In/genuine Encounters: Fiona Hall's Cross-cultural Creations A thesis presented

by

Sophie E. Prince 638005 to

The School of Culture and Communication

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Bachelor of Arts (Honours)

in the field of

Art History AHIS40021

in the

School of Culture and Communication

The University of Melbourne

Supervisor: Dr. Susan Lowish

October 2016

Word Count: 15, 023

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Abstract

This thesis examines the integrity of cross-cultural relationships in a particular art world context. Through critically examining selected cross-cultural artist residencies,

this research project adds to the field of postcolonial analysis of cross-cultural

engagement through art. Fiona Hall’s cross-cultural residencies within colonised

cultures that are not her own makes her an interesting case study for contributing to postcolonial discourse. Hall has undertaken three artist residencies amongst colonised cultures that were specifically intended to be immersive and educational experiences.

Inquiries into the intentions and outcomes of Hall’s residencies address my thesis question: To what extent do the cross-cultural experiences undertaken by Fiona Hall,

reinforce the colonial traditions they seek to overcome?

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... 2 Acknowledgements ...... 4 Introduction ...... 5 Literature Review ...... 9 Methodology ...... 15 Structure of Thesis ...... 16 Chapter 1: Asialink-sponsored Residency at Lunuganga Estate at Colombo, Sri Lanka ...... 18 Lunuganga Estate: People and Places, Past and Present ...... 18 Art, Beauty and Violence ...... 24 Negating the Naiveté of the Novelty Experience ...... 28 Chapter 2: Nomad Art Productions Artists Residency, Djalkiri: We are standing on their names, Blue Mud Bay, Australia ...... 37 Habitus and Logic ...... 37 Djalkiri and Blue Mud Bay ...... 39 Comparing Cultures ...... 43 Appreciation and Transformation ...... 47 Chapter 3: The Venice Biennale Collaboration with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers ...... 55 The Venice Biennale: Representing Australia ...... 55 Protest through Participation: Having a Seat at the Table ...... 63 Integrity and Collaboration ...... 68 Conclusion ...... 71 Bibliography ...... 76 Primary Sources ...... 76 Books and Journals ...... 76 Catalogues ...... 90 Ephemera ...... 91 Webology ...... 92 List of Illustrations ...... 98 Illustrations ...... 105

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Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks go to my supervisor, Dr. Susan Lowish, for her ongoing support and clarity of thought that have provided me with the guidance I needed to maintain a sense of direction and rigor throughout the research and writing of my thesis. I would also like to thank the librarians of The University of Melbourne’s Baillieu Library and

Lenton Parr Music, Visual and Performing Arts Library, as well as the staff of the

National Gallery’s A.G.L Shaw Research Library and the National Gallery of

Australia’s research library as each team was invaluable to my research process.

Thank you also to my friends and family, particularly Tri, Nina, my mum Fiona and dad Miles whose emotional and physical support is what has kept me motivated and inspired leading up to this year and throughout it. And lastly, I wish to acknowledge

and thank my late-grandmother Bevy, for her legacy of love, laughter and family,

which brought both perspective and passion to my work and my life.

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Introduction

Fiona Hall describes herself as an opportunist - a quality that has informed her itinerant way of life.1 The diversity of Hall’s experiences, themes and styles that have concurrently underpinned her art, provides a dynamic context for examining why, how and with what implications artists continue to embark upon the trajectory of cross-cultural engagement. These inquiries into the intentions and outcomes of Hall’s practice seek to address my thesis question: To what extent do the cross-cultural experiences undertaken by Fiona Hall, reinforce the colonial traditions they seek to overcome? Over the course of her artistic career, spanning more than thirty-five- years, Hall has participated in numerous residencies, travel-scholarships, artist camps, commission projects and collaborations that have facilitated her engagement with a great number of diverse environments.2 This thesis specifically explores the experiences undertaken by Hall that were geared towards facilitating cross-cultural exchanges.

