Vernon Ah Kee was born in 1967 in Innisfail, North Queensland. He lives and works in Brisbane. He belongs to the Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidinji and Gugu Yimithirr people. Ah Kee’s contextual text pieces, videos, photographs and drawings form a critique of Australian popular culture from the perspective of the Aboriginal experience of contemporary life. He particularly explores the dichotomy between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal societies and cultures.

Conceived in Brisbane in 2003, proppaNOW is one of Australia’s leading Aboriginal Artist Collectives, challenging the politics of Aboriginal art and culture. The collective is focused on generating Contemporary Art that is thought provoking, subversive and re-thinking what it means to be a ‘Contemporary artist’. proppaNOW takes working-class frameworks, which surrounded most of the artists growing up, of impoverished and oppressed peoples, and drives it into the art world. This has spurred the composition of contemporary liberation art, talking about the daily struggles of coming against the forces of modernism and capitalism. The focus and support for each other has also allowed the collective to foster the projection of our individual careers. Members include, Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Richard Bell, Megan Cope, Jennifer Herd, Gordon Hookey, the late Laurie Nilsen - all established and well respected artists in their own right. The collective as of 2023 has invited and received acceptance from three new members - Shannon Brett, Lily Eather, and Warraba Weatherall.

Warraba Weatherall is a Kamilaroi visual artist, Lecturer at Griffith University and PhD candidate, who is currently based in Brisbane. Weatherall’s artistic practice has a specific interest in archival repositories and structures, and the life of cultural materials and knowledges within these environments. He is also a lecturer for the Contemporary Australian Indigenous Arts (CAIA) degree at Griffith University’s, Queensland College of Art. Weatherall is passionate about shifting cultural norms within the Australian visual arts sector and contributes to the sector through artistic practice, education and curation.

Tony Albert was born in 1981 in Townsville, Queensland. He lives and works in Brisbane. Albert is a descendant of the Girramay, Yidinji and Kuku-Yalanji peoples. Albert is one of Australia's foremost contemporary artists with a longstanding interest in the cultural misrepresentation of Aboriginal people. Drawing on both personal and collective histories, his multidisciplinary practice considers the ways in which optimism might be utilised to overcome adversity. His work poses crucial questions such as how do we remember, give justice to, and rewrite complex and traumatic histories?

Richard Bell was born in 1953, Charleville, Queensland. He lives and works between Brisbane and overseas. Bell is a member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang communities. He works across a variety of media including painting, installation, performance and video. He grew out of a generation of Aboriginal activists and has remained committed to the politics of Aboriginal emancipation and self-determination. One of Australia’s most significant artists, Bell’s work explores the complex artistic and political problems of Western, colonial and Indigenous art production.

Shannon Brett is a Wakka Wakka/Butchulla/Gooreng Gooreng artist and experienced researcher/writer/educator who is skilled in various areas of research, arts management, curatorial (museums and galleries), arts writing, fashion design, graphic design, public speaking, photography and arts mentorship. They are currently a PhD Candidate at the Queensland University of Technology - interrogating the construction of racial whiteness in Australia and responding to systemic racism and patriarchy from decolonial and black feminist perspectives. Shannon holds a Bachelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art; Photography and Fine Art via the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, and has exhibited internationally while working in numerous arts institutions throughout Australia, maintaining their position as a curator and educator.

Megan Cope was born in 1982 in Brisbane. She lives and works in Brisbane. Cope is a Quandamooka artist (North Stradbroke Island in South East Queensland). Her site-specific sculptural installations, public art and paintings investigate issues relating to colonial histories, culture, the environment and mapping practices. Cope’s work often resists prescribed notions of Aboriginality, and examines the psychogeographies that challenge the grand narrative of ‘Australia’ along with our sense of time and ownership in a settler colonial state. These explorations result in various material outcomes.

Lily Eather was born in 1996 in Brisbane. She is a Mandandanji woman who lives and works in Brisbane, and the daughter of the late Laurie Nilsen, an early member of proppaNOW and renowned multidisciplinary artist in his own right. Eather has a deep commitment to upkeep his legacy through her current studies at The University of Queensland majoring in Art History. Her career as a Theatre Nurse for the past seven years has allowed her to follow her passion for the arts on the side, and aspires to become a curator and writer. She is passionate about Indigenous and Australian art, and recognises the need for Indigenous curatorship locally and globally.

Jennifer Herd is from Eumundi, Queensland. She lives and works in Brisbane. Herd is a Mbarbarrum woman whose family roots lie in far North Queensland. Herd draws on her past experiences and knowledge in costume design, often incorporating stitching and pin holes in her installations, painting, drawing and sculptural works. She creates shield designs as a way of connecting to her heritage and culture. Herd’s shield designs are presented as a reminder of speaking truth to power, frontier resistance and the aftermath of cultural identity stripped bare.

Gordon Hookey was born in 1961, Cloncurry, Queensland. He lives and works in Brisbane. Hookey belongs to the Waanji people. Hookey locates his art at the interface where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures converge. He explicitly attacks the establishment and implicates our current political representatives. His style and approach is distinctive in its vibrancy and best known for its biting satire of Australia’s political landscape, its leaders and representatives.

Laurie Nilsen (1953-2020), was a Mandandanji artist and educator born 1954 in Roma, Queensland. He lived and worked in Brisbane until his passing in 2020. His practice was charged with ideas surrounding Indigenous and gender issues, emus (the artist’s totem) and introduced species, religious doctrines, and the presentation of language. His work spans sculpture, drawing, painting, and printmaking, and often incorporates barbed wires that have been used in rural Queensland to threaten native species like emus. In 1988, Nilsen was one of the first ‘urban’ Aboriginal artists to have worked acquired by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. In the early 1990s, Nilsen was a founding member of the Campfire Group that preceded proppaNOW, which he became a member of in 2004.