My country, I still call Australia home: Contemporary art from Black Australia

Sorry: Keeping our histories alive essentially still a divided nation. It is the unease and complications around this division I wish to address here. As a way of beginning, it needs to be stated that ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’ looks to the creative works of Indigenous Australia and proposes that, through the neglect or silencing of Indigenous narratives, Australia has incubated an environment of exclusion that inhibits both social and national reconciliation. It presents the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait people as truly Australian stories, ones that originate from this continent. The artists represented within the exhibition’s ‘My life’ subsection explore identity and contemporary life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on a multitude of levels, from the personal to the political. Their work is instrumental in presenting a counter-voice to the dominant voice of contemporary non-Indigenous Australia. So, while it is true that in the past four decades mainstream Australian society has begun to look at Indigenous people and their cultures in a new way, we are still far from reaching equality. Indeed, as Irish–American performer Macklemore states in his top-40 hit ‘Same love’, there is ‘No freedom ‘til we’re equal’. 2 Queensland-based artist Richard Bell has long been interrogating events in Australia’s history since colonisation and the resulting impact on mainstream Australia’s worldview. In his powerful and evocative work I didn’t do it 2002, created more than half a decade before the Apology, he examines the opinions of a particular sub-culture of non-Indigenous Australians. These judgements dismiss this nation’s early history, deny the past and attempt to evade responsibility for the wrongdoings of European settlers. Four words feature in this black-on-black painting — ‘I am not sorry’ — and a repeated mantra — ‘it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me’ — is painted in smaller text and hovers visibly in the background. Created using only black paint and gravel, the work seems to exist in a shadow, a haunting and ghostly echo signalling the invisibility of the Indigenous voice and the covert racism that exists in this country, here and now — never spoken of publically, yet ingrained into the very being of so many Australians who call this land home. Bell’s Scratch an Aussie 2008 is a most compelling filmic work that very cleverly uses subversive satire and role reversal as a way of presenting the history of Indigenous Australia. Bell assumes the role of both patient and therapist — patient to friend and activist Gary Foley, and therapist to a number of young, healthy, blonde, scantily-clad, and bronzed Australians (suggesting that the role of eugenics in Australia’s past may have been a consideration in the casting of this production). 3 Bell as therapist prompts the patients to discuss their concerns — one patient retells the story of the theft of her handbag and how incredibly violated she felt when this possession was taken from her. Using the handbag as metaphor for a continent, Bell introduces the audience subliminally to the emotional impact European settlement has had on Australia’s first peoples. The patient speaks as if addressing the issue directly, making statements such as, ‘it wasn’t theirs to take’, yet we are simply watching someone mourn the loss of a mere physical possession. The work shifts mode, from passive narrative-based engagement, to an active interview format, in which the patients speak directly to the viewer. They begin reeling off racist jokes about Indigenous people, smiling, laughing and enjoying the hilarity, feeding off eachother’s energy. As a fair-skinned Indigenous Australian, I have often sat with people who aren’t aware of my heritage and listened to such jokes. Many times I have examined the situation and conceded that such individuals don’t respond to challenge, and when presented with opposition simply try to dilute the effect of their racist commentary, stating it was ‘just a joke’ or ‘settle down and get over it’. This young nation’s legacy encourages one to simply laugh it off, offering nothing but a continual reminder of a people’s incapacity to move towards reconciliation, to be free of a superiority complex that arrived aboard the ships of the first settlers. Scratch an Aussie , along with Bell’s other filmic works such as Broken English 2009, asks us to examine this continent’s history before nationhood, as well as the values and concerns of both non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australia in the contemporary world. Through overt subversion these works interrogate Australia’s race divide and illuminate trans-generational racism through to the present. They ask the viewer to examine themselves, to delve deep into their psyches, both individual and collective, and answer one question as honestly as they can: ‘am I a racist?’ Is it possible that this is why some people find Bell’s filmic work so difficult to engage with? Perhaps in observing audiences viewing this work we may occasionally see this nation’s cultural divide manifest in front of us. Bindi Cole’s I forgive you 2012, created a decade later than Bell’s I didn’t do it , and half a decade after the Apology, seems to reply to the Apology in the spirit of forgiveness. Created with emu feathers, the work delivers a gentle message of hope, like an embrace or a mother whispering into the ear of her child. The feathers’ softness, along with the message’s imagined tone, seems to offer redemption without fear of complicity to those with the courage to truthfully examine this nation’s brutal history. The work remains powerful for those who carry the worldview of a racist and divided nation, the people Bell speaks on behalf of in his work I didn’t do it. It also prompts a denial and rejection of truth — I forgive you challenges viewers in a way that throws focus on the social division in this so- called culturally diverse, multicultural society, a society that I believe often only tolerates, rather than celebrates, the cultural values of others. Gordon Hookey’s King hit (for Queen and Country) was created in 1999, during a time in Australia when Pauline Hanson, the leader of the One Nation Party, was quite outspoken about the state of the nation, particularly Indigenous Australia. She attracted condemnation from the public, the media, and even her own colleagues. At this time John Howard was prime minister and, as I previously noted, many of his decisions regarding the management of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues and concerns were also causing public outrage. King hit is comprised of a suspended boxing bag and, on a circular plinth directly below, a pair of boxing gloves. The boxing bag depicts both Pauline Hanson and John Howard, each wearing boxing gloves and ready to battle. Hanson’s gloves feature the swastika, the symbol of the Nazi regime, shorthand globally for genocide. In the boxing bag’s painted background we see police officers lined up and holding their guns as if in a military parade. Their volatile and macabre faces, along with those of Hanson and Howard, are pig-like, appearing almost rabid as they foam at the mouth. The work examines Hanson’s so-called ‘extremist’ values and suggests that the actual policies, employed by the Liberal government with Howard at the helm, were perhaps not so different. The gloves feature a palette of only red, black and yellow, the colours of the Aboriginal flag, identifying them as an Aboriginal object to be utilised in battle with the bag as its opposition. King hit represents the endless battle between policy makers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the ongoing disconnect between the aspirations and concerns of Indigenous Australians and the politicians that govern the country. It is an incredibly important cultural document, similar to another of Hookey’s evocative works, Ten Point Scam 1998; it captures a particular moment in time, but is as relevant today as it was when it was made. Consider the Northern Territory Intervention, another solution imposed upon Aboriginal people under the Howard Government in 2007, which was aimed at remedying the issues that exist — might I add non-exclusively — within Indigenous communities. Like all of Hookey’s work, King hit (for Queen and Country) 1999 is overt and unapologetic, a quality that has become synonymous with the Queensland artist collective proppaNOW, to which both Richard Bell and Gordon Hookey belong. This collective brings into being the thoughts of many, in a provocative way that encourages one to think about the state of politics in this so-called land of democracy. Tony Albert is also a member of the proppaNOW collective. His wall installation Sorry 2008 is a large text-based work that responds to the Apology and simply states ‘sorry’, as suggested by its title. Each letter contains ashtrays, plaques and other ornamental depictions of Indigenous people — Aboriginalia — produced en masse and sold throughout Australia and around the world as souvenirs. 4 These objects depict caricatures of Indigenous people, warping and exaggerating facial and body features, resulting in the type of offensive and false representations that have long perpetuated notions of otherness in a nation divided by cultural sectarianism. These misrepresentations of Indigenous people have a history that precedes the creation of kitsch objects to be sold in a retail environment, and can be traced back to the works of nineteenth- and twentieth- century artists such as freed convict James Walsh 5 and Elizabeth Durack, daughter of the well-known Kimberley pastoralist Michael Durack 6 . Countering these misrepresentations, however, were a number of artists including Richard Ffarrington 7 who aspired to recreate life with accuracy and clarity through their depictions of Indigenous Australia. These images were not imbued with sentimentality and notions of the savage, Richard Bell Kamilaroi people QLD Scratch an Aussie (stills) 2008 Digital video projection from DVD, 10 minutes, colour, sound, ed.2/5 Purchased 2012. Queensland Art Gallery What is clear inthe worksofCole, Bell, HookeyandAlbert, is thatfiveyearsonthe Apology is stillcentral tothediscourse surroundingrace politics inAustralia . . . 133 132