Age of Entitlement (2016) sits inside the text on the painting that, at first glance, says ‘Age of Enlightenment’. The map is Captain Cook’s map of discoveries from the period that the West refers to as the ‘Age of Enlightenment.’ For everyone else in the non-Western world, this era brought terror, dispossession, genocide, and the beginning of the apocalypse, hence the play on words – Age of Entitlement.
– Megan Cope
Megan Cope is a Quandamooka (North Stradbroke Island in South East Queensland) artist. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work and paintings investigate issues relating to identity, the environment and mapping practices.
Cope’s work often resists prescribed notions of Aboriginality, and examines psychogeographies that challenge the grand narrative of ‘Australia’ and our sense of time and ownership in a settler colonial state. These explorations result in various material outcomes. She is represented by Milani Gallery in Brisbane.