Christian Thompson and Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi

Christian Thompson is an indigenous Australian contemporary artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. His works include photographs, videos and performances. His most recent solo exhibition at Gabrielle Pizzi, King Billy includes 7 photographs, which can be seen here.

On October 3 I visited Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi located in Fitzroy with Joey, a contemporary aboriginal art gallery that represents Christian Thompson. The main exhibition on at that time was Alick Tipoti’s Badhulayg: person of badu, which you can get a glimpse of in the photos.

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Julie and Rodd were kind enough to provide us with catalogues and information about the gallery and the King Billy works (pictured in the slide show).

I asked Rodd a couple of questions about aboriginal art. I didn’t get a chance to record it but this is what he said in a nutshell based on the notes I took:

Aboriginal contemporary art has created a bridge between two cultures. Art in galleries are not necessarily potent as political statements, but are good communication; they communicate a gentler message of aboriginal art. Individual artists mostly address identity and less traditional areas. Some urban indigenous artists create works used for land rights, prior ownership. There isn’t much political play. Like feminism, there are different aspects that the artists focus on.

Do you agree with this statement? Why/why not?

In an essay by Hetti Perkins in the catalogue Christian Thompson King Billy, it is explained that King Billy was Thompson’s great great great grandfather. She goes on to say:

The textiles feature a pastiche of Aboriginal imagery from desert artistic communities, a subtle nod to Christian’s traditional lands. In clothing the body of an aboriginal man they suggest layers of identity. The skin with which members of Aboriginal communities identify themselves and the outer ‘face value’ which outsiders apply to determine Aboriginality.  In a play on the fable of the ‘Emperor’s new clothes’, Christian warns us against the foolishness and hollowness in believing what others tell you you should ‘look’ like. He asks, ‘Are our youth black or white in a position to start writing their own cultural vision or are we in a state of arrested development?’

Nice Coloured Girls by Tracey Moffatt

 

An Analysis of Nice Coloured Girls

Nice Coloured Girls (1987) was written and directed by Tracey Moffatt, an Australian Aboriginal artist working in film, photography and video. It is an unusual film in that it is quite different to the documentaries and realist dramas of contemporary Aboriginal filmmakers and to ethnographic documentaries of the past. Moffatt has set out to counter dominant representations, to challenge the notion of what constitutes an Aboriginal film and to explore how representations throughout history have constructed her identity and that of her race. In doing this, she draws attention to the means by which history itself is constructed and also, how film constructs meaning. Unlike the bulk of films about Aboriginal people which are set in the outback and portray Aboriginals in a community environment, the setting for Nice Coloured Girls is primarily the urban landscape and shows the central characters, three Australian Aboriginal women, in their element.

The story revolves around three Australian Aboriginal women who ‘cruise’ through Kings Cross and pick up a “Captain” (a drunken white man). They encourage him to spend his money on them, to drink until incapacitated while they steal his wallet and race off to catch a cab, self satisfied. The soundscape recalls a rural environment, and the voice-over of colonist, Lieutenant William Bradley, reading from his diary entries, recalls the first settlement. The sense of history established through this soundscape is juxtaposed with the story of the three women, linking the past with the present.

The film confronts orthodox histories of colonial race and gender relations. The use of colonial documents (through the voice-over of Lieutenant Bradley’s diaries) recalls the arrival of the First Fleet and the beginning of dispossession for black Australians. The relationship between black women and white men in the film is romantic and paternal (characteristic of early relations but not of contemporary ones) and this serves to illustrate both the naivety and self-deception of the writers of the colonial documents and the astuteness of the women. The colonists are shown to be naive because they believe the women need protection but the women, in fact, have a clear understanding of how interracial relations work and how to manipulate the situation to their advantage to get what they want. The depicted relationship between Aboriginal women and white men links the contemporary Aboriginal women with their female ancestors. Another link to the women’s ancestors is the subtitle which informs the audience that they call the white men “Captains” because that is what their grandmothers called them. A continuity of cultural identity is confirmed.

One of Moffatt ‘s motivations is to counter unrealistic and stereotyped images of black Australian women in film, Aboriginal women as victims for example. The women’s story is subtitled, a technique used by Moffatt to signify ethnographic documentaries which constitute the majority of past representations of Aboriginal people on film. In Nice Coloured Girls, Moffatt acknowledges “official” accounts of history and the representation of Aboriginal women in particular, in order to re-interpret and re-write this history from her own experience and knowledge. Through her own experience she re-defines the stereotype of Aboriginal women as victims of white men found in such “official” accounts by showing the way they perform tricks and maneuvers to undermine and subvert racial prejudices to their own advantage. Moffatt shows Aboriginal women as powerful and aware of their own subjugation.

History is represented as repeating itself in this film. The subtitles in the film tell us that the relatives don’t like the women to follow in their footsteps, in particular, the act of ‘picking up’ Captains. But the women have to because they don’t have any money; this emphasizes the historical continuities of exploitation. It is also a comment on the economic position of women at the time the film was made. In 1987 Aboriginal women were in a very similar economic situation to their ancestors following the settlement by the First Fleet. The main difference is that black women, today, are the exploiters and not the white men as in the representations of the past; yet I think Moffatt is also saying that Aboriginal women have always had a kind of power and have always understood how to manipulate the situation to their advantage. Moffatt gives us a view that economic concerns are and have been the basis for the relationship between blacks and whites.

