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Chair: Associate Professor Sana Nakata, co-founder of the Indigenous Settler Relations Collaboration, University of Melbourne
Counter-monuments: An introduction Speakers: Genevieve Grieves and Dr Amy Spiers
This paper introduces public and contemporary art practices in Australia that are engaged in countering dominant settler narratives, histories and iconography. These ‘counter-monuments’ broach a future where violent colonial histories and legacies might not be minimised or dismissed, but instead solemnly and actively commemorated by the Australian public, while at the same time presenting current silences, effacements and contestations around these histories as an object of collective thought and agitation.
Genevieve Grieves is a Worimi woman from Southeast Australia currently based in Melbourne. She is an award-winning artist, curator and content creator committed to sharing First Peoples histories and cultures and interrogating colonising frameworks and practices. Her recent projects include The Violence of Denial exhibition (2016) as part of the Yirramboi Festival; Barangaroo Ngangamay (2016), a place-based Augmented Reality app that shares and celebrates the living cultures of Sydney Aboriginal women; and, she was the Lead Curator of the internationally celebrated permanent exhibition, First Peoples (2013), at the Melbourne Museum. She is a passionate advocator of decolonising and community-engaged practice and teaches these methodologies in university, institutional and community contexts.
Dr Amy Spiers is an artist, writer, researcher and producer living on the unceded lands of the Kulin nation in so-called Melbourne, Australia. Her socially-engaged, critical art practice aims to prompt questions and debate about the gaps and silences in public discourse where difficult histories and social issues are not confronted. Spiers has presented art projects across Australia and internationally, including at Monash University Museum of Art (Melbourne), the Museum für Neue Kunst (Freiburg), MONA FOMA festival (Hobart) and the 2015 Vienna Biennale. As a writer and researcher, Amy has published texts widely, including for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Auckland Art Gallery, Journal of Arts and Communities and Open Engagement. Spiers completed a Master of Fine Art in 2011 and a PhD in 2018 at the Victorian College of the Arts. She is currently a research fellow and lecturer working across RMIT School of Art and School of Education.
MISSING or DEAD: reinstating the hidden figures of history Speaker: Dr Julie Gough
MISSING or DEAD related on posters the name and known details of 185 Aboriginal children stolen by colonists before 1850 in Van Diemen’s Land, and first placed on trees in the bush forest of the Queens Domain adjacent to Government House in Hobart in June 2019. This paper reflects on the development and aftermath of this temporary installation that tested the ground for more permanent markers about Aboriginal people and the atrocities committed against them.
Dr Julie Gough is a Trawlwoolway (Tasmanian Aboriginal) artist, writer and curator at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Her Briggs-Johnson family have lived in the Latrobe region of North West Tasmania since the 1840s, with Tebrikunna their Traditional Country in far north eastern Lutruwita (Tasmania). Gough’s research and art process involves uncovering and re-presenting often conflicting and subsumed histories, some referring to her family’s experiences as Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Gough completed a PhD, University of Tasmania (2001) and MA, Goldsmiths College, University of London (1998). Since 1994 Julie has exhibited in more than 130 exhibitions and her work is held in most state and national collections.
Indigenous perspectives on Captain Cook: this full agency, this decolonised spirit Speakers: Paola Balla and Dr Clare Land, with Kate Golding
With the as-yet unreconstructed colonial artefact and ‘tourist attraction’ Cooks’ Cottage in Melbourne’s Fitzroy gardens as a starting point, Land, Balla and Golding explore a range of meanings that Indigenous people of the Pacific have associated with the highly symbolic historical figure Captain Cook. Taking a critical Indigenist and a critical non-Indigenous view, and led in particular by the critiques expressed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Pasifika artists and intellectuals, this paper gives an insight into Indigenous responses and resistance to Cook’s journeys.
Paola Balla is an artist, curator, writer, speaker & community cultural development worker. Paola’s experience spans over twenty years experience, specialising in Indigenous community art, projects and community cultural development. Paola is a proud Wemba-Wemba & Gunditjmara woman.
Dr Clare Land is an Academic/Researcher at Moondani Balluk Academic Unit, where she runs the ARC-funded Northland Campaign Community History Project with Professor Gary Foley. Clare is a non-Aboriginal person. Clare has a long-standing commitment to supporting land justice and Indigenous-led struggles and is known in particular for the book, Decolonizing Solidarity: Dilemmas and Directions for Supporters of Indigenous Struggles (Zed Books, 2015).
Kate Golding is a settler Australian of English ancestry based on unceded Wurundjeri Country. As an artist she utilises a variety of photographic processes to examine colonisation and the representation of people and place through long-term projects. For many years her focus has been on Indigenous sovereignty and critiquing the memorialisation of Captain Cook.
