The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

Artists The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 78 Gordon Hookey 2021 / Photograph: Joe Ruckli MURRILAND! 2017 Oil on canvas / 200 x 1000 cm / Gifted by the citizens of the Gold Coast to future generations 2019 / Collection: HOTA Gallery / © Gordon Allan Hookey/Copyright Agency, 2021 / Photograph: Peter Waddington This memento mori provocation inspired Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey with a larger purpose: to platform versions of Australian history omitted from mainstream discourse, and to consider how these oversights have shaped the present. With Indigenous knowledge of important events, incidents and cultural narratives at risk of erasure, Hookey wanted his art practice to record and foreground Indigenous histories for future generations. Five years ago, Hookey began his most ambitious venture to date, the ‘MURRILAND!’ series of colossal and uncompromising history paintings; his vision as the last history of Queensland from a Murri perspective, a concept prompted by curator Vivien Ziherl. Inspired by Congolese artist Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu (1947–81) — who depicted his country’s brutal colonial past, power struggles and fight for independence — Hookey was determined to make his own grand and powerful statement on the colonisation of Australia and subsequent diasporas of sovereign peoples as his resounding legacy. Hookey has been a vocal contributor to the Aboriginal protest movement since the 1980s; his protest banners emblazoned with witty colloquialisms can be seen at Brisbane rallies, and often appear later in institutional exhibitions. 2 Looking back at the artist’s history of activism, the ‘MURRILAND!’ works seem inevitable. If I was to do the last painting, what would it be; how would I imagine victory? Gordon Hookey 1 to the national narrative, but that is the point. Hookey invites viewers to consider and honour these histories that, though revered by some, go largely unknown and unacknowledged. Within the vast linen expanses of MURRILAND! and MURRILAND! 2 , the artist clutches an immense expanse of time and offers a nuanced perspective, simultaneously ‘looking forward and looking blak’. 4 Exhibited together, the two works provide a glimpse into current political ideas circulating among significant Indigenous artists and activists, denoting a moment in our collective history. Katina Davidson Endnotes 1 Gordon Hookey, interview with the author, 4 March 2021. 2 At the time of writing, Hookey’s banners used at Invasion Day rallies in 2019 are on display at University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, for ‘Occurrent Affair’, a major exhibition of works by proppaNOW artists. 3 Libby Connors, Warrior: A Legendary Leader's Dramatic Life and Violent Death on the Colonial Frontier , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2015. 4 The NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee) theme in 2007 was ‘50 Years: Looking Forward, Looking Blak’. Jo Anna Isaak’s Looking Forward, Looking Black (Hobart and William Smith, Geneva, 1999) examines portrayals of race, and representation of African-American people. Gordon Hookey Waanyi people Born 1961, Cloncurry, Australia Lives and works in Brisbane, Australia Encouraged by the growing numbers of Indigenous people expressing their reality through creative means, Hookey began to practise art in the early 1990s. As a member of the groundbreaking proppaNOW artist collective, Hookey’s signature is his inimitable humour that manifests in puns, alliteration and poetic verse. He delivers his unwavering messages of activism with a knowing wink. Historically, Hookey’s art has focused on the present — responding to, and seeking to change, the here and now. His ‘MURRILAND!’ paintings, however, sit with the weight of history, exposing the greater public to a blueprint of Indigenous people’s experience of this land since time immemorial. The two works in the series — MURRILAND! 2017 and MURRILAND! 2 2021 — tell a grand narrative that details significant events that led to the current disenfranchisement of Indigenous people. Both works feature interwoven interpretations of oral histories that predate British colonisation and centre the work of ‘black armband historians’. MURRILAND! 2 presents six new scenes recognising local Aboriginal heroes. These figures — including lawman and resistance hero Dundalli (c.1820–55), 3 and fast bowler Eddie Gilbert (1905–78), who famously bowled Australian cricket hero Sir Donald Bradman for a duck — contest Australia’s history as it is widely taught. Hookey’s revelations also include illustrations of Chinese Emperor Zhu’s circumnavigation of the continent in the 1400s and his ‘cordial relations’ with Aboriginal people, long before Captain Cook’s voyage; the unfortunate truth that European explorers Burke and Wills perished of hunger in an environment full of bush food; and a massacre map of Hookey’s home state of Queensland, throughout which the artist’s ever-present rainbow serpent motif underlines anomalies in Australia’s history as it is taught in schools. Inherited gestures — whether performed through dance or ceremony, ephemeral markings on the ground, or painted or carved onto natural amphitheatres and surfaces — are used to share stories and histories. In the same way, the ultimate purpose of Hookey’s vast works is to provoke dialogue. The subject matter can be confronting, combative or contradictory