The myth of the white seducer is turned around as roles are reversed in this film. Vikki Riley notes that we cut from the voice-over of the colonist to King’s Cross 1987 where the “tributes of beads and button necklaces have been replaced with the great Australian gesture of offering the woman a smoke” (1).

The film reflects Moffatt’s response to dominant representations. Bruce Molloy notes: “Treatment of stories involving Aborigines has been infrequent in the Australian film industry until recent times….Where Aboriginal characters occur, the tendency was to present them either as figures of fun, simple-minded and easily deluded” (2). The white male attitude to the Aboriginal woman as a pliable object of lust is shown in the film to have developed and continued over the last 200 years, however, the women are shown to have manipulated this to their advantage and countered the stereotype of powerlessness and domination.

Moffatt said of the film that “it is about vulnerability on both sides” (3). She avoids stereotypes; the white man is just a ‘sucker’ taken for a ride and not the predator or exploiter and the Aboriginal women are neither “shy maids” nor “wanton strumpets”. The women are resourceful, have a sense of humour, comradeship and are not victims but survivors. Without malice or sentiment they accept their lot and the survival tactics required. Various contradicting codes work to establish this image: the white dresses (symbol of purity and innocence), the setting of King’s Cross which is the mythical center of prostitution in Sydney, the “NICE” girls in the title, the nasty girl in the Aretha Franklin soundtrack and the “Covent Garden strumpet”. All these contradictions serve to develop more realistic, rounded characters which defy the stereotype.

Karen Jennings says of the film “It is reductionist to see it simply as a film about the ‘coloured girls’ who take revenge for 200 years of white oppression by ripping off a symbolic white ‘Captain’. Instead, I read it as a film which establishes a dynamic interplay between a number of binary oppositions: nice girls/nasty girls; white culture/black culture; the past/the present; the predator/prey; exploiter/exploited” (4).

As Anne Summers explains, two images of women, which developed from first settlement, are deeply imbedded in our culture: Damned Whores and God’s Police. All women were categorized as whores because in the first two decades they almost exclusively came to Australia as convicts: they were abused on the ships and the stigma of the “damned whore” not only stuck but developed a social structure in the penal colony (the resonance of this is still felt today). God’s Police were the good and virtuous women who came later when Australian society had developed to the point where it could attract free settlers. A new nation began to emerge, there was a desire for an evolution from a penal colony to respectable society; part of the desire was that those in power wanted women to be wives, not whores, but a strong motivation seems to be a desire to eradicate the evidence of the nation as a penal colony. Summers quotes C. D. Rowley: “Aboriginal women carried a double burden. As women, they were seen as sexual objects and fair game for white men; as members of a subject people they were also victims of the whole range of indignities bestowed by a brutal invading colonialism which considered itself to be the master race” (5). Moffatt’s response in the film is both to being a woman and an Aboriginal and casting off the shackles of the representations of both.

The soundtrack enables the film to flow in and out of various time continuums through the voice-over and sound effects such as rowboats, snatches of Aboriginal language and bird cries. The sounds of the urban and rural landscape are heard simultaneously and the dislocation between sound and image is one of the elements which make Nice Coloured Girls an innovative film. An example of such dislocation is the film’s ending (which also echoes the beginning): the image is a shot of the cityscape while the audio consists of a soundscape of the rural environment and the colonists voice-over. Other examples include the visuals fading in and out from colour to black and white and then to sepia (and visa-versa).

At the time of the production affirmative, anti-racist action was well in place and the ideology dictated that black Australians (and all Australian women) should be portrayed positively. Nice Coloured Girls was made with the assistance of the Women’s Film Fund of the Australian Film Commission. Moffatt received some negative reactions following screenings of the film and Jennings relates: “Some viewers have been alienated by what they perceive as its endorsement of exploitation, seeing it as a revenge story or a tale of ‘urban terrorism’. Some (including a number of Aboriginal women) have seen it as reinforcing negative stereotypes of amoral Aboriginal women – stereotypes which have justified and perpetuated the exploitation of Aboriginal women since the invasion” (6). However, I feel that it was Moffatt’s intention to create a realistic representation which has numerous dimensions and, as I’ve already stated, a contradiction of dominant stereotypes.

I believe that Moffatt’s personal history as a successful and articulate Aboriginal woman is reflected in the ideology of the film and therefore has contributed to or interacted with the history represented. She was educated to tertiary level, giving her an educated background and skills to back up her view with her work. She operates effectively and successfully within the dominant culture and this is why she sees Aboriginal women as powerful and seeks to further empower them with her representation of history. (Although Moffatt is conscious of the lack of power Aboriginal people have and the discrimination which has and does have a profound impact on everyday life, it is my reading that she sees herself as powerful and of Aboriginal women having control of white male/Aborigine female relations.) The title of the film also directly reflects her experience of growing up during the 1960′s in Queensland: “White Queensland talked about ‘coloured girls’ because it wasn’t nice to say Aboriginal or black” (7).

