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

This land is mine/This land is me Gordon Hookey Waanyi people QLD/NSW Blood on the wattle, blood on the palm (detail) 2009 Oil on linen The James C Sourris, AM , Collection Gift of James C Sourris, AM , through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2012. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program who was killed by police in West End, Brisbane, in 1993. Vincent Serico’s Deaths in custody was made that year and encapsulates the mournful feeling attached to this era. It refers to a friend who took his own life in jail after a series of visions. In it, a mopoke owl — a reference to the totemic spectre of death — watches over the jail cell. Perhaps most famously, in 2004 an Aboriginal man died while in police custody on the Queensland Aboriginal community of Palm Island. The ensuing political circus tore the heart out of the proud community. Vernon Ah Kee’s Tall Man 2010 pieces together amateur video from the day a tipping point was reached following the report that this death was the result of an accident. This flashpoint is one that is just moments from exploding in nearly every Aboriginal community. Gordon Hookey’s Blood on the wattle, blood on the palm 2009 stands in solidarity with the leaders of the resistance or ‘riot’ that ensued on Palm Island. His painting is fuelled by anger at the fact that the only people jailed after the killing of one of their own are Aboriginal. Hookey’s work references Bruce Elder’s controversial book Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians Since 1788 8 and recalls Henry Lawson’s iconic poem ‘Freedom on the Wallaby’, penned to galvanise the Barcaldine Shearer’s Strike of 1891: So we must fly a rebel flag As others did before us. And we must sing a rebel song, And join a rebel chorus. We’ll make the tyrants feel the sting O’those they would throttle; They needn’t say the fault is ours If blood should stain the wattle. 9 Hookey connects this stand to the historical mistreatment of Aboriginal people and to universal struggles against tyranny. Life in all Aboriginal communities is complex. There are still struggles with the legacy of colonial conflicts and policies, yet life continues to be far richer than as reported in mainstream media. Community life is an important aspect of ‘My life’. Lama Lama painter Adrian King reminisces about times of happiness in the Lockhart River community and the unifying effects of football competitions, as well as his return to Wenlock Outstation on his own country; Bindi Cole illuminates the story of the ‘Sistagirls’ or ‘Yimpininni’ of the Tiwi Islands, bringing just one of countless diverse Indigenous experiences to light; Christian Thompson’s sinister ‘Black Gum’ 2008 series contrasts Australia’s infatuation with native flora Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples: country and culture versus Christianity. In Stranded , Thornton is literally crucified, bound to an illuminated cross that hovers above a waterhole in the West MacDonnell Ranges. This place is home to the Arrernte people who were perhaps the most affected by Christianity in central Australia. The setting, almost certainly a site of ceremonial importance, dramatically illustrates the contrast between Christianity and the land’s latent culture and religion. Thornton’s work also elucidates the crucifixion of Aboriginal cultures and people at the ‘humanising’ hands of Christian churches. Archie Moore considers the same history through works from ‘On a Mission from God’ 2012, reconstructing nine important mission churches from Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander reserves from the pages of miniature bibles. They examine the supporting role these churches played in the government’s control and assimilation of people and in the destruction of culture. The act of cutting, of physically intervening, into a holy book is controversial and highly political. Moore is selective about the passages he uses, constructing churches from Luke 12:47: ‘The servant who knows what his master wants him to do, but does not get himself ready and do it, will be punished with a heavy whipping.’ This verse relates to the colonial experience of many Aboriginal people in Australia, where church-controlled state reserves were used to break down existing social, cultural, political and linguistic structures. The exhibition presents a wide range of Indigenous experiences, and Irene Entata’s reminiscences of the very same Lutheran-run community at Ntaria (Hermannsburg) present a scene of happiness and harmony. For the older generation, the ‘Mission Days’ were often bittersweet; traditional practices were lost, but everyone had a job and on the whole felt relatively content. This contrasts starkly with the social problems and deteriorating conditions numerous communities now face. Ken Thaiday’s Symbol of the Torres Strait 2003 also paints a positive picture of relations with the church in the Torres Strait, where the London Missionary Society’s brand of Christianity was introduced in 1871, and eventually widely adopted. Today, the ‘Coming of the Light’ is commemorated annually on Zulai Wan (July 1) and is the biggest cultural celebration, both in the Islands and among the large diasporic community. A number of artists mine extensive family and state archives to reclaim and re-present their own history. In Jones’s picnic 2001, Dianne Jones continues her campaign to introduce a real Aboriginal presence to colonial Australian art. Here, Jones has substituted a photograph of her own family for a group of unnamed or imagined Aboriginal people in John Glover’s Aborigines Dancing at Brighton 1835, claiming a space in Australian art history and popular culture. Similarly, Lesley-Anne Murray’s prints give insight into the experiences of the many Aboriginal and Islander men who wore multiple hats, working extraordinarily hard to support their families while building strong communities. Exploring her grandfather’s life, Murray’s 1994 suite references the anonymity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people right up until the late 1960s through the repeated use of the appellation ‘Black’. Black boy recalls the practice of removing Aboriginal youths from their families to work in the pastoral industry; Black soldier shares the pain of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who fought for their country in various military campaigns, only to have their service effectively ignored until recently; Black boxer represents Aboriginal men who worked in touring boxing circuses, which were often stages for racial tensions; while Billy Murray presents a proud Aboriginal man and patriarch. My Life The works presented in ‘My life’ show the crucial engagement of artists of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage with contemporary politics. Worldwide, agitation for sovereignty, self-determination, justice, freedom and social and legal equality has traditionally flowed from street movements into the arts. This is equally true of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander protest and political movements in Australia. The recurring shame of Aboriginal deaths in custody features prominently in the exhibition. Across Australia, the first meetings between Aboriginal people and the police were often facilitated at the end of a gun barrel. Mounted police and their ‘native’ recruits were used to clear the frontier of ‘problem’ Aboriginal populations; ‘to disperse’ became a euphemism for killing entire groups of people. Today, ‘to defy’ has become a common response from Aboriginal people who still bear the scars of a historically abusive relationship. Gordon Hookey’s painting Defy 2010 bears witness to this history while acknowledging the contemporary reality that little has changed. This strained relationship shows scant sign of healing, with alarmingly frequent reports of police assaults on Aboriginal people and continued deaths in custody, despite a 1990 Royal Commission into the matter. The issue was brought to a head by the death of Daniel Yock, an 18-year-old Aboriginal man and well-known dancer 17 16