Regional Assembly, nurturing points of rigorous creative exchange, professional comraderie and artistic growth for practitioners based in regional and remote geographies across Australia, Asia and the Pacific.
Recent exhibitions include Surveilling a Crime Scene (and other examinations) at Griffiths University Art Museum (16 April - 17 May, 2025), like bloodthirsty mosquitoes: Jack Green and Alana Hunt at Watch This Space and the Cross Art Projects, 2024; Dreams Nursed in Darkness at Wollongong Art Gallery, 2024; Surveilling a Crime Scene at Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin, 2023; Rural Utopias at Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2023-4; Photo Kathmandu, Nepal, 2023; Kaghazi Pairahan: Publishing & Resistance at Printed Matter, New York, 2024, Arthshila Santiniketan and Ahmedabad, 2024, and at Double Dummy, Arles, 2023; Growing Like a Tree: Sent a Letter at Sunaparanta: Goa Centre for the Arts, 2022-23; The National 2021: New Australian Art, Carriageworks, 2021 among others. Her films have also been in competition at Antenna Documentary Film Festival, Revelation Perth International Film Festival and Sharjah Film Platform 7, among other public and interventionist screenings.
Alana has produced a number of critically acclaimed artist books, and her writing has been published by Hyperallergic, Artlink, Westerly, Meanjin, Overland, un Magazine, and in exhibition catalogues with the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Tandanya and The Power Institute among others. Writing about her practice has appeared in The Guardian (AU/UK), Third Text, New Left Review, The Wire, The Saturday Paper, Artlink, Hyperallergic, The Caravan, Dawn, The Times of India, We Make Money Not Art, and StirWorld among others.
Contact
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