The focus of this thesis emerges out of recognising a lack of academic research into the role of residencies. Although there are a variety of residency models3 a comprehensive understanding of the unique kinds of relationships, ideas and art that emerge from residencies, is effectively demonstrated through examining one conceptual model. It is important to forge a path of critical engagement with the intentions and outcomes of residencies in order to develop a comprehensive body of

1 Hall cited in Gregory O’Brien, Paula Savage, and Vivienne Webb, Fiona Hall: Force Field, exh. cat., Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008, p. 33. 2 Julie Ewington, Fiona Hall, Annandale: Piper Press, 2005, pp. 105-10. 3 An Xiao, ‘Surveying Arts in Residence’, Hyperallergic, April 3 2012. Accessible: https://hyperallergic.com/49397/surveying-arts-residencies-part-1/. 5 literature on the ways for artists and art world organisations to uphold integrity during creative practice. The notion of integrity informed my decision to focus on cross- cultural residencies and to subsequently apply postcolonial theory to understand the significance of residencies. The conceptualisation of a postcolonial approach4 is consulted in order to determine the capacity for residencies to facilitate genuine and reciprocal cross-cultural encounters.

The three significant cross-cultural experiences undertaken by Hall that this thesis explores are: the Asialink-sponsored residency at Lunuganga Estate at Colombo, Sri

Lanka between 1999 and 2005; an artists-in-residence program facilitated by Nomad

Art Productions, entitled Djalkiri: We Are Standing on Their Names that took place in

Blue Mud Bay on the eastern coast of Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory in

2009; and a collaboration with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers that was carried out during an artists’ camp Pilakatilyuru in Western Australia in 2014, with the resulting works exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Out of the numerous experiences that have enabled Hall to work in different contexts, these are all of the residencies that specifically promoted cross-cultural engagement. The research parameters of examining all of Hall’s cross-cultural residencies, is a frame through which to examine the implications of developing an art practice that involves cultures other than ones own.

4 For a definitive characterisation of postcolonial approach see Leela Gandhi, ‘Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Studies’, Graham Huggan (ed.), The Oxford handbook of postcolonial studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 412-5. 6

Hall recounts how at young age she possessed an eagerness to interrogate the world, which is an energy that has continued to manifest in both the opportunities seized and artworks made over the course of her artistic career.5 Born in Sydney, 1953 Hall was raised and educated in the heart of one of Australia’s most iconic and developed cities. Hall was brought up in a family that fostered intellectual development, her mother even taking her at fourteen-years of age to see the landmark exhibition Two

Decades of American Painting in 1967 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.6

Between 1972 and 1975 Hall attended the National Art School and completed a diploma in painting, before stepping out into the world abroad in 1977, following the opportunity to work in London as a photographic assistant to renowned black and white photographer, Fay Godwin.7 Hall continued to travel and take photographs over the mid-1970s into the late-1980s through further study, studio-based residencies and teaching that took her to New York, Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria.8

The diversity of experiences and influences saw Hall’s photography develop dramatically over this period. Hall’s subject matter moved from formalist images of everyday scenes informed by the prevalent photographic traditions of the 1970s,9 to

5 Ewington, 2005, p. 47. 6 Fiona Hall Background Information for Media, Australia Council for the Arts, 2015. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/fiona-hall- background-55389102e3994.pdf. 7 Ewington, 2005, p. 24. 8 Ewington, 2005, p. 24. 9 Graham Howe (ed.), New Photography Australia: A Selective Survey, Paddington: Australian Centre for Photography, 1974, p. 5. Howe determines that during the 1970s the notion of ‘photographic seeing’ meant that works sought to imply wider social structures and meanings. 7 questioning the certainties of ‘straight photography’ by the 1980s.10 Graham Howe asserts that Hall’s interpretation of this shift is ostensible in how her work throughout this period is an “assembly of subjective fragments that seemed to be seeking some kind of new objectivity”,11 which is realised in photographic works such as Divine

Comedy Inferno, canto III: The Gates of Hell, 1988 (Fig. 1) that are inextricable from the medium of sculpture. This work is from a series of twelve Polaroids that references Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, whereby each frame illustrates a scene from a particular canto.12 Hall’s reflection on the torrid journey through Hell and Purgatory to Paradise is rendered through cutting and moulding aluminium soft-drink cans to form the luminous yet menacing forms of vegetation, human figures, and unearthly creatures that comprise each image.13

It was not long before the sculptural medium came to dominate Hall’s wider practice.

