The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia Whitey's watching 1994 Colour polaroid,bubble-jet print on paper 59.5x 72.5cm Destiny Deacon's re-creation of her suburban Melbourne living room within the Queensland Art Gallery encapsulates the essence of her artmaking through its intersecting of the fine arts with mass culture, of the gallery space with the domestic and the everyday, and of the public with the private. It represents a practice which moves through a number of territories, including photography, filmmaking, writing, radio broadcasting, performing and lecturing. All are anchored securely within the artist's everyday experience as an Aboriginal woman living in contemporary suburban Australia. Deacon is self-taught and first exhibited in 1990, relatively early in her career.The artist developed a national and an international reputation for her visual imagery, which is both colourful and, therefore, inviting, but which is also infused with a potent streak of 'Blak' humour. 1 Working with affordable and reproducible materials, such as Polaroid photographs and colour laser copies which have biting and witty titles, and drawing on imagery from advertising and television, Deacon creates images which are easily read by a diverse audience, but which also grapple with complex issues of relations between black and white. Deacon's living room is her studio, as well as the centre of her daily life. It is here that she' researches' her images (via the television, videos and library books), and plans and stages their production (with the assistance of obliging friends, props to hand and her Polaroid camera). While the artist is pleased with the broad response to her work, she also makes these images for herself, to unearth and express ideas that reside at a subconscious level until made knowable through the physical image. Of her art practice, she has stated, 112 I ART I s T s: PA c I FI c 'I discovered it was a good way of expressing some feelings that lurk inside'. 2 At a time when many non-Aboriginal people continue to think of 'traditional' lifestyles in remote areas when they think of Aboriginal culture, Deacon's installation reinforces her experience of being a Koori woman in an environment which is familiar to many of her viewers. Such an act challenges head-on the still persistent notions of authenticity which see as irreconcilable 'real' Aboriginal identity with contemporary Western experience. Deacon has spoken of the sense of visibility which she has been able to create for herself through her photography, stating that she has been shown respect by people who 'wouldn't normally give me the time of day'. 3 She develops her own symbols of Aboriginality or 'Blakness' to counter the negative stereotypes created by non-Aboriginal people and perpetuated through the mainstream media. Marcia Langton describes these stereotypes as products, not of actual experience between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, but from relationships 'between white Australians and the symbols created by their predecessors'. 4 An example of Destiny's re-working of such stereotypical imagery and her post-colonial 'correcting' of European imagery of Aboriginal people is Portrait-Eva Johnson, writer 1994 which is a clever play on J. M. Crossand's Nannultera: a young cricketer of the Natives' Training Institution Poonindie 1854. Much of Deacon's restaging of this image is historically accurate, such as the red and white clothing and the painted landscape as backdrop. However, in place of the young man's cricket bat, used to symbolise the 'civilising' influence of European presence, Eva Johnson raises an axe towards the viewer. The power of Deacon's images to communicate rests with her choice of humour over antagonism every time. This is not to deny the seriousness of her subject matter. The artist uses the initial lightness and accessibility of her images to encourage her viewers to draw close. It is at that moment that the disturbing undertones of violence, sexual threat, isolation and injustice come into effect, hitting the viewer squarely in the eye. Kitsch plays an important part in her work and she regularly draws on her extensive collection of white– produced Aboriginal 'artefacts' (ceramics, ashtrays, paintings on 'black velvet') for the purposes of exaggeration and mockery.The artist's collection stems from a desire to 'rescue' these lost Koori souls from the desolation of the second-hand and junk shops in which she finds them. Deacon has developed an art form out of conveying complex issues and ideas through a visual language which is immediately readable and entertaining. Her witty titles combine with her images to present astute observations on the politics of representation, the power of language, and our identities in relation to the mass media. Her work has great resonance for all Australian viewers at a time distinguished by concerted attempts at self-definition. Her images reflect the ironies, complexities, incongruities and inconsistencies in our own pictures of ourselves as a nation or culture. At least, with Destiny Deacon, we can have a good laugh in the process. Clare Williamson, Curator, AustralianCentre for Contemporary Art,Melbourne, Australia 1 The term'Blak' has been developed byDeacon as part of astrategy toreclaim colonial language to create means of self-definition and expression for Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islanderpeople.See 8/akness:8/ak cityculture, Australian CentreforContemporaryArt. Melbourne and BoomalliAboriginalArtists' Co-Operative, Sydney, 1994. DestinyDeacon, artist's statement, Caste-Otts [exhibitioncatalogue], Australian Centre forPhotography, Sydney, 1993. Destiny Deacon, public lecture. Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Union Arts, 2September 1994. Marcia Langton, "Well, IHeard it on the Radio, and I saw it on the Television .. Australian Film Commission, Sydney,1993,p.33.