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

Can you talk about how your works Seventy Times Seven 2011 and I forgive you 2012 speak about your life experiences as an Aboriginal person? In a broad context, both Seventy Times Seven and I forgive you are responding to the Apology by Kevin Rudd. It was such a significant day, full of power, promise and purpose. However, it was just the beginning of a process. Often times, it’s thought of as the end, the final chapter in the story. Like somehow, we can now put it to bed. But the trauma left from colonisation and the stolen generations is palpable. It’s generational, handed down from one to the next and it’s manifested as pain and dysfunction. As an Aboriginal person, I feel this pain, I experienced this dysfunction. I see it all around me. So the Apology creates this space for healing. Having been apologised to, it’s now my choice to respond. Will I continue to hold onto the pain, bitterness and resentment from the past or will I, while acknowledging that what happened is not right, make a choice to free myself from that by releasing it through forgiveness — allowing me to focus on moving forward and work out how to make the community a better place? My own experience of working through trauma and healing has been that I need to release it myself, sometimes with and sometimes without acknowledgment. I don’t know if it’s the answer for everyone, but it’s worked for me. The statement ‘I forgive you’ is usually very personal and specific. In this case, who is the statement and sentiment directed at? Forgiveness is usually specific, but the statement I’m making in this work is multi-layered. It’s open to everyone. People are going to feel something different when looking at the work, depending on their own personal set of circumstances. Some might be relieved, some might be angry and some might hate it. I can’t define who it’s directed at specifically because it is a deep statement of forgiveness around personal individual pain as well as the community’s collective pain. It covers everything while targeting nothing, allowing me and everyone else to be set free in whatever area is needed. And, finally, can you speak about how pain and beauty are connected in your work? I’ve never really thought of my work as making a connection between pain and beauty. I was surprised by the question initially, but having thought about it I think there’s some truth to it. I think the beauty is in the tension. There’s a mix of suffering and vulnerability of the voice combined with courage and strength, which somehow produces something that might be considered beautiful. I don’t aspire to make works of beauty. I don’t think of them as that. Perhaps an honest attempt at moving through pain while celebrating what is good is beautiful. Trying to embrace suffering in our personal lives, and finding dignity and beauty by doing so while trying to relieve the suffering of others, maybe that’s it. Interviewed by Julie Ewington, CURATORIAL Manager, Australian Art, March 2013 Bindi Cole Wathaurung People an interview Bindi Cole Wathaurung people VIC I forgive you (detail and overleaf) 2012 Emu feathers on MDF board Purchased 2012. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 146