Moffatt’s work history is a significant part of the production history of the film; she has made numerous films on Aboriginal issues (particularly as they relate to Aboriginal women) and has been active in Aboriginal politics. She was involved (at the same time as Nice Coloured Girls) in the production of Women ’88 (a Women’s Program of The Australian Bicentennial Authority: a film celebrating the diversity of women’s contributions to Australian life over the past two hundred years). Nice Coloured Girls was made the year after Ross Gibson’s film Camera Natura (1986) and both films comment on the imposition of a European way of seeing and representing the landscape. As a reasonably acclaimed local film, I believe Moffatt would have seen and possibly have been influenced by Camera Natura. In addition, her work as a photographer explores similar issues as her films. The series ‘Some Lads’ for example, a series of studio portraits of black male dancers, which uses the conventions derived from nineteenth century ethnographic studies of Aboriginals but changes the intentions, as this quote from Moffatt illustrates: “I encourage my subjects to enjoy the staring camera (in contrast to the uncomfortable glaring in the earlier century photographs), to intentionally pose and show off” (8).

A recurring image within Nice Coloured Girls is the typical nineteenth century European print of the Australian landscape or tall ships. This is a polite landscape which reflects the European vision/representation of the Australian landscape (much as the landscape is represented in the film Camera Natura) and is just another aspect of European colonization. Shane McNeil interviewing Moffatt said: “Ann Kaplan in her article about Nice Coloured Girls says the film frame works as a “frame” and also for a metaphor for the way white history has framed Aboriginal culture” (9). (Kaplan’s view is further elaborated at the end of the following paragraph.)

One of the more perplexing scenes in terms of what it might mean is the sequence where the black hand sprays black paint over a European landscape drawing of what appears to be Sydney cove (rolling hills to the sea and a sail boat serenely in the water) and then a black hand smashes this glass to reveal the landscape still intact. There are various possible meanings. It may be metaphorically rewriting history by spraying over the image (although the landscape remains intact underneath implying the dominant representations are always there). Jennings sees it as “metaphorically describing the impact of white settlement on Aboriginal culture”; however she sees the hand as a white hand smashing the glass and it is clearly black (10). Harding says that “The Aboriginal women reject it (the European landscape drawing) by painting it black and smashing the glass” (11). The voice-over perhaps supports this reading: during this sequence the audience hear the story of a black woman who had a half-cast child and attempted to “supply by art what she found deficient in nature.” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and each culture beholds in its own way. Aboriginal artists in contrast to those of European origin don’t put their art behind glass, desert art is left to be changed by the elements; the scene of the hand painted onto white and then black skin recalls the form of traditional art as it runs almost immediately. This is perhaps a comment on white culture in opposition or contrast to black culture. Ann Kaplan says ” it encapsulates in one image the Anglo-Celtic tendency to “frame” the Aboriginal past, as a way of distancing it, putting it indeed “over there”, in a narrative, that is past, ended, closed; as a way of preventing the past from erupting into the present, disturbing the status quo…The reference back to the past “frames” the contemporary heroines’ actions.the picture on the wall breaking, and the scenes from the past. We are permitted to glimpse into some young Aborigines’ way of seeing their world” (12).

Central to the film is the issue of assimilation. The colonist’s diaries (in voice-over) meet the modern day urban Aboriginals, a startling and poignant disjunction. The attraction and repulsion felt on both sides is indicated numerous times, for example, the women find the men revolting and their glances at each other confirm this; on the dance floor the film zooms in and out from the black woman’s face, the evident repugnance/attraction of the white man to the black women emphasized. The film revolves around what Moffatt claims is a “modern day urban Aboriginal ritual: the practice of picking up a captain” (13). She states: “Picking up a captain is a very Aboriginal thing to do…Sometimes I wonder if it hasn’t always been this way since the Europeans first arrived and has developed into a way of surviving for a lot of urban Aboriginal people.” The women operate very effectively within white culture and embrace its diversity, including Italian restaurants and discos; as they walk down the street in the opening sequence, we hear a bit of the ‘Monkeys’ singing: “Here, we come, walking down the street…” which makes the Aboriginal women appear confident and in control and also signifies American culture as a pervasive presence in contemporary Australian society. A theme of the film which relates to assimilation is the pressure on Aboriginal people to become white in dress, behaviour and values. The colonist praises them when they are modest as their sex requires. Aboriginal people have been subject to the white view that they are an inferior race and the lack of respect by white Australian for the culture of black Australians is a part of our history. Images of ‘Australianness’ in film and in the culture have excluded the Aboriginal except for offering stereotypes of the Aboriginal, and Moffatt as a young, educated and urban Aboriginal woman is attempting to redress this.

Given that in 1989 Moffatt made Night Cries A Rural Tragedy, a film based on the 1955 Charles Chauvel film Jedda, we know that Moffatt was interested in past representations of Australian Aboriginal people and sought to redress the inadequacies of these representations (she has also expressed this in several interviews). Jedda and other films such as Chauvel’s earlier film Uncivilized (1936) offer similar thematic concerns to Nice Coloured Girls in that they portray the difficulties and problems of assimilation, the cultural tensions, the white view of the Aboriginal as untamable and uncivilized, and in particular, the sexual basis which was part of the formula of earlier films.

