The Voice Referendum was the stimulus for this body of work. I was saddened that there wasn’t a greater knowledge about our history as a country including the deep cultural practices, ancient knowledge and way of life of the first people of Australia. In particular, the Referendum provoked me to attempt to address ‘the great forgetting’, the violent history of colonisation including the massacre of at least 10,000 Indigenous people [1] and perhaps as many as 60,000 [2].
The great forgetting is one of the most important aspects of Australian intellectual and cultural life during the first sixty years of the 20th century. [3]
I am not indigenous and grew up near Bathurst, where there were some terrible massacres. I never learned about these at school. Over the past few years, I have read widely about the Indigenous massacres and about the often cruel and barbaric methods used such as poisonings [4] and trophy collecting [5].
The lack of national understanding about the massacres is reflected in our art history. While there is rightly a strong interest in Indigenous art and also a body of colonial painting, I think the main painting in this exhibition might be the first large history painting to attempt this subject.
So how are we to find a place for the women and men of the First Nations who died fighting for country kin and customs? When will Australia find appropriate ways to illustrate that it recognises, values and respects their sacrifice?[6]
I have struggled with the ethics of portraying this subject – can I as an anglo Australian reflect on this dark matter? However, I have come to believe that the massacres are also the history of non-Indigenous Australians. Unless we come to own this history, we will never be a cohesive and fully mature nation. These works are therefore intended to help inform non-indigenous Australians about their history, painful as this might be.
I asked Lyndall Ryan …which Indigenous scholars I should read and [she said] ….”But they don’t work on the frontier wars the topic is whitefella business”. An Indigenous colleague I have known for many years put it this way “You mob wrote down the colonial records, the diaries and newspapers. You do the work. You tell that story. It’s your story”.[7]
[1] Ryan Lyndall "Colonial frontier massacres in Central and Eastern Australia, 1788–1930: Statistics". University of Newcastle (Australia). Retrieved 16 October 2024
[2] Reynolds, Henry Truth Telling Sydney, NSW : NewSouth Publishing, 2021 pp186
[3] Ibid Reynolds Henry pp163
[4] Bottoms Timothy Conspiracy of silence Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2013 eg pp86-88
[5] Ibid Bottoms Timothy pp161
[6] Ibid Reynolds Henry pp243
[7] Marr David Killing for country Collingwood, Vic. : Black Inc., 2023 pp 409