Alana Hunt

Alana Hunt makes art, writes, and seeks the most effective ways for this material to move in the world.

Hunt is currently based in Sydney/Gadigal Country. Over the last 12 years, Hunt has lived on Gija and Miriwoong Countries in the remote northwest of Australia. Prior to this, she was in New Delhi for three years. These long-term relationships—with places, people, and moments in time—shape how her work grapples with the violences and absurdities that result from the fragility of nations and the aspirations and failures of colonial dreams.

Hunt has exhibited in galleries in Australia and internationally. She has worked with journalists, documentary filmmakers, human rights defenders, lawyers, poets, and artists on bodies of work that have moved within and outside of the arts.

In 2020, the decade-long evolving memorial Cups of nun chai was published in book form by New Delhi-based Yaarbal Books after being serialized in 86 editions of the newspaper Kashmir Reader between 2016–17—an "exhibition" slipping within the folds of a newspaper, reaching tens of thousands of people in the world's most densely militarized place.

As part of SPACED Rural Utopias program, Hunt has been an artist in residence with the Kimberley Land Council, materializing work about Western Australia's Aboriginal Heritage Act into video, photography, printed matter, and public events. Central to this work is a 2hr41m film detailing the summaries of 967 applications seeking permission to destroy or damage an Aboriginal site between 2010-20 and narrated in full by Sam Walsh AO, former CEO of Rio Tinto.

In October 2023, Hunt premiered the super 8mm essay film "Surveilling a Crime Scene" in a solo show at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Larrakia Country/Darwin.

Hunt was a finalist in the 2023 Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia and is a recipient of the Sheila Foundation's Fini Fellowship. Recent exhibitions include Photo Kathmandu; Kaghazi Pairahan: Publishing and Resistance in South Asia (Double Dummy, Arles, 2023); Growing Like a Tree: Sent a Letter (Sunaparanta, Goa); Every Inch: The Bureaucratic Affect in Colonization (The Cross Art Projects, Sydney); and The National 2021: New Australian Art (Carriageworks, Sydney, 2021). Writing about Hunt's work has been featured in numerous national and international publications, including Artlink, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, Third Text, Hyperallergic, Aperture, and the New Left Review.

Working collaboratively, Hunt is also involved with the Food Art Research Network and Womanifesto's ongoing gatherings on the last Sunday of every month—Lasuemo.