Colonialism and its Narratives

Kate Barber:

Hello and welcome to today's Form x Content talk, Colonialism and its Narratives, presented by two of Australia's leading artists, Judy Watson and Helen Johnson, and convened today for us by Tina Baum.

Form x Content is an annual lecture series presented by Monash Art, Design and Architecture and programmed by Monash University Museum of Art. We started doing the series online in 2020, obviously in response to the fact that we couldn't gather. We're really pleased to present this talk in person today and moving forward next year, the talks will all be on campus and in-person. So we're really delighted to have you here for this event today.

My name's Kate Barber. I work here in Public Programs at MUMA. And before I introduce today's discussion and our esteemed guest speakers, I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the traditional owners and Elders past, present, and emerging of the lands on which Monash University is sited and operates. And I acknowledge Aboriginal connection to material and creative practices on these lands for over 60,000 years and also, that sovereignty was never ceded.

I'd now like to extend a very warm welcome to our guests today. It's been really delightful, this week, to have Tina and Judy in the galleries and Helen also, although I missed you on the day you were here, and really wonderful to have guests visiting us and spending time in the museum. So without any further ado, Judy Watson is a Waanyi woman based on Jagera, Yuggera and Turrbal Country of Meanjin, Brisbane. Judy did give me some tips on the pronunciation yesterday. Helen Johnson is a second-generation immigrant of Anglo descent based in Wurundjeri Woiworrung Country here in Naarm, otherwise known as Melbourne. We're also joined by Tina Baum, and Tina is from Gulumirrgin (Larrakia) Wardaman Karajarri Peoples of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. And Tina is curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, at the National Gallery of Art in Canberra.

And for this exhibition, Judy and Helen have each developed quite a distinctive iteration to the exhibition that was presented previously in Canberra and under Hannah Mathews, our senior curator's guidance and in conversation with her, they have brought in some older existing works as well as new works that really kind of extend this exhibition, and we are really just so proud to be presenting the Red Thread of History, Loose Ends here at MUMA. It will officially open on Saturday, this coming Saturday the 10th of September, with the opening celebrations from 3:00 to 5:00 PM and we do extend a warm welcome to all of you to attend that particular event. There'll be a really wonderful catalogue available and other publications by both of the artists.

So for this exhibition, as I mentioned, both Judy and Helen have really explored the significance of family and motherhood, the particular importance of matrilineal lineage and the tensions between individualism and connectedness. In conversation with Tina today, they'll discuss their individual and ancestral, cultural experiences of living in Australia and how they're reflected in their practices and working methodologies. Judy Watson and Helen Johnson, the Red Thread of History, Loose Ends, is an opportunity to experience the work of two of Australia's leading artists in an exhibition that explores complex and varied perspectives on colonialism with an emphasis on the experience of women.

The exhibition was originally commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia for the Know My Name program and as a part of the Balnaves Contemporary Series. As I said, we're just so delighted to have it here on campus at MUMA. I'm looking forward to the exhibition launching on Saturday. For those of you who might have to duck away and leave back to class, there is a really remarkable poster that you're very welcome to take with you and we hope that you'll join us on Saturday for the opening celebrations.

Now over to Tina, Judy, and Helen. Thank you.

Tina Baum:

Thank you. Thank you for that, Kate. I also just wanted to just add to the acknowledgements and I always do as, I suppose, a generational person from it. I also acknowledge the Stolen Generations and their families and recognise their ongoing journeys of recognition and reconnection. So thank you for that, Kate. What can I say? Let's get these two talking.

I'm the kind of ring in with all of this, so I'm really pleased to be here with Helen and Judy today. I wanted to start from the beginning because of the background's been given already for it. Neither of you had really worked professionally together prior to this coming together for this commission project. And for those who may not know, Helen came on board first for the Balnaves Commissioning Project and then Judy. And I think it was at your suggestion when we were looking at an Aboriginal female artist to come on board, Helen certainly suggested Judy and as you'll see come Saturday, it's really quite a beautiful partnering there.

But I wanted to ask, can you talk about your pairing for this exhibition and what it's meant to you both, professionally and personally. But also, because your coming together began before the finalisation of your works, whether or not your, I suppose, friendship, if I can say that, had any flow-on effect to the works that you created in the end for the project?

Judy Watson:

You start.

Helen Johnson:

Okay. I also want to just start by acknowledging that we're on Bunurong Country here and that I was born and raised on Wurundjeri Woiwurrung Country. Sovereignty never ceded. I guess I was first interested in bringing my work into a conversation alongside Judy's because I've always been interested in the way that our works have these material similarities on some levels in terms of both of us often working unstretched and often working at large scales, often doing stuff that's floor based and comes into existence on the floor sometimes out of practical necessity for me, but that also uses a lot of techniques that come out of print making, embossing and pushing and taking paint off surfaces with different textures and things like that. But then the outcomes of those works are so different because in them in here is our really different experiences of the world, our different subject positions as women.

But alongside that, I have a beautiful memory of having... one of the first extended conversations I had with Judy, was at a dinner we both ended up at when I was a few months pregnant and feeling quite alone in that and not knowing anyone else who was pregnant at the time and not knowing what that experience was going to be of childbirth and stuff. Judy was just so generously sharing with me experiences of the beauty of that, but also the things that go AWOL and the shitty nappies and all of that aspect of it too. So I guess those were the points of connection for me.

It was a bit of a weird process, the making of this show because of Covid, lockdowns really restricting travel for the time when we were producing the works. So we didn't get to physically be in each other's studios. We met up in person a few times when we were able and looked at different works together. We went through the Tiwi Islands show together at the NGV, which was a really beautiful experience. I think you've said this before, Judy, it's a really nice way to connect, actually looking at other artworks, you learn someone's lens. And also through that situation of the restrictions of that time, I really learned a lot from Judy about generosity and sharing. She was always sharing her thoughts and images even when they were just an inkling. And I was like neurotically, like, "Oh, I have to finish this thing before I let it into the world." I think I learned from Judy the value of just relaxing with that and letting things flow and letting connections form as they want to.

Judy Watson:

I also want to acknowledge traditional owners of this Country and the fact that we're all on Aboriginal land now, as a Waanyi woman and everyone who's here, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Island people and all of you and your families. Yeah, it's true in some ways that I would take photos of things, but I don't know that I was relaxed about it.

I was playing around and wasn't sure what I was doing really. I sort of knew that I wanted to explore histories and women and various things, but I feel like each project I tend to lurch towards and into and then out onto the next. So the most pleasurable thing is actually making the work and then that's only a very small fraction of it. A lot of the time it's processing it all, working out where it goes. And that's where it was good having Tina and Jaklyn Babington that were also talking about what was happening because we were all in different places. None of us really knew, or maybe you did, I don't know. I think I agree, it was good to meet up in Melbourne and then in Sydney again and have a look at work together, talk about things, and... Hopefully that's not me.

I think for all of you, I would just say, while you've got your colleagues here, hold on to them if you can, and really go around and look at work together, speak about work, talk about it, and also use them to bounce off ideas about, and also just to check on things. It might be, "Oh, is this a really dodgy situation?" Or "How do I do this?" Because that's what we all do and I do it now with Helen too. We just talk about all sorts of things. Somebody who's safe that you can sort of connect with and there's no ego involved. It's just a sharing of experiences and a fact checking and what would you do in this situation? So sort out who's good like that for you and make sure you grab them.

Tina Baum:

And that takes me on beautifully to my next question, which is about the title and how you both separately but also collectively came together to settle on it. I think it's a really interesting story that the audience might be interested in because I think it came from your research, and also your separate research as well. Can you share a bit more about how you both settled upon the title?

Judy Watson:

Ernst Rietschel talks about the red thread of history being ochre, which connects all of us and our cultures. So it's at the beginning of every culture, everywhere in civilisation within the world or at the end of it, whether it's at the birth, whether it's at the death, whether it's at celebration, art, etc. And I've always thought that's an incredible thing because ochre, I'm very drawn to it within both Australia, but also countries overseas. I often travel. I've been to certain places and looked at ochre, found it and very interested in it because it's got many properties. Sometimes it's seen as having transformative properties. It's something which is used for painting up. It's something which is used medicinally and it's been a really important resource that's traveling all across Australia and other places in the world. So people have sourced ochre, as you probably know from remote sites in WA or in South Australia, etc.

Different colours, different pigments, different properties and travel with them. You might know about the ochre men for example, holding ochre on their heads and travelling like a snaking, serpentine line going through the Flinders Ranges and across. And it has so much significance. So that's the red thread of history. But I was also telling Helen about the crimson thread and something that I read about Henry Parkes and we were travelling through Parkes and here was this monument and it had this quote and he talked about the crimson thread like a bloodline, but it was not about people of colour, it was about people who were Anglo, white, all the... I'll let you talk about it.

