Author
Guy Forster-Pearce
A Year in Art: Australia 1992
Written December 2021
Almost three decades have passed since the infamous ‘Mabo Decision’, in which Eddie Koiki Mabo submitted evidence of his intimate, inherited knowledge of the natural landscape before The High Court of Australia. Annotated in English, for the benefit of the Justices, this evidence came in the form of a drawing on lined and hole-punched paper and was key to overturning the doctrine of ‘terra nullius’ which had allowed settler-colonialists precedence in claiming land for over 200 years. A photo of this evidence is presented with context to frame this exhibition of Contemporary Australian Art, hosted on the third floor of the Tate Modern’s Natalie Bell Building.
Sitting for 25minutes within this introductory nook, to digest the first of multiple televised screenings, my attention was occasionally disrupted by the fast pace at which other attendees bungled through. Many would casually glance over the fractured map of indigenous cultures and languages, some leaning in for a closer look at a map of a continent we’re used to seeing presented as a homogenous landmass. They treated it like a corridor that funnelled them through to the larger pieces that lay just beyond. Do take it leisurely! Sit down and join me in appreciating the 4 minidocumentaries before us, watch: John Mawurndjul interpret the historical and spiritual artworks for Murray Garde, Dale Harding’s reflection on being “witness to the burden of silence that was with [his] grandmother”, Judy Watson dance on wet netting, and Helen Johnson prod at the sanitisation of colonialism in comical portrayals of official figures “busting for a shit”. You’ll recall these voiced statements as you encounter their artworks.
Allow Watson’s handling of her ancestral documents marinade in your mind when you come to her ‘A Preponderance of Aboriginal Blood’. These etchings, complete with cover colophon, are splattered with red paint evoking a violent loss of blood. They detail various legal texts that restrict the civil liberties of individuals “no matter how much milk is in the coffee” – to paraphrase a common saying on this continent. The dated correspondence between government officials, especially of Queensland, have become outdated with terminology I am not prepared to perpetuate in my type. We witness the physical enaction of discrimination through prejudicial tones. Blatant transgressions on the right of the individual to marry and especially to vote are made and we are left powerless to affect this situation. Our hopeful agency comes only in the form of allyship from a 1942 letter “relative to [censored] applying for the Widow’s pension” which states “this woman is a rather fine type”. Thus, conditioning the proclivity of economic stability in later life upon a character witness to one’s whiteness. The paint splashes often angle upwards suggesting an inevitable upward social mobility for those with a preponderance of aboriginal blood. But when the pages still retain a tired white expression.
This is an exhibition of antipodal dialogue. A face-off positioning of Gordon Bennett’s ‘Possession Island’ against Algernon Talmage’s ‘The Founding of Australia 1788’ captures our attention repeatedly as we wander through the space and return to this central atrium. It is impossible to avoid contemplating the rectangular omission of an Aboriginal figure, save for the commodities they hold up, against a monochrome peppering of coloniser details. The trailing footprints of whom camouflage in curved succession to retire around, and behind, a colonial strongman with eyes glued to the hoist Union Jack. The handheld flagpole extends beyond the canvas in graphic opposition to Talmage’s aesthetic framing of the first erected mast on the continent within the native canopy. The Brit explorers, here, are dwarfed by rising trunks that greet them, and their attempt to impose their claim upon the land is seemingly stunted. Nevertheless, the impression is given that this ‘First Fleet’ overcame superhuman adversity to introduce Western society to the wilderness. An exaggeration or not, I’m rather inclined to agree with Griff Rhys Jones’ summation that “Australians […] really do enjoy the myth that they sort of live in a constant struggle against nature.” in the third episode of his ‘Great Australian Rail Trip’ (available on Netflix).