Bruce Molloy analyzes both Jedda and Uncivilized(14). In Jedda, the first film to give top billing to Aboriginal over white players, Doug (played by George Simpson Little) says to Sarah, Jedda’s white mother (played by Betty Suttor), when trying to convince her to let Jedda go on walkabout, “They don’t tame, only on the surface”. Jedda remains in a no-man’s land, unable to join her people but unable to assimilate. The film also explores the importance of dress and food as indices of civilization; also an issue in Nice Coloured Girls where the women appeal to the colonist when they behave demurely and don the appropriate dress. Jedda is about a black girl raised by a white mother (just as Moffatt was). According to Molloy, the basic opposition in Uncivilized is between civilization and savagery (a dominant theme in black/white relations historically). This is also a theme of Nice Coloured Girls.

In my research, I discovered that Moffatt’s influences include Charles Chauvel and Nicholas Roeg. I found it interesting that both Chauvel and Roeg had made films with the title Walkabout. The Chauvel version was a thirteen and a half hour documentary series funded by the BBC and screened in 1959. It compares Australia with European, British and American aspects of geographical scale and development and was titled Australian Walkabout when screened in Britian. It included episodes where the Chauvels went on a walkabout with an Aboriginal group and was as much a tour of the Aboriginal culture by outsiders as it was an exploration of the landscape. The Roeg version (1971) was a narrative based on the Alan Marshall novel where two children are stranded alone in the desert and an Aboriginal boy leads them back to civilization. Anthony Boyle says of the film that it “studies the relationship of two cultures which exist side by side” (15). Both Walkabout productions explore many similar themes to Moffatt’s work (although not in the same way or with the same viewpoint) and provide a context for the discourse she offers in this film.

The style chosen by Moffatt is anti-realist in Nice Coloured Girls (and her later film Night Cries A Rural Tragedy). The visual language of the film is strongly figurative; symbolic devices are used to economically evoke times and places (such as climbing of the rope ladder and the arms pulling at the bag of money) and she subverts dominant cinematic conventions (such as with the use of fluid temporal and spatial zones). The effect of this approach is to provoke the audience into awareness of the actual existence of filmmaking and narrative codes and thus induce an active, analytic, critical approach from the audience.

Nice Coloured Girls is a ground-breaking film stylistically and thematically. The audience is left to question history, in particular the reliability of primary sources. The absence of the Aboriginal point of view in Australia’s ‘history’ becomes glaringly obvious as we are left to question the nature of traditional representations of Aborigines. As Australians, Aboriginal people have been marginalized and stereotyped but Moffatt who is a young, contemporary Aboriginal Australian offers an Aboriginal perspective through her work and questions dominant representations which have excluded Aborigines (or offered unrealistic images of them).

http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/5/nice/

Nomad Two Worlds

http://www.nomadtwoworlds.com/nomadtwoworlds

Nomad Two Worlds is a collaboration between Russel James (Australian photographer) and Australian indigenous artists.
The goal is….

To raise awareness of the beauty and rich cultural history of Indigenous people worldwide, with traditional art, music, children’s health and family, self-esteem and cultural pride at the heart of Nomad’s creative, educational and philanthropic activities; and

To collaborate with Indigenous artists, and artists from marginalized communities, to create culturally relevant contemporary art and consumer products which provide long-term economic benefit to the artists and further the public’s understanding and appreciation of the world’s most threatened cultures and communities.

Nomad Two Worlds, for lack of a better term, is perhaps a more cheesy/commercialized version of Aboriginal activist art, but the message is still relevant.

How Aboriginal activism brought about change to contemporary Indigenous art

TIMELINE: Aboriginal activism

1957
A group of Indigenous and non-indigenous Aboriginal rights activists launch a petition for a constitutional referendum dissolving all discriminatory clauses from the Australian constitution and making Aboriginal affairs a federal responsibility.

1958
Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists form The Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA). The FCAA was the first united national body for Aboriginal activists. The public pressure group took the fight for Aboriginal rights and constitutional reform into the public eye and into federal parliament.

1962
The FCAA propose a legislative referendum to grant equal citizenship, wages, and employment to Aboriginal people. The rally for support was conducted in every state and more than 100,000 signatures of support were collected. Although, at this time, the constitution was not changed, the Commonwealth Electoral Act was passed and Aboriginal people were given federal voting rights.

1963
In protest to proposed mining leases in Arnhem Land, Aboriginal elders at Yirrkala present the federal government with a bark painting, the title deed to their country, to argue the Yolngu people’s native title over the land. The Yirrkala bark petition combined bark painting with typed text and was the first traditional document to be accepted as a legitimate document for recognition in Commonwealth Parliament. In a court of law based on terra nullius, the petition failed to establish Yonglu ownership but compensation and sacred site protection was achieved as well as an awareness of a new concept of land entitlement – Aboriginal Native Title.

