“It begins, I think, with that act of recognition.
Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.
We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.
We brought the diseases. The alcohol.
We committed the murders.
We took the children from their mothers.
We practised discrimination and exclusion.
It was our ignorance and our prejudice.
And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.
With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds.
We failed to ask – how would I feel if this were done to me?
As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.”
— PAUL KEATING, 1992
The Gallery has gathered together a collection of contemporary Indigenous artwork to coincide with the event. New work will be shown by Central Desert (NT) artists Doris Bush Nungarrayi, Beyula Napanangka, Isobel Gorey and Tilau Nangala (from the Papunya Tjupi Arts Centre).
Adam Hill’s ONE in FOUR will feature mounted Eucalypt on found boards, painted in a combination of “natural enamels” and aerosols. “This exhibition celebrates the very incarceration of art,” Hill says. “For this show only … I’ve developed a single ‘tag’ – PRIZNA. This is a homage to two factors. One, the generic opposition to ‘tagging’ and two, the abhorrent statistic that has seen a quarter of the Indigenous population of Australia behind bars.”
Jason Wing is an Aboriginal artist from the western Sydney suburbs of Cabramatta and Blacktown. Wing’s father is Chinese (Cantonese) and his mother is an Aboriginal woman from the Biripi people in the Upper Hunter region of NSW. Jason will be contributing a single poignant statement.
Susan Nakamarra Nelson of the Warumungu language will contribute a suite of paintings depicting bible scenes in central Australia (courtesy of the Julalikari Arts Council, Tennant Creek, NT).