Bennett brings us back to the reality that any Australian struggle is against its colonisers. Social winds are a-change between these compositions, with both insisting upon a rightward gust to their flags. With eighty years between them, only one remains ‘right’ today. He employs Kazimir Malevich’s suprematist colour blocks to deconstruct and secede from prior art history to encourage critical reflection upon Australian cultural identity. The rectangular ochre shape takes precedence over the other yellow and black cross-arranged blocks. These colours are of course those of the Aboriginal flag, representing a spiritual relation to the land, the sun, and the people, respectively. This primary focus upon the land is a motif carried forward in many other artworks in this exhibition.
This connection to the land is nowhere more potently documented than in Bonita Ely’s video performance ‘Jabiluka UO2’. https://bonitaely.com/1979-jabiluka Getting stuck-in with her pristine white cotton overalls, Ely caringly reshapes the rich ochre earth to construct a mound atop the manicured lawn. She affixes spiralling mud before anxiously anticipating the arrival of straight, white, male surveyors intent on dividing the structure with straight, white and insensitive geographic delineation. Sinisterly we watch as her energetic attempts to protect and prevent the landform are ignored and a violent act of rape upon the land plays out. The phallic equipment that prods into the ground and leaves a white stain to reveal a torn wound in the land and Ely embodies a visceral connection to the earth. Unmistakable screams pierce from the television to turn heads. Yet a stiff-upper-lipped reaction of silence from the crowd around me meets her plea.
Plea and protest continue into the 21st century as documented by Vernon Ah Kee’s ‘tall man’. So-called, we are told, because of the term’s use for a spirit who elicits the truth from wrongdoers. Truth is set against wilful ignorance in these frank scenes that combine citizen and rozzer videotape of the Palm Island 2004 riots that followed a death in custody. We are invited to sit once again and notice placards stating “Thou shalt covet our land no more”. “Thou shalt not steal”, “Thou shalt not bear false witness”. These key Christian tenets are held up to the state’s strong arm of law enforcement. Watch as community leaders coalesce outside the police station, express frustration and tiredness and leave without any other agency resorting to light this institution on fire. Predating the BLM protests by a decade and a half this film elicits a similar sense of wider empathy within those of us who have the privilege of not facing this aggression. Told across four adjacent projections this becomes the largest visual installation on this floor of the building. Narrative coherence persists through a baffling cacophony of noise and visual bombardment. In a perceivable victory for the community, we see the eventual evacuation of the police force from the island, some thousand kilometres away from the state capital of Brisbane. They saw sense and withdrew from a conversation to which they were no longer welcome.
We end in abrupt, comic relief meandering around Helen Johnson’s ‘Seat of Power’ and ‘Bad Debt’. The former’s replica-instructing text is obscured by the line drawing of the Speaker of the House’s chair. No longer in sanitary condition, a closer investigation yields that elements of the painting are missing. Perhaps some nifty fingers are at work? Such erasure would only accelerate without further social distancing of the public from the artwork, but those intimate details would be lost. The jovial donkey to the top right makes for a great ‘I spy’ with children, but I fear Bennett’s prior depictions of suicide would dissuade their attendance. The conversation is sustained as her works feature figures at their verge. Blankly silhouetted figures abandon the democratic process to then shoe-in their feet in ‘Bad Debt’ along with non-native floral and faunal species. Biological colonisation is famed by the Cane Toad, but so too are foxes, rabbits and the smallpox virus, who make a compositionally unwelcome appearance with their glossy, potent colour, so distinct from the muted domestic backdrop.
I leave through these 15ft wooden doors straight into the café where a gorgeous view of St Paul’s necessitates another sit down. Call me lazy, my legs, and mind, need rest to ponder over these dialogues.
For more intimate recordings of Aboriginal culture, artwork, ceremonies, and practices, I recommend checking out the 2-part ‘Preserving Indigenous Culture’ in S3 of ‘Tales by Light’ (also available on Netflix).
‘A Year in Art: Australia 1992’ is currently on show until Autumn 2022 as part of the free collection. Tickets can be booked online by timeslot entry here: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/collection-route/tate-modern-free-collection-displays
Guy A. Forster-Pearce 