1964-65
Indigenous student Charlie Perkins leads a group of fellow Sydney University student activists in the NSW Freedom Rides and exposes the epidemic of discrimination against, and mistreatment of, indigenous Australians. The demonstrations bombarded the airwaves and television broadcasts demanding action for Aboriginal equality.

1966
200 Aboriginal cattle workers on Wave Hill station in the Northern Territory walk off the job, protesting their unequal work and pay conditions in comparison to caucasian employees. The ‘Wave Hill Walk-Off’ is highly publicised, influencing similar Aboriginal employee strikes nation-wide, and beginning a wider public fight for Aboriginal right to equal pay and rights to land.

1967
Aboriginal rights activists succeed in their decade-long battle for Aboriginal citizenship. Just over 90 per cent of constituents voted YES to change the Australian constitution to recognise Aboriginal people as citizens, the largest ever affirmative vote for Australian constitutional change. The referendum meant Aboriginal people were to be counted in the national census, subject to the same Commonwealth laws as European Australians, and recognised as citizens of Australia.

Source: http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/how-aboriginal-activism-brought-change.htm
This monumental change not only aided in the rights of Indigenous people but also enabled artists to begin to work in any way they felt necessary. Artists like Vernon Ah Kee are able to make politically loaded works because of the freedoms achieved in this time.

Personally, I find it hard to believe why there are still terrible injustices that the Aboriginal people still face today. Many indigenous people still feel as though they are seen as “not human”- as seen in interviews with Vernon Ah Kee and Destiny Deacon.

Ah Kee’s works featured in the Venice Biennale in June 2009 as apart of the show titled “Once Removed”

Karla Dickens // Freedom Riders

Came across this exhibition from last year at the University of Sydney;

 

“Freedom Riders: Art and activism 1960’s til now”

The starting point for the exhibition ‘FREEDOM RIDERS: Art and activism 1960s to now’ is a major portrait, ‘Charlie Perkins’, 1986, by Aboriginal artist Robert Campbell Jnr in the University Union Art collection. Perkins was the first Aboriginal graduate at the University and a key figure in the Freedom Ride, a historic intervention initiated by Sydney University students in 1965. The Freedom Ride focused unprecedented attention on the systematic racism experienced by Aboriginal communities in regional towns across New South Wales. Campbell’s art played a pioneering role in exposing the social and political realities of NSW Aboriginal people. His Perkins portrait and the Freedom Ride will provide an historic framework for the work of six Aboriginal artists Karla Dickens, Adam Hill, Jonathon Jones, Michael Riley, Elaine Russell and Christian Thompson.

‘FREEDOM RIDERS: Art and activism 1960s to now’ at the University Art Gallery will coincide with the University’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander week, 22-26 August 2011. There will be an associated exhibition at The Tin Sheds Gallery and an intensive workshop for school students in collaboration with the History Department. The contemporary artists in the exhibition will be involved in public programs to examine the historic role of the University in providing a platform for Aboriginal culture in NSW.

 

Check out the website for some images of the works and more info on the artist.

http://karladickens.com.au/artwork-collections/

 

Destiny Deacon

Came accross this clip.

Thought it might be relevant.

“Not seen as real people”- Destiny Deacon

Ah Kee // Early works

A conversation piece from the time white people arrived to now.

A conversation of race.

A conversation of generation.

A conversation of belonging.

Ah Kee // Works

The main question that runs through his work is;

“what is Indigenous art?”

In an interview on the ABC television program Message Stick, Ah Kee opens up about his experiences as an “Aboriginal artist” and what it means to represent his people through art and activism.

Vernon Ah Kee is a portraitist, graphic and video artist. In 2009 Ah kee will become one of a select group of Australians whose work will be displayed on the most important visual arts stage in the world, the Venice Biennale. Ah Kee is a prolific Brisbane based artist. His work is provocative in the themes he tackles. He asks the question through his work “what is Indigenous art?” Ah Kee’s large scale charcoal portraits of his family provide insights into past generations and Indigenous life in Queensland.

MIRIAM COROWA: Hello. I’m Miriam Corowa. Welcome to Message Stick. Quietly considered and thought-provoking Vernon Ah Kee is a Brisbane-based artist who works across a wide range of artistic media. But it’s his exquisitely detailed drawings that have captured the greatest amount of attention, with portraits that fix you with the intensity of their gaze. In exploring the inspiration behind his work, including the unlikely influence of Spider-man, Vernon reveals a fighting spirit that’s determined to challenge ideas about Indigenous identity and the classification of Indigenous Australian art.

VERNON AH KEE: The art I make is about my life and my experiences as a blackfella in this country. So it has to be considered Aboriginal art, and I have to be considered an Aboriginal artist.

RICHARD BELL: We give each other moral support all the time. You know, like I… I do some of his work for him. (CRACKS UP) I wish! Like, if there’s a better artist than Vernon out there, I want to see who they are.

JOSH MILANI: We developed a very strong friendship and I got to know his work, and I got to know more about him. And I began to understand how deeply his art was rooted in his life and his history. And I realised, at that point, that he was someone who was going to go on and make art for the rest of his life.

