primrose park residency (2012)
bearings
Colonial maps and images printed on muslin, bark and wax
Dimensions variable
Dimensions variable
click to enlarge image
fanny's dress
Handmade muslin
150 x 70 cm
150 x 70 cm
is this our dream?
Shredded Hansard, selected transcript on the Northern Territory Intervention
250 x 70 cm
250 x 70 cm
These works explore the first contact between European colonists and the Cammeraygal, and other Aboriginal people living around the harbour, in the early decades following 1788. The works look at how history is coloured by those who tell it.
Scant material evidence survives of the lives of the early Aboriginal people, except for rock engravings, paintings and middens, the latter scattered and still easily visible if you look out for them around the harbour’s edge. As a result the artist has explored indirect ways of imagining and reconstructing the lives of the people who made their home and livelihood on Sydney Harbour. These ways have involved visiting local sites; researching oral histories; liaising with officers at the Aboriginal Heritage Office at Northbridge, and studying early written and visual records made by Aboriginal artist Tommy McRae, also by British soldiers, early settlers, convicts and French scientists.
The resulting works are imagined and symbolic artefacts. They are made in an attempt to make some kind of contact, to make audible and present the voice of early Aboriginal people in a personal way, and bear witness to the dignified and sustainable life they had here.
Scant material evidence survives of the lives of the early Aboriginal people, except for rock engravings, paintings and middens, the latter scattered and still easily visible if you look out for them around the harbour’s edge. As a result the artist has explored indirect ways of imagining and reconstructing the lives of the people who made their home and livelihood on Sydney Harbour. These ways have involved visiting local sites; researching oral histories; liaising with officers at the Aboriginal Heritage Office at Northbridge, and studying early written and visual records made by Aboriginal artist Tommy McRae, also by British soldiers, early settlers, convicts and French scientists.
The resulting works are imagined and symbolic artefacts. They are made in an attempt to make some kind of contact, to make audible and present the voice of early Aboriginal people in a personal way, and bear witness to the dignified and sustainable life they had here.