Michael Riley
Tracey
courtesy the Michael Riley Foundation
Jonathan Jones Artist bio by Katrina Schwarz
As Sydney artist Jonathan Jones describes it, his artistic practice - which is much involved with the meaningful installation and articulation of light - is about 'looking at big issues in a quiet way'. Rejecting noisy, attention-seeking neon - the focus of two recent installations at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney: Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley's 'Neon' and Danish artist Jeppe Hein's Neonwall - Jones's medium of choice is pervasive but unassuming fluorescence. What radicalises Jones's adoption of fluorescent fixtures, staged some fifty years after Dan Flavin's original gesture, is its transition to a local context and its participation in debates about appropriation and Indigenous representation.
To stand in the incandescent glow of Jonathan Jones's fluorescent installation Blue poles, 2004, is to be caught in a ricocheting beam of influence and association. From Flavin, our thoughts turn to the work which shares its title - a painting which signalled the Whitlam government's progressive stance and, more controversially, its downfall. In the spring of 1973, a short distance from the source of the Pollock-poles furore, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was entering its twentieth month, camped outside Canberra's Government House. The coincidence of Pollock's Blue poles, 1952, of the tent embassy, and the Papunya arts movement is explored by one of Jones's cited influences, the artist Gordon Bennett, in whose work the figure of 'Jack the Dripper' looms large and mythic. Jones, like Bennett, finds in appropriation a means of empowerment - a challenge to the representation of indigeneity as 'other'.
Jones is stimulated by this association and points as well to the connection between his light installations and Tony Tuckson's White lines (vertical) on ultramarine, c. 1972-73, a work inspired by Tuckson's deepening involvement with Aboriginal art, and his trips in 1958 and 1959 to Melville Island and Yirrakala. On Melville Island, Tuckson acquired a set of magnificently painted and carved grave posts for the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and it is these ceremonial objects that the jabbing vertical brushstrokes of White lines recall. Jones, who works as Coordinator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Programs at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, also draws deeply from the patterns and practices of his Indigenous predecessors.
The clutch of fluorescent tubes in Blue poles can be read as a form of rrark - the crosshatching whose shimmering effect reveals the presence of the sacred. For the installation White lines, 2005, at Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney, an entire wall of fluorescent tubes glowed in a geometry derived from the patterns of the Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri - carvings on wooden objects, weapons and the designs of possum-skin coats. On the opposite side of the gallery space, a series of meticulously layered black graphite drawings, took on the crystalline patina of animal skin.
It was a different kind of embedded blueprint that informed Jones's installation for the 2003 Primavera exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. 68 Fletcher, Bondi, 20:20, 8.6.03, 2003, traces the nocturnal lightscape of Sydney's Bondi Beach. The austere frieze of domestic light bulbs corresponds to light sources in the beach suburb, and the work's suspension on vertical extension cords evokes again the white lines of Tuckson. Electric light, the essential material for the construction of cities, resonates as both an icon of urbanisation and of mundane familiarity. To this Jones adds his own personal associations: light's essential ambivalence - being neither physical nor static - suggests the quality of memory and of spirit; that which has physically withdrawn from us but continues to light our way.
The accumulation of light is, in Jones's idiom, an attempt to map the network of relations between communities and individuals. Independent light sources come together to create a larger body of illumination, whose interlocking nature - we cannot tell where light begins and where it ends - signals the artist's interest in areas of commonality and connection, in overlap and symbiotic flow. It is a fascination Jones locates in his discovery of accounts of the Cadigal people night fishing, as recorded by early colonists observing from the shores of Port Jackson. The account of Watkin Tench describes with some poetry a constellation of iridescent lights reflected on the water: the Cadigal, with fires lit on a mud base within their nowey (canoes), fishing and cooking the night's catch.
As Jones explains:
These lines of reflection between two different cultures offered a moment - a moment to consider their relationship and retrospectively a moment in time when Aboriginality was acknowledged. The line of reflected light can be seen as the line connecting the two cultures.
Jonathan Jones's lines of light signify not the linearity of Western historicism but illuminate instead spaces of exchange, symbiosis and optimism.
Jonathan Jones is represented by Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney.
Katrina Schwarz
To stand in the incandescent glow of Jonathan Jones's fluorescent installation Blue poles, 2004, is to be caught in a ricocheting beam of influence and association. From Flavin, our thoughts turn to the work which shares its title - a painting which signalled the Whitlam government's progressive stance and, more controversially, its downfall. In the spring of 1973, a short distance from the source of the Pollock-poles furore, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was entering its twentieth month, camped outside Canberra's Government House. The coincidence of Pollock's Blue poles, 1952, of the tent embassy, and the Papunya arts movement is explored by one of Jones's cited influences, the artist Gordon Bennett, in whose work the figure of 'Jack the Dripper' looms large and mythic. Jones, like Bennett, finds in appropriation a means of empowerment - a challenge to the representation of indigeneity as 'other'.