RICHARD BELL: I’d heard about him in the community. I heard that there was this real deadly artist from up North Qld. And, straightaway, he was this sort of really intense… deep thinker. And, also… full-on black power… (LAUGHS)

JOSH MILANI: I think his drawing is particularly exciting. I think he’s one of the best drawers in Australia at the moment.

ANDREA FISHER: When I look at Vernon’s work now, it’s… It’s inspirational. He’s got both conceptional background as well as amazing technique. He’s and amazing drawer. He’s very smart, you know, with text.

VERNON AH KEE: I was born in Innisfail and I went to high school in Cairns and lived in Cairns until I was about… early 20s. All throughout my life growing up, I’ve always been able to draw. So my family was always aware of that and they kind of assumed that I would always do something. I don’t think anyone thought that I would actually leave Cairns and go to Brisbane, that was a big move. I never thought my art would afford me a living. I’m very grateful that it does. But, yeah, it wasn’t like that in the early days. And my dad was always saying that, you know, “It’s good that you’re doing this and that you’re passionate about it, but you should get a job and just pay your bills and feed your family and things like that,” cos that’s a different generation of people.

When I was a kid I didn’t have any teachers who could actually teach me how to draw and I never did. But I had Spider-man comics and Spider-man comics, more than anything else, taught me how to draw. I love it. And I love Spider-man. And I still… I don’t buy the comics any more, can’t afford ’em. The art in comics was very rudimentary and very basic and it got better and better and better, at the same rate that my own drawing ability got better and better and better. And so I have this affinity with comics. So, more than anything, I think, my art, my drawing, especially, has been inspired by comic art. And that fed right into anatomical drawings and looking at the body and the nude and life drawing and led me to teaching life drawing. And, ultimately, led me to the kind of portraiture I do now.

All of the drawings – it’s one long project of mine, and it will reach an endpoint in about 10 to 15 years or so. And the original source material of the drawings, the whole series, are these archival images of my great-grandparents and my grandfather from Palm Island. And they were shot in 1938. And they were basically a scientific record. And not just a scientific record, but a scientific record of the dying species of subhumans probably. Yeah, certainly this exotic ‘other’ that had been set aside and anchored in this kind of desperate existence in Aboriginal reserves and missions and, in my grandparents case, Palm Island. But was particular about the images to me was the gaze, this very intense gaze, and profoundly affected me. So what I’m doing is I’m representing those images and trying to retain the gaze, cos it was a gaze of endurance and persistence and intelligence and emotion and depth. And a kind of deep-thinking and hunger that is not normally associated with black people. I’m trying to establish an idea of Aboriginal that is contemporary and modern and stripped of all the romantic ideas around spirituality and virtue and the decorative Stone Age. So, one is, I’m trying to demonstrate that Aboriginal art is more than what we think it is and that Aboriginal people, as a subject, is more than what we think it is. And, even more than that, it’s a beautiful thing.

So I want all these drawings to be beautiful. Then the subject must be, also. I started with my grandfather’s first, because I wanted to monumentalise them. They were big people and big personalities to me. And when you come into the world, grandfather’s, if you are lucky enough to know them, they’re already formed and they’re already who they are and they’re set in their ways as this grandfather. And, as a grandson, you look up to them and you worship them. So I… you know, established this grand vision of who they were. One grandfather in particular, Mick Miller, he was a larger-than-life character. And he used to tell me things about his… his own life and his own accomplishments which may or may not have been true. But they were wondrous, everything. I could see myself in what he was talking about and he’s this Aboriginal man who could ride horses and break horses and knew everything about horses and cattle and things, living on the land. And I thought being around him was wondrous when I was a child.

JOSH MILANI: I saw an exhibition of Vernon’s at Metro Arts called If I was White, and it blew me away. It was one of the greatest exhibitions by a young artist I’d ever seen. It was all text-based, but it was essentially 30 suppositions on what it would be like to live in Australian society if one was white. And some of the propositions were, “If I was white I could buy a bandaid the colour of my own skin. If I was white I could identify with the characters in Neighbours.” Some of them were just very everyday… things, some of them were very philosophical, and some of them were facts. Slowly Vernon and I developed a relationship. But it took some years before, I think, he entirely trusted me. I don’t know why that is, but… We developed a very strong friendship, and I got to know his work and I got to know more about him, and I began to understand how deeply… his art was rooted in his life and his history. And I realise at that point that he was someone who was going to go on and make art for the rest of his life. And… later discussed it with Peter Bellas and we… together, decided to represent his work. And he had his first show in 2002, and exhibited the work If I Was White, and it sold to the National Gallery Of Australia and the National Gallery Of Victoria. This year he’s had the… the Sydney Biennale. He had an exhibition at Artspace in Sydney. He’s got my exhibition here and he’s also preparing for an exhibition in Venice at the Venice Biennale next year. So there’s a lot of pressure there. So I help him organise himself for those shows, and try and free up space so that he can just go away and make art. He doesn’t have to think about where money’s coming from. That’s my job, to sell the work to institutions. So to state museums, the National Gallery Of Australia, and also to private collectors. So I’ve got the whole series in there?

