Brown sugar, 1995/6
acrylic paint on ply, mixed-media, 1800 x 3000 x 120 mm
collection the artist

This is a 6 x 10 foot work based on the two-year journey of my ancestor Woretemoeteyerner, who travelled from Bass Strait to mainland Australia and across to Rodrigues and Mauritius from 1825 - 1827.

The elements of chance and fragmentation are integral to the work due to the information about the journey accidentally surviving within the indistinct diary musings of Quaker Missionaries, Backhouse and Walker, who in 1831 recorded that "She spoke a little French...Having been to the Isle of France".

Further archival research revealed a little more including that Mauritius to this day provides Australia with sugar : once all types - today only demerara. "Brown Sugar" has been utilised as a descriptive term for Black women throughout White history.

The work "Brown Sugar" developed from the realisation that "knowing" a complete and unabridged version of the past is an impossibility. Notions of journeying and discovery provided the structure for the piece and allow for a mirroring thematic axis to exist in this work. This fluctuation is between the unplanned lives and chance encounters of the adventurers (which the story revolves around) and the similar accidental nature determining which "facts" and names are retained for any future, and which stories become History.

Differing perspectives between the historical record and my own notions (at this point in time) of my  ancestor's journey, has resulted in a work that suggests an unfinished puzzle- which the viewer can interact with and visualise on a personal level.

"Brown Sugar" is a sculptural work situated between two modes of representation. These elements are the physical, intuitive acts of collection and placement of familiar objects which blurs, modifies and questions the initial archival research process of a factual-historical event. The familiar object versus the cognitive word.

The incongruous nature of familiar items from circa 1950 to represent a particular whaling/sealing voyage which took place 1825-27 is intended to draw and yet unsettle the viewer.

The usage of Aboriginal Kitsch female face-plaques within the work are as objects of uncomfortable interaction. 20 calico demerara-sugar filled  bags are intended to be thrown by the viewer through the portholes, whilst old rope quoits are provided to throw onto protruding dowels. Chance as a major operant of pre-20th century life informs and links the work both in its physical game structure and data-based areas, where sea-shanties provided as much information as diaries and maps.

The Tasmanian archives hold correspondence about the voyage; how due to poor weather, the sealers and the four Aboriginal women and one child were stranded on Rodrigues Island; with the Governments of Van Diemen's Land, Mauritius and New South Wales discussing who was going to pay for their deportation back to Australia- arriving back in Launceston four vessels and two years after the original departure, with several people having died or jumped ship.

One aim of this work, in reading between the lines of history, is to deliver the story not only from the viewpoint of the invisible Other (how I see myself), but also from the Twentieth Century Other who also cannot envisage the original event as it was, but chooses to attempt an understanding of the voyage as a pictorial chain of thought - a picture puzzle.