Robert Campbell Jnr, Sunset over the Macleay overlooking Euroka, 1990. Courtesy AGNSW
Arts Monday’s Jane Raffan and Amanda Peacock (Art Gallery of NSW Coordinator of Aboriginal and Photography Education Programs) discuss the exhibition ‘Home’.
Sadly for most Koori artists, reflections on the idea of home are actually infused with the long term effects of displacement through colonisation:
“This gallery stands on the home of the Gadigal clan of the Eora people … when the First Fleet landed at Warrane (Sydney cove)… the home of the Eora became contested ground and was systematically taken away…”
The exhibition’s concerns were denser than the simplicity of its title, addressing colonisation, dispossession and assimilation; self-determination, which includes challenges to the dominant political and societal hegemonies; and cultural continuity.
The exhibition featured around 100 works of art drawn from the gallery’s collection, supplemented by loans from select regional galleries, and featured artists:
France Belle-Parker, Mervyn Bishop, Karla Dickens, Peter McKenzie, Michael Riley, Genevieve Grieves, Rea, Brook Andrew, Richard Bell, Roy Kennedy, Donna Brown, Badger Bates, Laddie Timbery, Kevin Gilbert, Lorraine Connelly Northey, Elaine Russell, Jim Stanley, Robert Campbell Jnr, and Harry Wedge.
More on the exhibition and the gallery here: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/home/