VERNON AH KEE: I regard Josh as you know, a very personal close relationship. It’s really good cos we can anticipate what we both think about my own work. So I make it and it’s his job to sell it. And we both earn a fairly good living off it. All you really want from any studio space is for it to be productive. Doesn’t matter what it looks like, it’s just got to be productive. And that’s been the case so far.

The show that I’m preparing these for is really like a no-pressure show. And it’s a fun show, and… I kind of see it as an opportunity to experiment, try new ideas, basically do something with these little canvases and think about the scale of them and what they’re for. And, maybe, just have a bit of fun. They’re a lot less serious than most of the art I do. I’m more comfortable in smaller shows, because you can get more of a grasp and the dynamic and the discourse that your work or that you, as an artist – in your work, by extension – has with other artists in their work. And that’s always interesting to me, and it’s always exciting engaging in that process on that level.

JOSH MILANI: It’s an exhibition that I have every year called the Christmas Show. And it’s an exhibition that was started by Peter Bellas many years ago. It’s a tradition I’m continuing. And all of the artists that I represent, or most of them, do artworks of the same scale which is 20 by 25 centimetres on little canvases. All the artists sell for the same price no matter where they are in the hierarchy of their careers. So it’s a great opportunity for people who don’t really have money to buy a major Vernon Ah Kee or a major Gordon Bennett or another artist that they might like. It’s an opportunity for them to buy something and have a work by one of those artists in their collection. So, it’s usually very popular. We get people from the Qld Art Gallery. We get people pretty much from off the street. A broad range of people come and will look for a little bargain there.

VERNON AH KEE: ProppaNOW is an artist group that myself and Richard Bell, we had the idea for it some years ago now. We were just talking amongst ourselves and Richard just said, “We should just start our own group up.” And we just thought if we had the right number of people we would create a lobbying kind of power.

RICHARD BELL: We were looking to let people know about what we were doing which is contemporary Aboriginal art, what I call ‘liberation art’. Simply because we’re talking about the daily struggles of human beings, you know, against the forces of modernism and capitalism. The group has been really good for each of us because, you know, it’s formed… It’s a support mechanism for each of us. We would all have gotten where we are today in a much longer time. Just having that there, those discussions with each other, was fantastic. We’re all pretty much on the same page, you know, like, as far as where Aboriginal people are where aspirations are, what we think, you know, like, should be happening. And it’s really good to… You know, with Vernon, because he’s so considered in his approach to things. You know, like, he thinks very deeply about things. So when he does say something it’s usually pretty well thought out.

LAURIE NILSEN: When someone does great art, like Vernon does, he’s such a great… he’s such a great technician. You know, I get inspired like that. When I was back lecturing at uni he wanted… He heard that I was getting a live model in and he said, “Do you mind if I just come down and join in the group? And I said, “Yeah no, that’s OK, mate. Doesn’t worry me, you know. Just got a model, so, yeah, I don’t care who uses it, as long as there’s room there.” Then I thought about it, “No, I can’t let Vernon in my class with first and second year students, because they’d just look at his drawings and they’d just probably throw their pencils down and go, “Well, I’m just wasting my time here.” So, yeah, had to turn around and tell Vernon he wouldn’t be welcome in my class for that reason, you know. He said, that’s OK. ..hang around with you. Did you save this for me?

ANDREA FISHER: When I look at Vernon’s work now, it’s inspirational. He crosses several media as well, which I think is very interesting and something that ProppaNOW really addresses as well. Because I know him on a personal level – he was my teacher, and now friend and member of ProppaNOW, you know, it’s overwhelming now. It’s great to see and it’s inspirational as an artist as well. And it’s inspired me to follow that path of working towards being able to make a living as an artist.

JOSH MILANI: I represent 25 artists and of that group about four artists are what you would call ‘urban Indigenous artists’. Urban Indigenous is a problematic term, and it’s something that’s been debated within the art community. Some artists such as Gordon Bennett and Tracey Moffat have been called ‘urban Indigenous’, but they don’t identify with that term themselves. They just want to be known as contemporary artists. Vernon, on the other hand, is very much making work that’s about empowerment of Indigenous people and that’s very central to understanding his work. So he has to own his Indigenous identity in a very profound way in order to have that platform to speak from.

LAURIE NILSEN: Vernon and I and, especially, I and Richard too have been very outspoken against the way the industry picked their traditional artists and label us as urban artists.

RICHARD BELL: It’s a romanticising of works by Aboriginal people. You know, like, it’s an attachment that white people attach to work. You know, like an artist mightn’t have the story that they’ve got. In those circumstances, that process of attaching a spirituality to a work that isn’t really there, that’s ooga-booga.

LAURIE NILSEN: That’s what the industry does and some of the people out there – we call them gatekeepers – they’re aiming at a specific market. So sometimes they’re telling the artist what to paint and what not to paint, what colours to use, things like that. They’re the sort of people we have a beef with sometimes. And, I suppose, that’s a part of ProppaNOW’s charter too is… Yeah. They’re just trying to keep people honest and give our views on what we think the industry should be, how it should be. You know, our stories are just as important as desert stories, but they don’t see that and the industry doesn’t see that. So, therefore, a lot of the public don’t see that cos they’re educated by the industry.