Jones is stimulated by this association and points as well to the connection between his light installations and Tony Tuckson's White lines (vertical) on ultramarine, c. 1972-73, a work inspired by Tuckson's deepening involvement with Aboriginal art, and his trips in 1958 and 1959 to Melville Island and Yirrakala. On Melville Island, Tuckson acquired a set of magnificently painted and carved grave posts for the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and it is these ceremonial objects that the jabbing vertical brushstrokes of White lines recall. Jones, who works as Coordinator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Programs at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, also draws deeply from the patterns and practices of his Indigenous predecessors.
The clutch of fluorescent tubes in Blue poles can be read as a form of rrark - the crosshatching whose shimmering effect reveals the presence of the sacred. For the installation White lines, 2005, at Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney, an entire wall of fluorescent tubes glowed in a geometry derived from the patterns of the Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri - carvings on wooden objects, weapons and the designs of possum-skin coats. On the opposite side of the gallery space, a series of meticulously layered black graphite drawings, took on the crystalline patina of animal skin.
It was a different kind of embedded blueprint that informed Jones's installation for the 2003 Primavera exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. 68 Fletcher, Bondi, 20:20, 8.6.03, 2003, traces the nocturnal lightscape of Sydney's Bondi Beach. The austere frieze of domestic light bulbs corresponds to light sources in the beach suburb, and the work's suspension on vertical extension cords evokes again the white lines of Tuckson. Electric light, the essential material for the construction of cities, resonates as both an icon of urbanisation and of mundane familiarity. To this Jones adds his own personal associations: light's essential ambivalence - being neither physical nor static - suggests the quality of memory and of spirit; that which has physically withdrawn from us but continues to light our way.
The accumulation of light is, in Jones's idiom, an attempt to map the network of relations between communities and individuals. Independent light sources come together to create a larger body of illumination, whose interlocking nature - we cannot tell where light begins and where it ends - signals the artist's interest in areas of commonality and connection, in overlap and symbiotic flow. It is a fascination Jones locates in his discovery of accounts of the Cadigal people night fishing, as recorded by early colonists observing from the shores of Port Jackson. The account of Watkin Tench describes with some poetry a constellation of iridescent lights reflected on the water: the Cadigal, with fires lit on a mud base within their nowey (canoes), fishing and cooking the night's catch.
As Jones explains:
These lines of reflection between two different cultures offered a moment - a moment to consider their relationship and retrospectively a moment in time when Aboriginality was acknowledged. The line of reflected light can be seen as the line connecting the two cultures.
Jonathan Jones's lines of light signify not the linearity of Western historicism but illuminate instead spaces of exchange, symbiosis and optimism.
Jonathan Jones is represented by Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney.
Katrina Schwarz
Anne Curthoys - a freedom rider remembers the journey with the Freedom Riders 1965
The original Freedom Ride was a two-week bus trip by students from the University of Sydney. It took place in February 1965, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King’s examples of non‑violent direct action. The students travelled to country towns around NSW, to protest discrimination against Aboriginal people, particularly their exclusion from facilities such as swimming pools, clubs and cinemas, and from houses in town.
At the time, the government was promoting policies of assimilation, which meant social inclusion. Habits of racism and segregation were, however, deeply entrenched, especially in country towns, where most whites thought of the Aboriginal people who lived on the outskirts as intruders who had to be kept out, severely circumscribed and controlled.
By the mid‑1960s, many Aboriginal people were demanding a change. They wanted recognition, respect and genuinely equal treatment, with full access to decent housing, jobs, education and community facilities. They also wanted to retain their identity as Aboriginal people, with a strong system of kinship and connection to their own country. During the 1960s the Aboriginal rights movement grew, acquiring strong leaders and attracting support from many non‑Aboriginal people.
STUDENT RADICALISM EMERGES
One of these leaders was Charles Perkins, who had enrolled at the University of Sydney in 1963, along with Gary Williams, a Gumbaynggir man. The men helped to unite two emerging forces that were beginning to change Australian society: the Aboriginal rights movement and student radicalism. I witnessed this change when starting my Arts degree at the University that year.
During 1964 there was increasing student activity on issues of racial equality, such as a massive demonstration in support of African‑American civil rights. Stung by an observer’s query about why they were focusing their attention on this cause when there was similar prejudice at home, the students discussed how best to support Aboriginal people and oppose racism.
They decided to hold a Freedom Ride, modelled on the successful 1961 Freedom Rides in the United States, to visit country towns known as hotspots of discriminatory behaviour.
When the Freedom Ride bus left Sydney on 12 February 1965, there were 29 students on board, including Charles Perkins. Gary Williams and several others joined later. Altogether, 33 students were involved, 11 of them women. The average age was just 19.
CONFRONTATION IN WALGETT
The Freedom Ride travelled to Orange, Well-ington and Dubbo without incident, gathering information but staging no protests. In Walgett the students decided to target the local RSL club, as it was known to exclude Aboriginal ex-servicemen, sometimes even on Anzac Day.
