CCASGORMAN HOUSE

Territorial

1-30 June 06

The Northern Territory
Franck Gohier, Catriona Stanton and Gary Lee
essay by Andy Ewing  24HRArt, Darwin

On the surface, the difference between Australia’s two Territories could not be greater. The Northern Territory’s steaming tropical climate nurtures an open-air lifestyle that is all but foreign in the semi-alpine continental climate of Capital Territory. Canberra’s ‘utopian’ city plan and refined sense of socio-political order provides a stark contrast to Darwin’s chaotic optimism on the edge of Australia’s wildest frontier. Whether at the centre of “civilisation” or the most far-flung corner of the continent, however, both Territories suffer a sense of isolation and alienation that is both physical and psychological. Territorial brings artists based in the ACT and NT together whose work offers insights into the mind-sets of internal territory, autonomous territory, dark territory, peripheral territory and new territory. 

Northern Territory artists revel in being on the margins. Far from the central nerve of capital cities on the east coast, here, on the periphery, artists make work that tells another story. Many artists in the Territory have experienced Indigenous culture first hand and it is Indigenous perspectives that influence and characterise their work in varied and unique ways. White bosses, white anthropologists and the white noise of entropy, loom, move and shake in the remote and the very remote pockets of Australia.

Franck Gohier has been commenting on the dubious activities of anthropologists, arts administrators and Indigenous art collectors for years now. The hypocrisy of white fellas, collectors and cowboys, fuels his canvasses with stories about the glitches and aberrations of players in the Indigenous art market. Gohier’s paintings of the Top End tell horror stories of exploitation, opportunism and inhumanity – the underbelly of the Indigenous art boom. Looking at the breadth of his practice Gohier has carved out a unique style of visual commentary that focuses on many of the things that Indigenous people have had to adapt to.

Larrakia artist Gary Lee says ‘Indigenous Australians are among the most scrutinised in the world’. Faces, markings, lengths of limbs and spaces between eyes and ears have been obsessively recorded and reported on by anthropologists and researchers. Anthropologist and policeman, Paul Foelsche’s thorough documentation of the Larrakia people in the late 19th century has provided Lee with a connection to his ancestors. Using Foelsche’s images in diptychs with his own contemporary photographs and playing with a colonial sense of the erotic and the exotic, he reclaims the anthropological gaze for himself and his people, expressing pride in the past and present.Conscious of working against the history of colonial photography and subverting it by showing family lineage portraits, Lee promotes Larrakia identity and beauty through a sense of aboriginal portraiture.

Environmental extremes in the Territory – the build up, torrential rain in the wet season, the dry, cyclone threats, lightning storms – generate an overwhelming sense of the immediate for Territorians. Catriona Stanton’s sculptures are charged with this physical/psychological sense of immediacy. Her aerial perspectives of windswept landscapes, remind me of images of stripped trees in Arnhem Land after Cyclone Ingrid tore through it.  Stanton’s topographies are inspired by Indigenous perspectives of land and speak of a prickly ground, seductive yet repelling. People living in the tropics are surrounded by deterioration - nature is constantly collapsing and it’s either baking dry or in damp decay. The nerve-racking cyclone season makes one doubtful of the solidity of the environment. Everything is in flux. Everything is impermanent.

Australian Capital Territory
Raquel Ormella, Silvia Velez  and Bernie Slater
essay by David Broker Contemporary Art Space, Canberra

As Australia continues its struggle with a clear sense of national identity and we hear talk of a values test for new immigrants (and even tourists), defining characteristics just seem to become more elusive. Freedom, mateship, the fair go, tolerance and the English language have all been touted as defining what is distinctly Australian and yet it must be asked if these qualities do actually distinguish us from other nations and further, are they just hypocritical? While the source of these uncertain notions is national, coming from the mouths of politicians, it often appears that they come from Canberra.

Although there is a tone of aggression in the term territorial, it is rare that Canberra is defended by its residents let alone people outside the ACT’s borders. It is frequently derided as dull, a city with low esteem and without soul. The Prime Minister doesn’t want to live here, many politicians suffer their time in Canberra and public servants it seems, would rather be elsewhere. Australian Capital Territory represents power in a country that is paradoxically noted for its apathy and a history of contempt for authority - and there is little doubt that politicians lower the tone of a city that might otherwise boast many advantages. Politics and its obligatory spin generate an environment of national delusion that is addressed from different angles in the work of Silvia Velez, Bernie Slater and Raquel Ormella.  

Over the years Silvia Velez has explored the role of politics in Australian society from a point of view that emphasises people over politicians. Noting that the residents of Canberra “ … never really see the pollies. We know they are up on that hill, under the big flag, somewhere”, Velez opens a dialogue of “semi- political consciousness”. While residents of the ACT are automatically set apart by the fact of living in the same city as those elected to run the country – actual contact is every bit as minimal as that of people living anywhere else.

In a city with more than its fair share of government offices the lanyard is so ubiquitous it becomes a kind of meaningless uniform.  In Disruptive Identities Velez’s camouflage lanyards represent, not a distinctive identity, but rather one that is blurred by the facelessness of those representatives who “inhabit” that hill on the other side of Lake Burley Griffin. In the lead up to the 2007 election Velez sees a nation gripped by a fear and paranoia that has silenced everyone from the top of the symbolic hill all the way down. Partisan politics and new ideas are almost meaningless in an environment where it is often difficult to remember who said what and from which area of politics they came. When Velez comments “ We are living in a state of camouflage” she speaks of an area far greater than the ACT.

Bernie Slater draws upon propaganda images from China’s cultural revolution for his ironically titled work We Know Who We Are. The idealised posters that called the people of China to arms by asserting a specific cultural identity are applied to culture and politics in John Howard’s Australia where arguably – we have little idea of who we are. Hence the “necessity” for a values test.

Unlike China, where propaganda provided the populace with a defined identity set by the Communist Party, Australian mass media provides cultural content in the form of mindless entertainment while also being used by politicians to fuel the flames of discrimination. In other words the “Howard identity” is elastic, based not on who we are but who we are not - at the time. It’s an identity well suited to nationalism based on politically expedient division. Reference to Mao Zedong’s images of equality, harmony and prosperity which we now know were far from the truth, are ultimately uncannily similar to Howard’s dubious assertions of a free, fair and tolerant Australia.

The Prime Minister John Howard and his legacy (to date) are also at the centre of Raquel Ormella’s Australia Rising #1. With a large banner that is based on the Australian flag but not a literal description, her aim is to produce a nationalistic object of such dazzling extremity that her audience might be compelled shield its eyes. Looking at the broader picture, Ormella’s intention is to expose Howard’s political double speak in a way that renders increased bureaucratic small mindedness and the marginalisation of that which is “unaustralian” no longer disguisable. “Mutual Obligation” emblazoned across the banner points to how those people who missed the economic boom have been screwed by a government intent on convincing the populace that they have never had it so good.

With its status of Capital City and the presence of the very people we love to hate, a significant part of the experience of living in Canberra includes questioning why one has actually chosen to call this unusual environment home. In this Ormella is no exception and her banner is not just to be waved at the Parliament in an accusatory fashion. Its satirical edge and over the top materiality provides a stark contrast to Canberra’s modernist and brutalist architectural aesthetic while demonstrating that being at the mythical centre does not mean that one is necessarily blinded by the national delusion. On the contrary, critical art has a currency in the ACT that just isn’t quite the same elsewhere.

 
Thanks to Mark Hislop for his work in the initial stages of this project