VERNON AH KEE: Is it an accident that the dealers, the art advisers, and the people who have tricked the industry into thinking the way it does about Aboriginal people and art… Is it an accident that none of them are Aboriginal? You know? Or is it a clever trick that Aboriginal art in this country has been separated from the people, that there’s a style, and that has been separated from the actual hands that make it? And all the money is invested in the art, not the people.

I have four kids right now. I’ve been married for a long time. Been together for a long time, we have four kids. Our eldest is 13, youngest is 8. I guess there have been many many personal sacrifices I’ve made. I sacrifice a lot of time that I could be spending with my family. But, I figure, that’s what it takes. And I’m at a point in my life where I have some measure of success, in that I’m making a living. And I’m happy with that. The most gratifying thing about me and my work is that my family see themselves in my work. That’s the big difference between me and a lot of artists. And not just blackfellas, artists, all artists. I put my family in it, literally. Everybody wants to know when their turn is now. “Your turn will come,” you know, “you sit down.” (CHUCKLES) But, no, I’m excited too.

Since the very beginning of the portraiture project. I’ve been excited about it all. And I love it. It’s great fun, it’s funny, serious, deep, emotional and it’s persistent and it’s perseverance. And that is all the things that make up blackfellas. So these boards here, they’re going to Venice Biennale in 2009. I’m very excited about it. This board is a rainforest-shield design. And it’s talking about the beach and giving another idea of what the beach actually means or should mean to people in Australia. They’re drawn from our actual shields that are held in museums in Brisbane here and in Canberra. They were made in the 1800s, and they were actually used in war. Some of the boards have big battle scars on them from rainforest swords. And some of them have bullet holes in them. So it really means something to have those particular designs on these. This whole series is all about combat and contesting space, and things like that. And they’ll be accompanied by… There’s a text installation that wraps around the walls – vinyl text, large-scale. The first time I went overseas it was a profound experience because I realised almost immediately that you go through the international airport and through Customs and you realise that you’re no longer on the lowest rung in society. And, as a blackfella, you very quickly realise that you actually are part of a world culture of native peoples. It’s just in this country there’s an attitude towards Aboriginal people that is pretty lousy. And that’s the first impression that people want to have of me, regardless of my artistic kind of achievements. But, internationally, that’s not the perception I get at all. So it’s stunning the turnaround and the attitude that people have to me.

The work I have up here tonight mainly deals with the Palm Island kind of events of the last few years. And just the ideas around, you know, issues of justice and natural justice and system of law and the whole relationship and the interaction that black people have with white people in this country. ‘The art gallery offered me a wall, and it’s huge. And I just threw myself into it. I just thought I’d do something big and cover the whole thing. It introduces this little character called Red Hat who is an Aboriginal legend. His history is that he lives around billboards and he loves media and he speaks in slogans.’ There is an aspect of the Red Hat character that kind of references Ned Kelly, in the shape of his helmet. But this is very different. You know, I’m re-contextualising the shape of the hat. You know, and I’m calling it a hat. Cos he doesn’t need armour because they can’t catch him anyway. The words are designed that you have to stand in front of them and you have to read them, you have to break up the lines, and you have to say the words, and there’s a puzzle there. And I think people will remember those things and take them away.

JOSH MILANI: The test, in a way, of a great artist is that they can work across different mediums and still have something quite profound to say. And, I think, Vernon’s proven that he can do that. And it’s just very exciting to see where he goes next.

VERNON AH KEE: I think, in ten years, my life will be smaller. My life is very busy right now. I just want to have a studio somewhere where I have more time for swimming and fishing. But, hopefully, I will continue producing worthwhile art and having worthwhile exhibitions. I just want to know that what I’m doing with myself is worthwhile and that the quality of my work is still, you know, something to regard.

 

– Vernon Ah Kee // Activist –

Vernon Ah Kee

Born in 1967 in Innisfail, Queensland, Vernon Ah Kee is a member of the Kuku Yalandji Waani, Yindji and Gugu Yimithirr peoples.

A conceptual artist, working across media including text, film, painting and drawing, Mr Ah Kee’s work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions nationally and overseas in France, Germany, Austria, Canada and Italy.

Ah Kee uses activism as a way to bring contemporary Indigenous issues into a national and international context.

Below, Ah Kee talks about being involved in the Venice Biennale.

Laurie Nilsen

Artist Laurie Nilsen describes contemporary Indigenous works;

“With all the works, there is a search beyond the surface of the image; a search which incorporates contemporary political discourse and history and explores what it means to be an Indigenous artist in contemporary culture.

“Urban Indigenous art is finally starting to get the recognition it deserves and this exhibition breaks the notion that all Indigenous art is dot painting and x-rays on bark.

“The works provide another voice and another way of understanding what it means to be Aboriginal in contemporary society.”

Scar, 2010
mixed media on paper (3 drawings)
Courtesy the artist and Fireworks Gallery, Brisbane