Over the course of the 1980s, as Julie Ewington observes, Hall found conviction in her capacity to bring together imagery, themes and concepts through sculpture, whereby “instead of seeing meaning in the world around her, Hall has shifted to making meaning.”14 The strong material basis of Hall’s art functions to critique the systems that produce the material at hand. The material basis of Hall’s work is geared towards addressing what Hall terms, “the unfinished project of humanity’s

10 Ewington, 2005, pp. 41-3. The distinct shift in photographic sensibilities that proliferated across Europe, the USA and Australia was perpetuated by texts such as Photography unsure of itself, 1950-1980. 11 Graham Howe quoted 2003, in Ewington, 2005, p. 41. 12 Collection of Works, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2015. Accessible: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/185.1989/. 13 Collection of Works, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2015. 14 Ewington, 2005, p. 47. 8 relationship with nature.”15 As this brief biographical overview suggests, Hall’s critical engagement with the material environment around her was developed whilst travelling. Hall’s subsequent collection of cultural references (or codes) continues to enable her to form commentaries on the world around her.

Literature Review

The function of analysing the residencies undertaken by Fiona Hall, and specifically those that were intended to facilitate a cross-cultural experience not only narrows the scope of this thesis, but also allows the concept of residencies be considered within a field of academic research. Currently, research on the role of and reason for participating in an artist in residence program is predominantly non-academic. The function and development of residency programs is demonstrated through quantitative research and annual reports undertaken by government funded Arts organisations such as Asialink16 and Australia Council for the Arts.17 These reports form an archive

15 Ewington, 2005, p. 23. 16 Annual Report 2004, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2004. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/2121650/2004-Annual- Report.pdf, pp. 6, 8, 16; Annual Report 2011- 2012, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2012. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/1968468/2011-2012- Annual-Report-jp.pdf ; Annual Report 2013- 2014, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2014. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1968478/2012- 2013Asialink-Annual-Report-IN.pdf ; Annual Report 2015- 2016, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2016. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/1968492/ASIALINK- ARTS-ANNUAL-REPORT-2015-16_English_Individual-pages.pdf. 17 Arts in Daily Life: Australian Participation in the Arts, Australia Council for the Arts, May 2014. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/research/fact-sheets-arts- enrich-our-l-5487de7320b24.pdf ; Fact Sheet: The Longitudinal study of early career artists, Australia Council for the Arts, 2013. 9 of insight into the growth in the number of Australian-run residency programs according to their perceived social and economic relevance in an increasingly globalised world.

This data is congruent to numerous non-academic articles by artists,18 academics,19 arts writers,20 and arts workers21 that recognise residencies as a platform for mobilising artists and to enabling artists’ engagement with other artists, experts, environments and cultures. The value of artist residencies is also articulated in recent conference papers, interviews and texts initiated by residency workers22 that further reinforce the understanding that through a multiplicity of residency models there are subsequently more opportunities for artists to extend and develop their practice. These industry report findings and conference notes inform the research question of this

