When Brandi Salmon taught herself to paint as a teenager in country Victoria, she never imagined she’d grow up to be a full-time visual artist. A proud Wiradjuri and Tongan woman, Salmon went on to study creative arts at university, where she was struck by the limited ways in which Aboriginal people had been depicted in classic paintings. When an undergraduate assignment led her to reimagine Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus with a Blak woman at its centre, she realised she was onto something. Venus became the start of Salmon’s Aunty Collection: reimagined versions of famous paintings that feature Aboriginal women as their subjects. In this conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, she talks to Griffith Review Editor Carody Culver about flipping the script on representation.

CARODY CULVER: I’ve read that you initially taught yourself how to paint by watching YouTube tutorials when you were a teenager. What drew you to start experimenting with visual art, and how did you develop your style in this early period?