Floating life: contemporary Aboriginal fibre art

110 111 Fiona Foley: Black velvet Angela Goddard Fiona Foley’s work often refers to her relationship with the history of her family, as a Badtjala woman of Thoorgine (Fraser Island). At the same time, it operates within the local and international contexts of Indigenous art and politics. The sexual politics of colonisation have been a special focus for Foley, as have the idioms of exchange and currency, and their legacies in objects, in bodies and in lives. Black velvet 1996 consists of a series of nine cotton dilly bags, hung in two lines along the gallery wall. A red and black vaginal image is appliquéd on each of the bags. These plain bags, each bearing a simple shape, invoke many reference points; every element of this work is charged with symbolic meaning. ‘Black velvet’ is the historical, colloquial term for white men’s sexual desire for Indigenous Australian women. The word ‘velvet’ implies softness, but this history is anything but soft, or delicate. In the late nineteenth century, many Badtjala women were prostituted, sometimes in exchange for opium dust, but often for no recompense at all. Neither the desire nor consent of these women is encompassed by the term. Instead, implicit is a legacy of Indigenous Australian women’s history — assault, rape and disease. Foley uses central core imagery, also associated with feminist art practices from the late 1960s and ’70s. This second wave feminism has since been criticised for focusing on mostly Western, white and heterosexual women. By depicting this core image rimmed in black, Foley asserts the specific oppression of black women, including her ancestors, appropriating the familiar forms of Western feminism for her own purposes. The use of these shapes is found throughout ancient cultures, featuring, for example, in rock art at Carnarvon Gorge in central Queensland. These bags also carry connotations of exchange and currency. In their cotton form, they recall the slogan-laden bags emblematic of counter-cultural movements, and point to Foley’s explorations of the appropriation of Australian Indigenous cultures without permission by practitioners of Western ‘alternative’ lifestyles. Bags like these are now ubiquitous in contemporary culture and, as environmental awareness has become mainstream, they are often used for carrying groceries. Their forms evoke consumerism, and in this context succinctly remind us that female Aboriginal bodies were consumed, in exchange for misery. We could also see these bags as traditional dilly bags — the small, practical, usually woven string vessels, often used to hold food, tools and personal items, and carried on the shoulders or head. They also sometimes hold more secret, sacred items. The dilly bag has been accorded a rather diminutive role in Western art categories, where its size and quotidian function — perhaps even its association with women — has placed it low on a scale occupied by painting, sculpture, photography and installation. The dilly bag is not often employed to symbolise or make important public statements. But, here, it carries forward Foley’s message about history’s legacy to her people. The simplicity of Fiona Foley’s imagery and form invokes the complex and multiple histories of Indigenous Australian women. She abruptly exposes the unjust exchanges that took place in return for her women ancestors’ bodies, whilst also connecting with the wider international contexts of feminism and colonisation. Fiona Foley Badtjala people, Wondunna clan QLD b.1964 Black velvet (detail, and overleaf) 1996 Cotton and linen fabric with cotton appliqué Nine bags: 99 x 20cm (each) Acc. 2001.102a–i Purchased 2001. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant