Imperial Leather,
1994
cotton, wax, composition board
149 x 204 x 15 cm
collection of the National Gallery of Victoria
The work "Imperial Leather" addresses notions of: Imperialism, cleanliness/cleansing, whitening, placement, loss of self, identity, policies of rendering indistinct.
The title is suggestive of the soap-brand name and associative connotations of familiarity due to the current availability of the product (one premise of the piece includes its immediacy) and the title also conveys notions of 'imperial' invasion alongside 'leather' which suggests whipping, punishment and control. The 'heads' are wax, cast from an original aluminium 'positive' of the kitsch plaster 'Aboriginal boy' 'head' commonly suspended in Australian lounge room walls in the 1950s.
The layout of mathematical regularity in the piece speaks of order, control and containment over Aboriginal people as represented on the panel. Power is held by those whose flag is the control mechanism. The cross-motif also resembles a target, whilst the hanging and pinning aspect relates to the exploration and labelling of the 'new' worlds and their flora and fauna.
The sense of order and obsessiveness through repetition in this work represents western fear of the Other and the Unknown which the British carried with their flag to Australia. This fear was channelled into state and federal control mechanisms through displacement of Indigenous peoples into state or church-operated "Homes" without families, when many of the British newcomers had arrived without their own families. Removal and re-organisation was part of a ongoing goal imposed on Indigenous Australians - which was for Aboriginal people to lose their original identities, to be whitewashed, and thus subsequently embrace Imperial/Colonial identity or the "flag".