Accessible:http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/research/fact- sheet-the-career-developm-543255dbb3190.pdf ; Residency Research, Australia Council for the Arts, 2015. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/strategies- and-frameworks/residencies-research/ . 18 Andrew Tetzlaff, ‘Listening for the unspoken’, Deans And Directors Of Creative Arts, 13 April 2017. Accessible: http://www.ddca.edu.au/nitro/articles/2017/4/13/listening-for-the-unspoken , p. 2; Pamela Zeplin, ‘Trojan Tactics in the Art Academy: Rethinking the Artist-in- Residency Program’, Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Design and Art), South Australia: University of South Australia, vol.4, 2009, pp. 66-77. 19 Jonathan Holmes, ‘To Go Abroad: Australians-in-residence’, Artlink, vol. 18, no. 4, 1998, pp. 22-7; Tetzlaff, 2017. 20 Stephanie Britton, ‘Hybrid World’, Artlink, December 2004. Accessible: https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/2291/hybrid-world/; Xiao, 2016. 21 Alison Carroll, ‘Residencies in Asia’, Artlink, vol. 18, no. 4, 1998, pp. 28-30. 22 Ika Sienkiewicz-Nowaka and Agnieszka Sosnowska,. Re-tooling Residencies: A Closer Look at the Mobility of Art Professionals, Warsaw: Creative Commons, 2011. Accessible: http://www.re-tooling- residencies.org/media/upload/img/ReToolingResidencies_INT.pdf ; Raquel Cámara and Marta Velasco (eds.), ‘Mapping Residencies’, Artists’ Residencies and Contemporary Art, no. 2, 2015; Ika Sienkiewicz-Nowaka and Agnieszka Sosnowska,. Re-tooling Residencies: A Closer Look at the Mobility of Art Professionals, Warsaw: Creative Commons, 2011. Accessible: http://www.re-tooling- residencies.org/media/upload/img/ReToolingResidencies_INT.pdf 10 thesis that seeks to grapple with the concept of inducting artists into new contexts and cultures. Given the diverse models and even labels of residencies that can be interchangeably termed artist camps or artist-in-residence programs,23 postcolonial theory will unify the theoretical analysis of three residency experiences undertaken by

Fiona Hall, in order to unpack the implications of participating in various cross- cultural experiences.

Postcolonial theory is centred on critiquing the origins, implications and continuation of colonial cultures that exploit and capitalise cultures that are not their own.24 Hall’s collection of cross-cultural experiences within colonised cultures that are not her own makes her a dynamic case study for contributing to the wider discourse on postcolonial theory. Positioning Hall’s practice and artworks within a postcolonial framework will be achieved through close analysis of artist statements, interviews, reviews, essays and the exhibition catalogues that outline the intentions of specific

23 Definition of Artist Residencies, Resartis, 2016. Accessible: http://www.resartis.org/en/residencies/about_residencies/definition_of_artist_residenc ies/. 24 Alessandra Marino, ‘Orientalism and the Politics of Contemporary Art Exhibitions’, Iain Chambers, Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona, and Michaela Quadraro, The Postcolonial Museum: The Arts of Memory and the Pressures of History, Farnham, United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2014, pp. 185-93; Denis Ekpo, ‘Any European Around to Help Me talk about myself? The White Man’s Burden of Black Africa’s Critical Practices’, Third Text, vol.19, no.2, March, 2005, pp.107-124; Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Harmondsworth: Pantheon, 1995 [1978]; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sarah Harasym (ed.) The Post-Colonial Critic, New York: Routledge, 1990; Greg Dimitriadis and Cameron McCarthy, ‘The Work of Art in the Postcolonial Imagination’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, vol.21, no.1, 2000, pp. 59-74; Leela Gandhi, ‘Thinking Otherwise: A Brief Intellectual History’, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998, pp. 23-41; Stanley Fish, ‘Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 2, Winter, 1997, pp. 378- 95. 11 works and the exhibitions that were outcomes of each respective residency: in Blue

Mud Bay,25 Sri Lanka26 and the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) lands.27 Hall’s art and practice will be engaged with through anthropological, sociological and postcolonial literature in order to establish how residencies can embody a genuine cross-cultural engagement and negate promoting novelty or tokenistic experiences.

Australia’s colonial history informs my analysis of the artist residencies undertaken by Fiona Hall in Blue Mud Bay and the NPY lands. Art historical literature such as

Ian McLean’s text Rattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian28 Art or his essay, Aboriginalism: White Aborigines and Australian Nationalism29 explore the impact of colonization on Indigenous Australian art, which is quintessential to understanding the fraught history Hall is inserting herself in to through each

Australian-based residency. The tradition of non-Indigenous cultures appropriating and primitivising Indigenous Australian cultures has also been specifically identified