Helen Johnson:

Sure, yeah. So I kind of followed up that... Went monument hunting and there's many monuments to Henry Parkes and including name of the suburb in which the NGA is situated and just dug around and learned a bit about his role in federation, which he was a big voice in the process of so-called Australia becoming federated. And he actually appears in one of my paintings in this show from a cartoon around that time, along with a lot of imagery that at the time of its making was popular and widely known but has since been swept under the rug or gotten tucked away in the archives in favour of this. I feel like we sort of, as a colonial society, curate these versions of history that try and propose colonial society as something okay. But then there's all this information that reveals the foundations of it very clearly, the racism and the violence of it very clearly.

That's a lot of what drives me to make work that addresses those histories, is to bring some of those things that have been swept under the rug back up at this bodily scale and back into visibility just as a way to say these attitudes might have changed form, but they haven't gone anywhere actually. And I guess there's quite a lot of ochre in your works in the show too, Judy, in some of the prints and some of the string.

Tina Baum:

Thank you. One of the core premises behind the exhibition is the role that women have played in this nation. From First Nations, from colonial days through to today. Each of you have featured the women or family members in your works. Can you share a bit more about how or why that was important to include your family, particularly in your works?

Judy Watson:

Well, I think we've had spoken about sort of connections that we have. Both being women, mothers living in Australia, making work, trawling through documents, archives and referencing histories of colonisation among other things. And so I decided to do the silhouettes of my mother, one of my sisters, my daughter and one of my cousins, and then one of my art assistants, Ebony, whose family is from Sri Lanka. Just sort of thinking about those connections and disconnections that we have. But some of the silhouettes are placed over maps of Country and the maps have got property stations and the stations are many that my family, my Aboriginal matrilineal family worked on, lived on, were born on.

And there's another work petition where the station managers signed a petition saying that they didn't want Aboriginal people in that area to be paid. They wanted to get some nice young white boys in instead. And basically trying to depopulate the area of Aboriginal people and not pay them a decent wage, among other things. So once again, a lot of those places are properties that are within my blood memory through my family, of places that they worked on.

Helen Johnson:

I think about a lot of the work in this show in terms of transmissions. Both the things that get transmitted through history that form cultures and also on the familial level is one of my paintings that I made thinking about my sisters. I have four older sisters. And another that contains the mouths of my studio assistants. This was something that we... One of the first things we spoke about was like, "Right, let's make sure your assistants and my assistants are getting paid equally for this project, that there's equity." They play a really important role in my daily life when I'm in the studio, the conversations that we have and the way that thoughts get shared, I suppose. That painting also includes the mouth of my four year old daughter and I think a lot about transmission of ideas in relation to her and how to give her an awareness of what it means to be part of a colonising society, but in a way that gives her the humility to want to learn, and reflect, and listen, and understand rather than feel... Don't know what that is, it sounds like someone blowing their nose.

Rather than become defensive or run up against your own ignorance or end up taking an attitude towards that position that feels like where you feel threatened by it because your position of power is being brought into question or you're trying to bring it into question yourself constantly.

That feels like a promising and positive thing to me compared to my understanding of those realities when I was growing up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne with British parents who didn't know much about those histories either. But the other day I picked my daughter up from kinder and she said to me, "Do you know what it is, mom? Poorneet." And it's tadpole season just started now. I was like, "That's nice. She knows. She's getting that knowledge, appreciating where she is."

Tina Baum:

Fantastic, thank you. Judy, this is a question for you. Your works are just visually stunning storyboards that explore truth-telling, really. There's some hard stories that are in some of the works that you have there from the frontier of violence to contemporary issues today of deaths in custody. Can you just share briefly why it was important to not just have the colonial stories and that, but also some really, really hard stories that you have in your works, even though people may look at them and think, "Wow, the stories that lie within them are not so evident. But can you share why those particular stories have been important in your practice?"

Judy Watson:

I mean, it comes and goes. Sometimes some of my work doesn't always have those embedded stories, but when they do, it's for a particular reason. For example, the Skullduggery work, which was actually made prior but I thought was important to be in the show, was some documents that I'd heard about and a story I'd heard about, which is based around the Gulf Country in which this Aboriginal man, King Tiger. If you look at the video, you'll see the story and hear the various Aboriginal voice performers reading it out. So they're reading the white words in which his remains, and his skull, and his breastplate were dug up, given to the matron at Burketown Hospital. He's King Tiger, King of Lawn hill Mines, which is around our Country. And the Burketown matron, Agnes Kerr decided that she wanted to send it off to the Wellcome Museum in London, and this correspondence went back and forth. This was in the 1930s, not that long ago.

There's a lot of stories like that, Gaye Sculthorpe, a Tasmanian Aboriginal curator who I had met when I worked on the Bunjilaka Project, Wurreka etched zinc wall at the Melbourne Museum, forwarded me the correspondence. And when somebody does that, I feel like I have the responsibility to do something with it. So that's where it came from really. That's a story that I think, it's just one story, but it sort of brings up many stories about ancestral remains being shunted around between museums, collections, used as trophies. It's an ongoing thing for Indigenous people around the world.

That's where that came from and the deaths in custody work, Veil of Tears, it shows only a very, very small proportion of deaths in custody. The ones that families have allowed The Guardian newspaper to collect and to publish. And so it's once again, just a very small inkling of what lies beneath. I was talking with John, the sign maker today about it and saying this is something where you have these muslin lengths where friends and colleagues and families sewed scars or welt wounds onto them and you get the shadows coming through onto those documented lines of text. But it could be many other things. It could also be the parallel histories of many people who are unrecorded as having died through Covid and there might be many families that you know of who have had that happen to them. Suicide. There are so many different stories which affect people and not everybody knows, but it's like that idea of hidden histories and thinking about the psychic or the memory scars which we and families carry within us.

Tina Baum:

Thanks. Likewise, Helen, your major works, the large works that are in the exhibition also talk about that colonial experience and the birth of a nation and the forming of a nation and from a western perspective as well. Can you briefly talk about one in particular that's really resonated with you? There's probably many, but a work like Birth of a Institution that you'd like to share a bit on.

Helen Johnson:

Sure. The work Birth of an Institution started with the blueprint of the State Library of Victoria. And I wasn't aiming to make an address to that specific building so much as that being one of the buildings, I was thinking of it as the colony getting its eye teeth or something. Right when those big colonial buildings started being built in the Port Phillip district. When I've previously made works drawing on those histories and those archives, I've often ended up focusing on male imagery and the male energy of the division of land and the control and all of it.

But with this body of work, I've became interested in the role of women in those situations and looking at all this imagery from the moment of Federation where the newly federated Australia was depicted as a young woman, this sort of young bride or something. And in the Birth of an Institution I created this kind of scene where the blueprint of that library has been distorted into this fluid kind of destabilised form and it cuts through the body of a woman in labour who's about to push out, instead of a baby's head, there's the dome of that building, the Redmond Barry Reading Room emerging from her body and it's a big monster of a painting. It's pretty full on and around her at all these stakeholders witnessing this birth, is the father banker, the priest, the policeman, the teacher, all of the figures who were the beneficiaries and actors in the colonising process at that time.

I guess just asking the question when we look at those histories, what happens when we put women at the centre of it? How does it change our thinking about it and our perspective and thinking about what that role was. Women were instrumentalised in many ways, but were also complicit in many ways.

Tina Baum:

Thank you. This is to both of you again and to Hannah in the corner over there as well. Under Hannah's vision, of course with the exhibition, there's been additional works added in the show which have been really fantastic to see, some of the early works and some new works. I wanted to ask Hannah as well as part of that, I mean contextualising these two incredible artists in this show... You can come on up. It's been great for me seeing these earlier works, but also each of the artists have also spoken about not seeing a number of these works for a very long time. Can you just share really briefly just, or not. There's some fantastic works there, how important it was to include those additional works into the show as well?

Hannah Mathews:

Sure. I guess after going up to Canberra and seeing the project at the NGA and having conversations actually because you're both there at the same time. I guess picking up on where I found the joy that you were both taking in the conversations in terms of family, in terms of motherhood and definitely in terms of the importance of influence of matrilineal lineages, which is sort something we've been thinking about more at MUMA over the last two years. I really heard that and encouraged both artists to share works that they sort of felt reflected back to that time of making their own families and how they thought of their own families and the different forms and languages that were used around that. And I think, picking up on what Helen said, Judy is incredibly generous in her conversations and sharing of both knowledge and artworks and other people's works and conversations, and Helen similarly. So it was really through the works that both artists brought and I think when thinking quite personally about those connections and their importance and significance to them.

