Angela Brennan, Bridget in my painting, 2025, oil on linen, 220.00 x 180.00 x 3.25 cm, TCG23698
(photo: The Commercial)

exhibition text:

Bridget Brennan is an award-winning Indigenous journalist. She is also artist Angela Brennan’s niece.

A Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta woman, based in Naarm/Melbourne, Bridget is a newsreader and co-host of News breakfast for the ABC. She was previously the ABC’s Indigenous affairs editor and, as the first Aboriginal foreign correspondent at the broadcaster, spent nearly two years in London.

In 2023, she was one of the reporting team investigating the crisis of missing and murdered First Nations women for Four corners, which won a Gold Quill award. She also anchored the ABC’s coverage of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum.

‘I have painted Bridget a number of times since she was a child,’ says Angela Brennan. ‘Bridget is always a joy to be with. She is kind and compassionate, and makes for a wonderful painting subject.

‘My painting practice is predominantly concerned with abstraction, though I have painted portraits since the early 1990s. This painting was inspired by the yellow pantsuit I’ve seen Bridget wearing while presenting for the ABC. I wanted to create an image of her stepping into one of my abstract paintings.’