25 Angus Cameron (ed.), Djalkiri: We are Standing on their Names, Blue Mud Bay, Northern Territory: Nomad Art Productions, 2010. Accessible: http://www.nomadart.com.au/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Djalkiri-Catalogue- 4mb.pdf; Kendrah Morgan, Big Game Hunting, exh. cat., Melbourne: Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2013; O’Brien et al., 2008. 26 Suhanya Raffel, A Transit Through Paradise: Sri Lanka 1999/ Fiona Hall, exh. cat., Melbourne: Asialink Centre, University of Melbourne, 1999; Suhanya Raffel, Leaf Litter: An Exhibition by Fiona Hall, exh. cat., Melbourne: Asialink, The University of Melbourne and The Lunuganga Trust, Colombo, 2002. 27 Linda Michael (ed.), Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time, exh. cat., New South Wales: Australia Council for the Arts and Piper Press, 2015; Natalie King, Djon Mundine, Diane Bell, John von Sturmer, The TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper in My Mask, ex. cat., Tarrawarra Museum of Art Ltd, 2014. 28 Ian McLean, Rattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian Art, London: Reaktion Books, 2016. 29 Ian McLean, ‘Aboriginalism: White Aborigines and Australian Nationalism’, Australian Humanities Review, May 1998. 12 in texts such as Charles Green’s The Third Hand: Collaboration in art from

Conceptualism to Postmodernism30 and Eric Michaels’ Postmodernism: A

Consideration of the Appropriation of Aboriginal Imagery,31 as well as Una Rey’s essay ‘Women’s Business: Cross-cultural Collaboration in Remote Indigenous Art

Centres.’32 The methods and issues explored in this literature is in dialogue with my own research that seeks to assess the extent to which the Hall’s cross-cultural encounters perpetuates the ongoing subjugation of Indigenous Australian cultures. In order to uphold the agency of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers from the NPY lands, and the

Yolngu people of the Blue Mud Bay region Hall’s encounters will be considered according to anthropological33 and historical texts,34 as well as journal articles35 that uphold a methodology of privileging the voices of the Indigenous Australian peoples, or are by an Indigenous Australian author. This literature will form the basis of my

30 Charles Green, ‘Be quiet, still and solitary: Abramović and Ulay in the Desert’, The Third Hand: Collaboration in art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001, pp. 166-70 31 Eric Michaels, ‘Postmodernism, Appropriation and Western Desert Acrylics’, Postmodernism: A Consideration of the Appropriation of Aboriginal Imagery, Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art, 1989. 32 Una Rey, ‘Women's Business: Cross-cultural Collaborations in Remote Indigenous Art Centres’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 16, no. 1, 2016, pp. 39- 54. 33 Frances Morphy and Howard Morphy, ‘Tasting the Waters: Discriminating Identities in the Wasters of Blue Mud Bay’, Journal of Material Culture, vol. 11, London: SAGE Publications, 2006, pp. 67-85; Howard Morphy, Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-Cultural Categories, New York: Oxford, 2007; William E. H. Stanner, ‘The Dreaming’, William H. Edwards (ed.) Traditional Aboriginal Society, South Melbourne: McMillan Company, 1990, pp. 225-36. 34 Penny Watson (ed.), Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Victoria: Macmillan Art Publishing, 2012. 35 Alison Ravenscroft, ‘Coming to Matter: the Grounds of Our Embodied Difference’, The Postcolonial Eye: White Australian Desire and the Visual Field of Race, Farnham, United Kingsom: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2012, pp.31-44; Jonathan Holmes, ‘To Go Abroad: Australians-in-residence’, Artlink, vol. 18, no. 4, 1998, pp. 22-7; Djon Mundine, ‘Travelling from Utopia’, Art Monthly, June, 2012, pp. 39-44; Rey, 2016. 13 understanding of the specific cultural values of the Indigenous Australian cultures discussed in this thesis. As a person of non-Indigenous decent, I can only speak from my own position.36

Colonisation in Sri Lanka has also motivated an extensive body of academic literature both historical and art historical. Texts such as Neluka Silva’s The Hybrid Island:

Culture Crossings and the Invention of Identity in Sri Lanka37 explore the fragility of

