Artist Brad Darkson to build knowledge of Sea Country under prestigious Fellowship

Cultural Precinct, 2016, Brad Darkson, a multimedia installation, sound duration 00:00:45sec. Photography by Jessica Clark 2016. Source: Supplied

Artist and Narungga man Brad Darkson has been named the winner of the 2025 John Mulvaney Fellowship, enabling vital research on First Nations’ knowledges of seaweed management.

Brad Darkson is an artist, PhD candidate and seaweed researcher.

As a practicing artist of over a decade, Brad has exhibited across Australia including the Sydney Opera House, the Australian War Memorial, Casula Powerhouse Art Centre, and the University of Sunshine Coast Art Gallery.

Brad works across various media including carving, video, sound, animation, sculpture, painting and site-specific installation. His recent work, waiting for kakirra (2023) is an animated multi-projection installation featured in Between waves, an exhibition commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne.

“Art is an excellent way to communicate science and philosophy,” says Brad. “All my work is focused around First Nations cultural revival and environmental advocacy. I want to bring the voice of people in my Community, our elders, our knowledges, to the forefront.”

Under the Fellowship, Brad has recently returned from a multi-week trip across North America visiting First Nations seaweed and kelp farms and social enterprises, learning and connecting on Country with First Nations knowledge holders making a difference in their local community, and to their lands. Brad and his wife, marine biologist Dr Chloe Darkson, are innovating a new model of seaweed farming they call “saltwater agroecology” — specific to local ecologies and centred on First Nations knowledge systems.

“Seeing all this work come to fruition, sharing our knowledge and connection, it’s empowering.”

Empowerment is at the centre of everything Brad does — from his decade of experience as a practicing artist giving his elders voices through his art, to his philosophy behind caring for Country and community and his work coordinating an international collegiate of First Nations seaweed researchers.

Art, science & traditional knowledges

“I believe as traditional owners, we have a right and a cultural obligation to care for Country in whatever we do,” says Brad, who is from the Chester/Owens/Yates family on his father’s side. He has coastal connections to Narungga (Point Pearce), Ngarrindjeri (Raukkan), Barngala (Poonindie), and Nyungar (Annesfield, WA).

A mechanic by trade in his young adulthood, Brad trained in the visual arts in his mid-twenties, and has been a practicing multimedia artist for over a decade. 

Seaweed cultivated at the Big Island Abalone Farm. Source: Supplied.

Now, he’s completing his PhD at Flinders University, investigating modern ways of caring for Sea Country and how Traditional Knowledge can contribute to western systems of environmental management, specifically through the utilisation of seaweed to remediate coastal ecosystems. Brad will present his research in a landmark interdisciplinary art exhibition at Flinders University Museum of Art (FUMA).

“My wife Chloe is a marine biologist, and we’re both passionate ocean people,” Brad says. “Back in 2017, just before our son was born, we were talking about this idea to open a seaweed farm to combat climate change, and to create a space where First Nations people are leading the kind of work that needs to be done in caring for Country.”

Together, they launched seaweed enterprise, Moonrise Seaweed Co, on the South Australian coast in 2019.

“Seaweed has this unique ability to sequester carbon really quickly, it can be used to remediate soil and create biostimulants and fertilisers,” says Brad. “It absorbs nutrients from topsoil run-off, drawing that out of the water and putting it back into the earth. And then there’s the human health benefit — seaweed contains your healthy omegas, fatty acids, minerals and dietary fibre.”

“We’re caring for Country through our work. That’s something we’ve been doing for millennia as Traditional Owners in this country. That right to care for Country, that obligation, has been taken away from people through colonisation, but when people are given the chance to fulfil that cultural obligation to care for Country, there’s a healing process for both people and Country. It’s fulfilling.”

“So that’s a really core part of why we think it’s really important for First Nations communities to be leading that work in remediation.”

Building a community of scholars

Brad Darkson and a community of First Nations scholars present at the 2025 International Seaweed Symposium, in Canada. Source: Supplied.

Under the John Mulvaney Fellowship, Brad travelled to attend the 2025 International Seaweed Symposium in Victoria, Canada. The Symposium, held every three years, attracts marine scientists from all over the globe.

“A few years ago, I was engaged by marine scientists who wanted to build a bigger Indigenous presence at the Symposium — we provided a lot of feedback about bringing in Indigenous voices. But it was pretty clear it was too last minute, and we needed to coordinate on a bigger scale.”

Together with environmental scientist Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) Dr Andrew Kalani Carlson, Brad convened a group of First Nations seaweed researchers from Hawai’i, British Columbia, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and other Pacific Islands.

“This year, our collective caught up before the conference on Vancouver Island to have a really important cultural exchange. At the Symposium, we held a workshop to discuss ways of working together and extending our networks.”

“The John Mulvaney Fellowship enabled me to make stops on the way to and back from the Symposium, so I was able not just to meet with these people at the event, but I could go to their communities to see how they did things, such as how First Nations communities in North America develop systems of joint management with government, including further understanding of policies and legislation regarding rights to Sea Country.”

“I travelled to O’ahu, Oregon, California and Hawai’i Big Island, researching seaweed cultivation in different contexts and cultures and positioning my work at the forefront of Indigenous seaweed research internationally. It’s all work I can bring back to my Community.”

Strength, vision & legacy

This year commemorates 50 years of NAIDOC Week (6-13 July). The theme, The next generation: Strength, vision and legacy will celebrate not only the achievements of the past but the bright future ahead — it focuses on empowering young leaders, achieving the vision of communities, and the honouring legacy of ancestors.

It’s a poignant theme for Brad as he considers the next stages of his research. 

“In the next 3-5 years, I plan to have completed my PhD and have scaled our current initiative to be South Australia’s first Indigenous owned and operated seaweed farm to cultivate macroalgae for remediating coastal waterways, and to provide seaweed biomass for things such as soil amendments, bioplastics and alternative sources of protein.”

“I want to empower more Indigenous people to be leaders in this important work.”

The post Artist Brad Darkson to build knowledge of Sea Country under prestigious Fellowship appeared first on Australian Academy of the Humanities.