We've made history in terms of the highest court in Queensland coming out to an Aboriginal
or an Islander community to sit in our public hall and listen to us they're saying the land
belongs to Queensland that they are the owners
The Mabo decision of 1992 takes its name from the high court case led by Eddie Koiki Mabo
this led to the overturning of the legal concept of 'terra nullius' which means 'land belonging to no one'
This key moment in 1992 had many debates leading up to it and since which artists have responded to
My mother's parents, my grandfather was a Bidjara man and my grandmother was a Ghungalu woman
my father's a non-aboriginal man and a man of agricultural background and a real passion
for trees as plants and timber as a media and this is of great importance to who i am
these days the art practice and our cultural selves in central Queensland and where we are is inseparable
With this work he was using a technique which involves him having to blow
the ochre onto the canvas
The shape that's emerged looked like the geographic location
in the Mackay region of Queensland which was a site of a massacre of a large group of people
fleeing a rifle assault of Queensland native police
The group leapt to their deaths from
the cliff edge of Mount Mandurana You marvel at the landscape and the fact that country
has been applied directly onto the canvas
Bonita Ely was part of a community of artists in 1970s Australia interrogating political
and social concerns of the time
Jabiluka UO2, it's named after a uranium mine which was proposed for the
Jabiluka area
At the time that Bonita Ely created this performance the Mirrar people
were beginning decades of resistance against mining companies
There are two men painting this white line she's pointing out the way in which this line
this linear thought this thing that's meant to represent masculinity and the patriarchy
is destroying this symbol that's relating to the feminine principle
On Sacred Land was created during the lead-up to the bicentenary of Australia's colonisation in 1988
The film creates a complicated assemblage of found video material, photographs, drawings
history painting depicting the landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay and scenes filmed
by John Hughes
The title refers to sacred Aboriginal sites which are then used and exploited for financial
reasons by white Australians
John Mawurndjul paints using earth pigments on stringy bark, he's particularly well known for his mastery
of rarrk a very intricate cross-hatching style this bark painting breathes it moves over time
Buluwana, female ancestor pinpoints a particular moment in Australian art history when contemporary
Aboriginal artists gained national and international recognition
Emily Kame Kngwarreye was a elder of her community she describes her paintings as being everything
trees, animals, grasses... it may seem almost abstract to us but actually they are about this extremely
rich and complicated relationship that connects country ceremony painting so when you're seeing
the sides of the canvas and those lines you're seeing where grass shoots may be coming up
and the fertility of the country
In Untitled 1990 these lines could be looked at almost
like aerial maps maybe rivers maybe pathways
Tall Man is showing a particular incident in Palm Island in 2004. The community rioted against the
death of a local man named Mulrunji Doomadgee and he died in police custody
There's a particular figure that you see in the video projection his name is Lex Wotton
he won a law suit which concluded that the police had committed unlawful acts, the artwork
is a homage to Wotton for his role in the riots, this is seen in the title of the work
Tall Man an Aboriginal term for a boogeyman or a spirit who elicits truth from wrongdoers
The deaths in custody of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are hugely disproportionate
to the rest of the community. Whilst it was created in 2010 in Palm Island, Tall Man reflects
many of these larger issues that are happening across Australia
Gordon Bennett didn't know he was of Aboriginal descent until he was a teenager, his mother
was one of many children who was removed from her Aboriginal family and put into white institutions
as part of what's now referred to as the stolen generations
He was particularly interested in the way in which colonial history was told and retold
through the creation of historic paintings that were then replicated in print and etchings
His work Possession Island (Abstraction) is a copy of a copy of an artwork that's now
lost he exposes the moment when Captain Cook arrived on Possession Island. In the original
work there is a Black figure who's fictionalised as serving the coloniser's drinks. Gordon Bennett
has painted over this figure in red black and yellow the colours of the Aboriginal flag
It seems as if he's asserting that these footprints have always been there and that they have
existed for many generations
I must think I have something to say and I can't say it in painting because I cannot
paint and I can't draw what i think I can do though is put an image together I always
think of the frame I always think like that I see things like that
During the stolen generations, children who were removed from their Aboriginal communities
were often placed into Christian missions Tracey Moffatt used the representation of nuns
as a way of hinting at that It's never just a simple concept of violence and desolation
Moffat purposely inserts these moments of innocence and kindness
I'm really interested in creating sort of moments of push and pull in paintings and
having different registers of imagery with different surface qualities so one thing might
be compositionally in the foreground but materially might be being subsumed by what's behind it
Seat of Power uses unofficial histories as recorded by political cartoons and satire
The chair is a replica of the speaker's chair at the Parliament of Westminster and it is
a continued symbol of the historical tie between British Empire and its colony. When the gift
of the speaker's chair was made Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders did not have the
right to vote and had no autonomous representation Johnson's painting highlights this discrimination
All Queensland Aboriginal people were documented so we've got masses of papers in the archives
which we can as artists I think you know it's a great resource but it's also a heavy burden
to sort of like read how my grandmother and her mother were treated
The etchings in a preponderance of aboriginal blood are official documents which classify whether or not someone
was entitled to vote according to whether both of their parents were Aboriginal or not
and show the way in which discrimination was officially recorded
After looking at this I thought I need to see my own family's files and I was the first person from my direct
family to see them as soon as you start channeling who you are into your artwork you will have
more inner strength and be able to deal with adversity