Charles Perkins recognised the symbolic significance of this exclusion. It was important not just to Aboriginal people that their war service be acknowledged, but also to non‑Indigenous Australians, who would more easily recognise discrimination when it applied to ex-servicemen.
The line of students holding up placards outside the Walgett RSL Club attracted huge crowds, leading to much public argument and speech‑making. When the students left town, the son of a local grazier attempted to run their bus off the road. Unfortunately for the disgruntled townsfolk, a cadet journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald had just joined the bus, and as a result the incident was given full coverage in the city newspapers.
EXCLUSION IN MOREE
After Walgett, several more journalists joined the bus, resulting in massive media coverage.
They had plenty to cover at the next town, Moree, where Aboriginal people, except for schoolchildren during school hours, were being excluded from the council‑owned swimming pool. To draw attention to this inequity, they took a group of Aboriginal children to the pool. The party was admitted in order to avoid a confrontation, and later left town, believing that council management had agreed to desegregate the pool. When they learned this was not the case, they returned a few days later. This time, they were surrounded by a hostile crowd and subjected to considerable verbal abuse and some physical violence.
In an increasingly tense atmosphere, the students met with council representatives to find a solution. The council members agreed to abolish the regulation excluding Aboriginal people from the pool, if the students promised to leave town immediately. The Freedom
Ride continued to Lismore, Bowraville and Kempsey, holding several demonstrations. In Bowraville the focus was the cinema, which the proprietor later closed rather than desegregate. In Kempsey the target was another council‑owned pool that excluded
Aboriginal people. All the while the public was bombarded with media stories about the poor conditions under which Aboriginal people lived. Across the country, some serious soul-searching was taking place.
FAR-REACHING RESULTS
The Moree and Kempsey pools were desegregated, and so too (eventually) was the Walgett RSL Club. Charles Perkins became
a well-known Aboriginal leader, and student support for Indigenous rights continued to grow. many other campaigns followed, such as ‘Vote Yes’ during the 1967 Referendum, wage equality for pastoral workers and campaigns for land rights. The aftershocks continue to this day.
There are many forms of commemoration: plaques at the Moree Pool and the Bowraville picture theatre, Rachel Perkins and Ned Landers’ film, Freedom Ride, the film Freedom Rides 40 Years On (produced by Oliver Lawrance and ReconciliACTION, see www. antar.org.au/ freedom_rides_40_years_on), Charles Perkins’ autobiography, Peter Read’s biography of him, and my own book, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers.
The Freedom Ride was retraced in 2005 by university students, both Indigenous and non‑Indigenous, and again in February 2011 by year 10–12 students, who were mostly Indigenous – proof of its enduring legacy. The meaning of this event changes all the time – as historical events do whenever people seek to connect past to present. Our memories of the Freedom Ride will continue to change, along with Australian society and the aspirations of Indigenous people.
Ann Curthoys is an ARC Professorial Fellow in History at the University of Sydney, and the author of Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers (Allen and Unwin, 2002). Some of her Freedom Ride materials, including her diary, can be read at www1.aiatsis.gov.au/ exhibitions/ freedomride/start.htm
Adam Hill
Adam Hill
K9 vs bloodline on the breadline 2008 synthetic polymer paint on canvas
© and courtesy the artist Photograph: © Michael Myers 2011
Artist statement
… This image is an urban payback.
This is from the heart – mine and from the heart of Redfern, an ode to TJ and all local mob who in the course of Redfern history have gone unrecognised officially while the officials become more official.
Redfern is the police punching bag of NSW, over equipped, undereducated, mono-cultured young guns asserting their authority en masse.
Drug controlled kids patrolled
Adults paroled and stories untold
In the words of Wire M C
“In the eyes of my people I see a legacy of pain a reflection of yesterday”
Adam Hill 2008
Adam Hill is a Dhungutti man and was born in Blacktown, Western Sydney in 1970. He originally studied Graphic Design but later took up painting without further formal training. Hill uses house paint to produce what he describes as “vast colourful landscapes with reminders of colonial impositions”. His work references the history of Aboriginal resistance in Australia.
Adam Hill, 2008, 25th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory
Karla Dickens
Never Forgotten
Installation 2011
image courtesy the artist
“ The Wicca Cradle is a black empty tomb, covered by a black veil; it symbolizes the lost, the grief, and the heartache that is never forgotten.
My five year old daughter Ginger slept in this cradle as a baby, next to my bed, safe and untouched, now it honor’s the pain of the mothers and children that were separated, the families and lives destroyed.
As I hold my daughter in my arms I think to my great grandmother, Mary who was taken away at a month old, spent many long hard years at Cootamundra Girls Home, and died at Callan Park, blind, and haunted by the past.
The pain and lost did not stop with Mary.
view the artists website
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