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

a melding, morphing mash-up of traditional and contemporary media as reflected in the work of artists/activists such as Richard Bell (Kamilaroi people), Christian Thompson (Bidjara/Kunja peoples), Vernon Ah Kee (Kuku Yalanji/Waanyi/Yidinyji/Guugu Yimithirr peoples) and Tony Albert (Girramay people), among others. If any visitor to ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home’ is expecting to discover a specific type of Indigeneity that may help make them a) feel at home , to know their place, or b) learn all about Aboriginal culture, then apologies for likely disappointment. Viewers may instead, however, experience transcendence. Other insights might include an initial belly-laugh at L.H.O.O.Q. ERE! 2001 by Dianne Jones (Nyoongar/ Balardang people) — a tongue-in-cheek, poke-in-the- eye-with-a-burnt-stick reworking of colonial artist John Webber’s eighteenth-century oil painting, Portrait of Captain James Cook RN 1782, which was acquired as a ‘foundation picture’ 3 by the newly established National Portrait Gallery in 2000. 4 Jones was infuriated that such value had been placed on the portrait of a public figure who, along with the artist, was long dead, but more significantly, under whose exploration the deadly earnest invasion of a continent falsely decreed terra nullius commenced. Jones’s amended digital print rendition — similarly framed and to-scale with the original — shared much more than a nod and a wink with renowned conceptualist Marcel Duchamp’s early twentieth-century ‘readymade’ L.H.O.O.Q. 1919, where he ‘degraded’ a poor quality reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci’s iconic Mona Lisa 1503–06 by graffiti-ing a moustache and goatée on La Giaconda’s face. Duchamp’s title, L.H.O.O.Q., when pronounced aloud in French, puns on the phrase elle a chaud au cul , translating colloquially to she has a hot ass .’ 5 The joke is a double-double entendre — an overlaid, multiple readymade — tripling the intent for the viewer. History, or more to the point, varied versions of it, folds in upon itself and what finally (re)surfaces does so through the filter of altered points of view, perspectives and standpoints — from the centre, all the way out and beyond the periphery. Jones is one of numerous contemporary Indigenous artists who have specialised in ‘(re)historicising paintings’. Robert Campbell Jr (Ngaku/Dhungutti people), Vincent Serico (Wakka Wakka, Kabi Kabi people), Joan Nancy Stokes (Warrumungu people), Christopher Pease (Minang/Wardandi/Balardung/Nyoongar peoples), Lesley Anne Murray (Koori people), Danie Mellor (Mamu/Ngagen/Ngajan peoples), Cornelius Richards (Gungani people), Vernon Ah Kee (Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidindji and Gugu Yimithirr people) and Brook Andrew (Wiradjuri people) have also consistently mined the public archives to respond eloquently, yet succinctly, to the known historical records, which until recent times denied Indigenous peoples’ very existence. They are now telling our stories from the other side, our perspectives, our versions of the killing times, drawing on oral histories and the official archives, twisting and turning to bring the shade to the light. In the Torres Strait Islands contemporary artists have emerged with an exceptional worldview, where Ilan knowledge 6 and representation is totally different from those of us from, and culturally connected to, the mainland. Arguably, the same can be written about the work created by Tasmanian Aboriginal artists/cultural activists, whose surrounds are distinctly affected by wide open sea and sky — infinite panoramic views. Artists who live on the islands, or reside away from traditional homelands, share a proud birthright that weaves a distinct visual heritage through works by Ken Thaiday Sr, Rosie Ware, Douglas Watkin, James Eseli and Joey Laifoo. Most cogently, artists working in photographic and digital media have made vital contributions to these discourses. The elegiac, profoundly sorrow-filled stills from Picturing the old people 2006–07 by Genevieve Grieves (Worimi people), hold muted, insistent conversations with the digitally-manipulated image works in ‘Patterns of Connection’ 1992 by Leah King- Smith (Indigenous, Qld), which in turn reflect the recent digitally created allegories in ‘Civilised’ 2011 by Michael Cook (Bidjara people) and The oyster fishermen 2011 works by Fiona Foley (Badtjala people). The love–hate opacity in the wake of the impact of church and state on our communities over many generations is evident in the work of Archie Moore (Kamilaroi people), Irene Mbitjana Entata (Arrernte/Luritja people), Michael Riley (Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri people) and Jonathan Jones (Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi people) through means hidden, explicit, revealed and conceptual. Banduk Marika’s (Rirratjingu people) representation of her people’s intensely significant ancestral beings in Djang'kawu (The Djang'kawu standing at his home Burralku) 2000 and Banumbirr (Morning Star) 2000, from her ‘Yalangbara’ suite, emphasise the interlinked, cyclical, eternally connected elements of earth, water and sky. Land is not a singular concept — Indigenous peoples are not simply referring to the geographical formation on which we stand at any one point in time or place. Indigenous knowledges and methodologies Dianne Jones Balardung/Nyoongar peoples WA/VIC L.H.O.O.Q. ERE! 2001 Inkjet print on canvas with gilt-wood frame, ed. of 10 Gift of Patrick Corrigan, AM , through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2010. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program encompass land — underneath, on, above; sea/water — underneath, on, above; and sky — underneath, on and above. For certain central Australian Aboriginal people, the pattern formed by the Southern Cross is the footprint of the revered ancestral wedge-tailed eagle. The pointer is his throwing stick, the negative space, his nest. For other language groups, the constellation represents an Ancestral stingray being pursued through the night sky by an Ancestral shark. In the Torres Strait, the Southern Cross is the spear of the great Ancestral zugub Tagai. In southeastern Australia, these stars are known as a man named Mirrabooka, placed in the night sky by the creator spirit, Baiami. It all depends on your viewpoint, your worldview, from where your knowledge originated. My country, your country, I’m cross you’re in my country, get out of my country , neither mine, nor yours — custodianship , not ownership. Not empty land, full of stories. 7 1 From a poem by Waanyi artist Judy Watson, in True Colours: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Artists Raise the Flag [exhibition catalogue], Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, Sydney, 1994. 2 Macassan traders had been regularly visiting the northern coastline for at least three centuries to coincide with the fishing seasons, with customs exchanged including inter-marriage. The trade with Makassar (now Sulawesi) in Indonesia was declared illegal in 1907 by the Australian government. 3 http://www.portrait.gov.au/magazine/article. php?articleID=155. 4 See Shireen Huda in Pedigree and Panache: A History of the Art Auction in Australia , ANU E press, Canberra, 2008, p.110. 5 http://www.marcelduchamp.net/L.H.O.O.Q.php. 6 Ilan is a Torres Strait Kriol term for ‘Island’; knowledge in the context of Indigenous knowledge, a recently and hard fought-for discipline in academia. 7 These are Brenda L Croft’s own words, a personal mantra that reflects her feelings about Australia’s colonisation and what this has meant, and continues to mean, for Indigenous people. History Always Repeats Theyarenowtelling ourstoriesfrom the o ther side,our perspectives . . . drawing onoralhistoriesand theofficialarchives, twistingandturning tobringtheshadeto thelight. . . 79 78