Intertidal Resignation is an art work
within an art work.
Whilst recently trawling
through e bay website I found a section 'devoted' to the auction sale of
Aboriginal art. Dozens of named Aboriginal people were shown holding up
their(?) paintings to the lens of unnamed art dealers?/photographer/s in
their(?) backyards in unidentified towns/cities sent to the screens and
scrutiny of unknown millions of art lovers(?).
This viewing experience
raised my hackles and many questions about power, authenticity, who is driving
who, what and how in the world of Indigenous art. Is this big wide (white)
world of art monitored beyond the computer monitor?
My art making reaction, my
answering action to this web-based experience was to position myself in this
'out back (yard)' setting as I am, as an artist, to hopefully subversively
evoke a similar reaction to my own within the quintessential 'official'
'authentic' Indigenous art audience, the viewers of the annual NATSIAA awards.
To this end, I created an
original painting from my own experience, deep set with my own sense of
(Tasmanian Aboriginal) identity, place and permissions with the use of ground,
mostly found, materials painted onto canvas in linear striations intimating my
own obsessions with salt water currents and tides. With my completed work in
hand I went into my back yard with a plastic table, stool and piece of bark to
carefully position and angle my digital camera on 10 second timer mode to take
my own photograph of me holding my art.
There was a sense of
sweeping resignation as the shutter clicked, I was commodified, inseparable
from and as identified and identifiable as my art work. I had set myself up as
I imagine those in the web photos have been set up for unknown transactions in
one dimension of an art world that apparently desires art with cultural depth
about country, people, story, responsibility and respect and yet shows little
regard for these values. The double edged irony for me in this position is
that I am for many an invisible Aboriginal, not visibly black, hence the photo
of me with my work rather than accrediting my work as authentically Aboriginal
may serve the opposite purpose for the casual onlooker.
The NATSIAA awards have
set categories into which an acceptable award winning Indigenous artwork
should be able to be placed; these are Bark Paintings, General Painting, Three
Dimensional Work, Works on Paper. In making this work for the purpose of
addressing the audience from which,
essentially, this phenomenon of auctions, authenticity and investment has
sprung there is a certain risk, not least of which are conforming to the
categories themselves. These demarcations can serve to eliminate works of an
in-between and potentially disturbing nature, such as I sometimes view my
practice, art-life-culture arguments and commentaries.
It took some musing about
how to complete this work to be able to even enter these awards. This work is
by me, I made the painting and I took the photograph of me. But I sent the
photograph to be ink jet printed onto canvas by an outside company and it was
then sent back to me where I painted over the then photographed painting to
bring the painting back the surface after which I posted the rolled-up painting to
Darwin where someone else stretched it to where you stand before it off a
screen and on the white gallery wall. For these purposes I think it is a
painting.
Julie Gough
March 2005
