Quaternary exhibition at QUT Art Museum

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae
Artworks: Bianca Beetson, Chantal Fraser, Rachael Haynes, Natalya Hughes, Alice Lang, Gemma Smith, and Jemima Wyman

Bianca Beetson says “we were all born pink, even when a dark baby is born, it’s still pink at first”.

And it’s that colour, which is so deeply imbued with meaning, that underpins Bianca’s work.

“I was a bit of a tomboy growing up and my mother, I remember her, as a last ditch attempt putting me in this pink bedroom,” says Bianca.

“It had pink clouds on the wallpaper and on the bedspread. And I really don’t like the colour pink.

“I ended up reclaiming pink in many ways and my hatred for pink became about anger and how pink’s not necessarily this insipid colour that’s associated with girls it can actually be quite powerful.”

Bianca’s self portraits at QUT’s Quaternary exhibition are bathed in fuchsia, blush and coral. Her costume changes from soldier, to barbarian to bohemian. It’s kind of this strange journey of mercurial magenta identity. And Bianca’s wrestle with identity is inexplicably linked to her aboriginality that of course is steeped in complex history and politics. 

“I always struggled with this thing of, who am I? and being pigeon-holed and people expecting you to act and behave in a certain way.

“And I think back to my uni days and I’d turned up nearly every day dressed as a completely different person because just when someone had thought that they had got me figured out... where to put me, I would shift.”

The pink in Bianca’s practice extends beyond femininity and self-perception. It looks at the “artificiality” of Australian history and “the way that pink sort of signifies this candy-coating”.

“I talk about sugar-coating poo and you can even sugar-coat poo that much and make it palatable.

“And at the end of the day it’s still poo.

“‘Let’s cover it up, let’s sweeten it’, but the problem doesn’t go away.”

Bianca has looked even further into that richly emblematic colour and found the concept of assimilation. Bianca’s grandmother was a domestic in Cherbourg where she “was taught to be a good woman, a good cleaner, a good cook, to stitch and sow and do all of those domestic things”. For Bianca, this represents the assimilation of her culture, heritage in family.

In the end, history, gender, identity: they're not white washed, they're pink washed.

Craig Walsh’s Embedded exhibition at the IMA

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae
Original Artwork: Craig Walsh

Mining plays a significant part in Australian history. But the general population often forgets its deeply rooted effects on immigration, the economy and government. As curator Robert Leonard notes, “despite mining’s dominance, most Australians distance themselves from it; they see it as happening, literally and metaphorically, over there”.

Craig Walsh attempts to address Australians’ views of mining in Embedded and the apparent disconnection and confusion.

The space is filled with 21 industrial bins overflowing with iron ore coated in neon yellow paint, reminiscent of high-visibility uniforms. It’s true as Leonard identifies that “not many of us even know what iron ore looks like”. This idea is representative of Australians’ detachment from mining despite its huge importance to the nation.

The exhibition stems from Craig’s works commissioned by Rio Tinto and time with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation. His works are laced with the paradoxical relationship Aborigines hold with mining where it has fostered education, health services and employment, but also been a source of conflict and land disputes.

“There is a popular, idealised image of Aboriginal people as noble savages, as people who have coexisted with the landscape for eons and who have a deep spiritual connection with it,” Leonard says.

“However, now that Indigenous people have a stake in economic development – now that they can participate in it and reap its benefits – this presumption is becoming untenable.

“We are witnessing the emergence of… the ‘economic Aborigine’.”

Around the space are portraits of traditional custodians projected onto rock formations. They’re overlooking the giant mounds of raw iron ore. It again presents the idea of the interwoven nature of resources and indigenous population. The portraits seem to suggest the native people’s intrinsic links to the land. But the works don’t resolve the potential for mining to be positive or detrimental for them.

In the end the exhibition demonstrates the conundrums of mining: disempowering while supportive, distanced while deeply involved, dirty while enriching.

Danie Mellor’s Exotic Lies and Sacred Ties exhibition at UQ Gallery

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

Within 20 years of white settlement in the Atherton Tablelands, the indigenous population was reduced to 20 per cent of their pre-contact numbers. European diseases like measles and influenza took many victims. But it was the wholesale murder by settlers that was the main contributor to the almost complete obliteration of Dyirbal speakers.

This is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award winner Danie Mellor’s mother’s country. The compilation of his works over the last 11 years at the UQ Gallery presents a history of the Atherton Tablelands and the rainforest people.

Danie’s pieces offer binary views from colonial and indigenous perspectives. It creates a kind of synergy to highlight how the cultures are vastly different, but share commonalities.

The themes explored across the exhibition include ritual and safekeeping, memento mori, culture warriors, silent witness and arcadia.

Curator at UQ Art Museum Samantha Littley says she and the head curator Maudie Palmer used these motifs to fully explore the concepts in Danie’s art.

“So for example with the ritual and safekeeping theme there was this idea that ritual knowledge and the handing on of sacred knowledge is something that common to many societies.

“There’s all sorts of ritual knowledge that’s passed on through visual and oral histories [in the indigenous community].

“And then kind of counterpointed against that is the masonic rituals that are perhaps more closely associated with European culture and what he’s saying in fact is that there are similarities, but there’s differences between those two things.”

Many of Danie’s mixed-medium pieces are reminiscent of blue-and-white Spode China. But instead of whimsical oriental pictures, the paintings depict native Australian peoples, flora and fauna or macabre and disjointed scenes of colonialism. Spode China represents the Chinoiserie popular at the time of white settlement in Australia. In Danie’s works it seems to symbolise the forced invasion of western culture on the tranquil, but confused native population.

Samantha says the ornate frames and shimmering materials in Danie’s works attract the viewers’ gaze. At first, it seems quite beautiful. But then more poignant messages arise.

“So what he does is he draws you into that picture,” she says.

“And initially he does that with things like the gold and the glitter, which are obviously very visually appealing and attractive in a way.

“But then once you’ve entered into that looking with him, he shows you other things that are perhaps a little bit more complex and possible more difficult to consider, but he does it in a very gentle way and there’s no course to blame.”

It’s a pivotal moment in Danie’s already illustrious career. He was recently included in the inaugural international survey of Indigenous art in Canada and will be shown this year at Art Basel Hong Kong.

The 50 artworks on loan from galleries including the Australia Museum, the National Gallery of Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery are on exhibit until April 27^th.