Those additions to the exhibition have been made and there are works that are made while being pregnant or expecting motherhood to arrive. There's a relationships, yes, between blood families, siblings, there's different notions of families as they might exist across community but also maybe in social spheres instead. So I think there's a sort of diversifying of this notion of what constitutes family within the exhibition. But I guess we're all focusing on whatever that notion is, the importance of connection. Is that enough?

Tina Baum:

That was fantastic because a lot of the works go across identity, like you said, Country, community, what that sense is and from a woman's perspective and that. But I think one of the last questions before we can open it to the floor is, and this including for you as well, Hannah. As all mothers up here as well. Both your works are really inspirational to so many people and play a really important role in, what I think of as the truth-telling of this country. Can we ask just what inspires you besides your family and community and that? What drives you to create the works that you do and in this exhibition as well as your future projections as well?

Judy Watson:

Paying the bills.

Tina Baum:

That's critical. Yes.

Judy Watson:

Project to project, in this case it's stories of my family. My mom does artwork with me. My daughter's very strong in my life, as is my son too. But I loved doing projects where we were sewing together with colleagues and friends as well, but also making string together, going back to Country. Going back to Country is so important or going out into the bush or anything like that, always feel just really replenished and being there and sharing it with them is great. I was just thinking of the profile of Rani who's on the poster, my daughter and the freshwater muscle shells known as malu malu in our Country. And when you see those middens of the big freshwater muscle shells, you know that's a really important site. All the women who would've dug them up with their toes on the side of the banks and harvested them.

And in fact it was so important in that area, it was known as water beef. It was such a staple diet, but it's also a very vaginal shape, a very female shape. And the striations are going down through it are also referencing a lot of the engraved tool marks on carved wooden vessels in our Country too. So I think family but also culture, Country, and history, and contemporary events are what drive me to make something. And I know that by processing it as an artist, it's like you take it through your body, you push it through and you feel a lot better for it.

Helen Johnson:

Yeah, I agree with that. I think when you make artwork or when you create anything, it gives you a different relation to your subjecthood. It enables you to understand your position in the world in a different way and in ways that are sometimes uncomfortable. Sometimes I'll make a work and then put it up or put it out into the world and go, "Oh," I just realised what I was doing. Didn't know what I was doing, just following an intuition. But then it sort of comes around and slaps you in the face and shows you that your unconscious is fully active.

I think that's one other thing that drives me. And I've been thinking about it a lot lately because I've been training as an art therapist and working in a psychiatric unit, in a public hospital and thinking about the importance of having my own art practice in order to understand what it means to hold space for other people to explore through art materials, explore their own situations, and just having that sense of being able to recognise in those situations what you are bringing and what they're bringing and that there's different things that can sometimes be hard to discern when there's all these different energies flying around the room. So that's something that's been really big for me lately in terms of driving my practice and feeding back into it as well.

Tina Baum:

Thank you. Talking about holding space and as a slight shift, as a curator, I know with myself and certainly when I deal with or look at works that I can certainly relate to, say for example with Judy's works and that where I have to process works in my own setting as an Aboriginal woman, which can be really quite upsetting and you deal with that too. But for you as a curator, when you're creating a space for artists like Judy and Helen, what drives you or inspires you and your role?

Hannah Mathews:

Yeah, that's a good question. I think as a curator, it's really the learning that can be done with artists and through the work of artists. I think that's a really key thing, especially in a university art museum context, the multitude of perspectives, experiences, knowledges that artists are so generous in sharing through their work. That's a really key one. And I think more specifically in the context of Helen and Judy and this project, there is motherhood in terms of becoming a mother, but mothering is not an exclusive event. Everyone has a relationship, good or bad to a mother. So I'm particularly interested in the kind of intergenerational context of the roles, relationships of mothers across time and through history.

Reading recently, just thinking about in the instance where one is becoming a mother, having children, the love kind of going forward, but it's equally an act of, reflecting back to one's relationship with one's own mother, obviously those that come before and I think that's a really important... It's something we've particularly been conscious of here actually, just how it threads through time. It's a really complex relationship and not an exclusive one. But just the various relationships and just how key that relationship can be.

Tina Baum:

Thank you and the backbone that women are to this country for sure. We might open it up for any questions from the audiences. Can we get a mic.

Thank you. Question over there.

