I intended to work subversively
within the Colonial constructs of Australian land and spatiality,
which renders it in print and
picture as divisible, nameable thus
knowable, manageable and ownable by relative newcomers. To challenge the
notion
of statehood and fixed borders- by
which 8 states and territories purportedly define the Country, I made the
regions into
packages or land parcels-
commodities representing the vision and interests of the mining, pastoralist
and Government
fraternities covered by the
Imperialist Australian flag that supposedly defines and encompasses the
people and place.
In wishing to represent a
communicative act of my contemporary urban desperation, I have employed the
pogo stick as seemingly
the only tool in the 'given kit'
for which I can make my own Aboriginal mark. Because the 'dot' is not mine,
that is, Tasmanian,
traditionally to make, I have
rendered this mark-of-reclamation using an implement over which I had no
control of the
outcome of the placement of the
acrylic dots, and where the size of these dots are as altered in scale to
the acrylic-on-canvas
tradition I reference as are
the various States in connection to each others' actual size.
These parcels look malleable,
easily re/moved, plundered, swapped, lost. Their indoorsiness is suggestive
of the Land
power games, structures and
debates undertaken entirely behind doors, which is
also suggested by the unnatural materials
and placements in this piece. I see
Aboriginal people in one corner with one tool, whilst other contenders have
an
entire army of tools at their
disposal. A tool for jumping about the land vs tools for cutting, twisting,
puncturing and removing the land.
