Renowned Journalist Jeff McMullen Discusses Encounters with Cook
Jim Cook, Reg Mombassa, Courtesy of Watters Gallery
ArtiFacts Eastside.
Join me, Jane Raffan, for an in-depth discussion with Jeff McMullen about the exhibition East Coast Encounter– Re-imagining 1770.
East Coast Encounter is a major four year project and now exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum that explores the phenomenon of first contact from the time of Cook’s mapping of the east coast of Australia, and how these encounters resonate with Indigenous and non Indigenous artists, writers and songwriters today.
Award winning journalist, filmmaker and author Jeff McMullen AM, is a household name through his important work as a veteran correspondent for the ABC’s Four Corners and later 60 Minutes.
McMullen has written, filmed, and campaigned around the world to improve the health, education and human rights of Indigenous people. We’ll be chatting about the East Coast Encounter project and exhibition, which includes a documentary film he wrote and produced that gives further voice to the artists and records their own encounters with significant first contact sites as well as traditional owners
And the music? Tracks by Indigenous songwriters and singers, such as The Stiff Gins, Busby Marou, Kev Carmody, Jessica Mauboy and participants in the exhibition such as Shane Howard and Neil Murray.
More on the exhibition: https://www.anmm.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=2230
More about Jeff McMullen: https://www.jeffmcmullen.com.au/
Podcasts of the interviews: https://eastsidefm.org/renowned-journalist-jeff-mcmullen-discusses-encounters-with-cook-with-arts-mondays-jane-raffan/
And if you are interested in Indigenous rights, there are another two shows on around town worth viewing:
Flow of Voices at the Cross Art Projects is a unique two-part contemporary art exhibition wherein artists from Borroloola, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia’s remote Gulf Country, tell the of the colonial frontier and post-colonial race relations and mining. Flow of Voices argues for proper consultation, environmental monitoring, restoration and community benefit in exchange for resource extraction. Without proper resepect for people and country racial heirarchies and ‘imperial’ attitudes persist. https://www.crossart.com.au/index.php/jacky-green-stewart-hoosan-and-nancy-mcdinny-flow-of-voices-2.html
And at Damien Minton Gallery, Redfern, is a group exhibition Monuments to the Frontier Wars with works acknowledging the wars conducted on Australian soil between the early settlers and Aboriginal nations. https://damienmintongallery.com.au/artists/monuments-to-the-frontier-wars
As always, I look forward to your company!
Jane Raffan