Speaker 1:

Hello. This is a question for you, Helen. Hearing you discuss art therapy and how your own art practice flows into your art therapy practice and helps you better understand patients, process and making, I'd be curious to hear more about how your art therapy practice flows back into your fine art practice and whether it's helped you appreciate connecting with your own unconscious and intuition in your own making.

Helen Johnson:

Thanks for the question. I found that when I first started studying, which was, I got into the art therapy course the same day I found out I was pregnant actually. So it's been a long process. But when I first started studying, I found that when we did experiential exercises in class, the stuff that was coming out bore no resemblance to my art practice, my studio practice, and I quite liked that. As the years have gone by, they've become closer and closer. Actually the book that MUMA are publishing, hopefully there'll be some copies of this week, is a book of oil pastel drawings I did that was set as an art therapy assignment. They were like, "We want you to keep a visual journal and just do something in it every day."

And that book ended up mapping my pregnancy and I can see when I flip through it is sort of... Sorry, I don't know why that's happening. This sort of transition from being a subject to being an incubator and giving over your subject to another person and then coming back to being a subject once the baby came out. But also more recently, because when I run groups on the psychiatric ward, I participate, I make art alongside the patients. A lot of those artworks that I've made in that setting have then ended up becoming actually the only source material I've been using in the studio this past year. I've really made this quite big shift to not using externally produced source material, just using things that have flowed out of my own unconscious, often in that setting among other people. And so often made in this situation where you are sitting around a table and it's a really social situation, which is quite different from the way that I would previously make or conceptualise a work where it's just me sitting, trawling through images on a computer or working in Photoshop or whatever.

It's the more recent works of mine that are in this show are indicators of that shift. And I feel like it's been really nourishing actually. I feel like that work feels very honest and direct and from the heart for me, which is, it's quite a different experience from making work that draws on an archive that's a public archive. And it's like I'm taking responsibility for these images and the modes of their making and re-situating them in a way that there's always going to be questions over that and the decisions you've made and stuff, as well there should be. Whereas these works feel like they're more directly engaging with the immediacy of being in the world, I suppose. Sorry, that was a long answer.

Tina Baum:

Any other questions? Come on, there must be one.

Speaker 2:

I'd like to ask. When your work is shown in public collections, particularly overseas like Judy's in Paris and London, and the average person takes 30 seconds to look at a painting. Does it worry you that the average person has no idea of all the intricacies and histories and they just look at them as a decorative work, some of them, and they have no idea of the history behind all the work?

Judy Watson:

I can't control that. Helen's work and my work is both included in the Tate Modern Art Exhibition at the moment. And I think for Australian audiences who come through, like that group exhibition, and see what's on, they'll probably know and relate to a lot of things. I don't know if the other people who haven't been exposed to those histories, what they'll make of it. They might read up about it, they might want to know about it, but you can't slap people around and force them to look at something and learn more about it. But you can seduce them. So that's what I like to do, seduce them into being drawn into the work and then they might start finding out more and more about it and before they know they've swallowed that story and they can't get it out again.

Hannah Mathews:

I would say also just to add to that, Judy specifically chose the titles... Sorry. I would just say in addition to that, many artists, including First Nations artists also use language. So there are titling conventions for their work and Judy does that really explicitly with every work. Things being in lower case, but also the additional information that you're adding to them. And I think that's another kind of trigger or something that's instructive in terms of drawing people's attention to what they might be looking at and could learn more about. It's the work, but it's also the artwork label, which inevitably lots of people do take a good look at in that experience.

Judy Watson:

Answer that as well.

Helen Johnson:

Similarly to you, I think sometimes it can be a prompt for people. I often find people, if they're encountering my work overseas, they'll be like, "Oh, wow. I didn't know anything about this." And that will be a prompt for them to go away and do some research and learn. But as Judy said, I think it can be really valuable to have that aesthetic function where the surfaces of the work and the beauty of the work can actually draw people in to wanting to engage.

Judy Watson:

I just think that artists can lift the lid on things too, and hopefully that swarm of information or disparity or whatever it is, will infect people. But we can't sort of know that that's going to happen for sure. I think it's like everything, people have to be open to it or sometimes be tricked into it to then accept what stories might be about and maybe they're not ready, who knows? What do you think?

Tina Baum:

It's interesting actually, when you pretend to be a regular punter in these shows. Looking at Judy's works that were at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and you pretend you're just wandering around looking at the artwork, but you're really listening in on what people are grappling with or what they're doing. And observing how long they might stop and look at works and that. I love doing that, trying to pretend that I'm not staring at people. It's really interesting, it is the works themselves that draw people in, then they're curious enough to read the labels.

It was interesting seeing Richard Bell's work at Documenta. He has no labellings on his at all. And his idea is that if people are curious enough, they will ask about it and they will engage with the workers there about it. It's a gamble that you take, but the work itself draws people in and hopefully you can capture, even if it's half who will then have that ripple effect on to say, "Go and look at this show," or "Go and look at this work," or "Look at this artist." You hope that ripple effect takes hold at some point. Yeah.

Any other questions? Yeah.

Speaker 3:

I think this is probably more for Helen, but maybe Judy has some reflections on this too. As an artist working to decolonise your practice, if I can make that assumption about your process, how is it different working alongside Judy on a project and any reflections on what you might have learned?

Helen Johnson:

Yeah, good question. Big important question. Whenever I address colonial realities in my work, I am very particular and give a lot of thought to what it's appropriate for me to address. And for me that is the way that we as a colonial society construct ourselves rather than the injustices and violences that we've brought upon Indigenous people and those stories. But it's also like if you make that decision, then there's this space where those stories go that it's not for me to address them. But I think that having the voices of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists alongside one another, addressing their own parts of that story, I think can be a way to approach that and a way to address that imbalance. I think it's a really delicate and difficult thing to navigate and something that you always have to be on the ball about in questioning yourself about and not feeling like you've resolved it. I guess that would be my answer. Having those voices alongside one another.

Judy Watson:

I just want to address an assumption that people have made that being an Aboriginal artist is the easiest thing in the world. And it's absolutely not because not only do you have to negotiate amongst yourselves, amongst your contemporaries, amongst your families, preconceptions, the rest of the world, the assimilated world, etc. There's all of these restrictions that we have and are constantly laid on us. I call it State of Origin. "Well, you're not from here. Why, you know, you shouldn't make work about that." But for example, I wasn't born on my Country. I was born in a different place. I was born in Mundubbera, in central coastal Queensland. My Country's up in the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern area. I make work about that, but I don't live there. I don't have a stake on that. And I'll probably get told off, not that I know of, but I might, about things there. And so I think it's one of those things where you have to think about what is appropriate, but whatever you do as an Aboriginal artist, it will never be correct.

You can get slapped down, so you get used to it. You try to do the best you can and you try and do what's appropriate and responsible. But I think there's maybe a bit of nodding going on from, I can see Tina here. We've all been through it and it's just something you have to be aware of. I used to call it The Blacklash, but I don't anymore because Blacklash is this fantastic organisation in Brisbane of Indigenous artists and writers and workers, but it's like the internal lash that you get. So whatever the non-Aboriginal people can throw at us, it's nothing compared to what we get from our own and you have to survive it as an artist. It's tough, but it's a process you go through and I think you come out, wrung out. But also sometimes making better work for it.

Tina Baum:

It's a hard one too, because you're navigating that all the time with... There's a lot of trauma that's still out in the communities and a lot of shame in telling those stories. But also that's just a snippet of what we know and what we get told. Having those personal stories like Judy has of your great-great grandmother's survival of a massacre that's in one of the works, telling those personal stories really, really helps navigate through those avenues. And if it's coming from a place of genuine storytelling, then that's all you can really do. But we are doubly-

Judy Watson:

Shamed.

Tina Baum:

... held to account for what we do, whether it's as a curator or as an artist. And we particularly say the subjects that Judy covers, where you've got historians and others that are continually criticising and questioning. It's a tough road, but I think the work speak for themselves and there are a lasting legacy really. They're there for the record and that's the beauty of what artists do.

Judy Watson:

Helen and I were talking about that too, and talking about working with history and with colonisation, etc. And it's like, why should we have to carry the burden? Why don't you carry it as well? And so to all of you, I think, share that responsibility around. Do the hard work and nobody gets away with it. So you might as well all get involved and do your work.

Tina Baum:

I think that's a great thing to end on. Nobody gets away with it. So please put your hands together and thank Helen and Judy.

Helen Johnson:

And can I just add one very short-

Tina Baum:

Absolutely.

Helen Johnson:

... thing at the end, which is that this project was commissioned by the Balnaves Foundation, which was the work of Neil Balnaves and he very sadly passed away just as this exhibition opened at the NGA. I just wanted to acknowledge his support and the sadness of him not being able to see the outcome of it.

Tina Baum:

Great. Thank you.