Sri Lankan identity due to years of colonisation and civil war. This history is also explored in essays such Anoli Perera’s ‘A new order: Contemporary visual art in Sri

Lanka’,38 which explores how ongoing socio-political instability have become central to the practice of a number of Sri Lankan artists. The instability and perceived impressionability of Sri Lankan national identity is furthermore understood as informing the architectural oeuvre of Geoffrey Bawa whose property, Lunuganga

Estate was the site of Hall’s residency between 1999 and 2005.39 Historical, architectural and art historical literature offers insight into understanding the diversity and intensity of influences that Hall was exposed to whilst in Sri Lanka, which manifested in her practice. Hall’s responses to her time in Sri Lanka will be critiqued

36 Linda Tuwili Smith, Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: University of Otago Press, 1999, p. 33. 37 Neluka Silva (ed.), The Hybrid Island: Culture Crossings and The Invention of Identity in Sri Lanka, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Social Scientists’ Association, 2002. 38 Anoli Perera, ‘A new order: Contemporary visual art in Sri Lanka’, Art AsiaPacific, no. 26, 2000, pp. 72-7. 39 Robin Jones, ‘Memory, modernity and history: the landscapes of Geoffrey Bawa in Sri Lanka, 1948–1998’, in Contemporary South Asia Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2011, pp. 9-24. 14 and understood through postcolonial theory. Literature by Homi K. Bhabha,40 Gayatri

Chakravorty Spivak,41 and Leela Gandhi42 characterise the qualities of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The conceptualisations of these seminal theorists are referenced to establish the neo-colonial tendencies that prevailed during Hall’s residency in Sri

Lanka.

Methodology

Fiona Hall’s art practice and biography sets the parameters of my research. Hall’s history of undertaking residencies, specifically the three experiences entrenched in cross-cultural exchange, act as a conduit for my academic research into the function of residencies, and is informed by pre-existing postcolonial discourse on implications of engaging with cultures other than our own through art. These assessments are made through qualitative analysis of Hall’s art making process. Insight into Hall’s process, interactions, and influences are gained through secondary sources including websites of the facilitating organisations and historical texts associated to each cultural context.

The themes and formal analysis of Hall’s art produced as an outcome of each residency will rely on the secondary sources of exhibition catalogues, as each residency resulted in the outcome of an exhibition. A number of published interviews and videos with Hall also offer insight into the themes, influences and intentions of

40 Homi K. Bhabha, ‘The Other Question: Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism’, Marcia Tucker (ed.), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990, pp.71-87. 41 Spivak, 1990. 42 Gandhi, 1998. 15

Hall’s art and exhibitions. These non-academic sources will be critically engaged with through concepts extracted from peer-reviewed journals, articles and books.

Structure of Thesis

The three significant cross-cultural artist-in-residence programs undertaken by Fiona

Hall will be explored in their own chapter within this thesis. Each chapter begins with an overview of the program and context in which the residency takes place. The aims, experiences and artistic outcomes of each program are subsequently examined in each chapter using a different aspect of postcolonial theory. The first chapter recounts

Hall’s Asialink-sponsored residency at Lunuganga Estate at Colombo, Sri Lanka that took place between 1999 and 2005. This chapter engages with postcolonial theory debunking master narratives, which is specifically demonstrated through critical analysis of the two exhibitions Hall held in relation to her residency. The second chapter analyses Djalkiri: We Are Standing on Their Names, a residency facilitated by

Nomad Art Productions that took place in Blue Mud Bay on the eastern coast of

Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory in September 2009 for two weeks. The visual qualities seen in Hall’s art are formally analysed through focusing on the way she perceived and responded to the local Yolngu beliefs, whilst anthropological, sociological and neo-colonial theory addresses the appropriative qualities seen in

Hall’s etchings. The third chapter engages with Hall’s collaboration with the Tjanpi

Desert Weavers that was carried out during an artists’ camp Pilakatilyuru in Western

Australia in for two weeks in June 2014, with the resulting works going on to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Sociological theory by Michael Foucault and Antoni Gramsci shed light on the power relations and agendas that underpin the 16 structure of the Venice Biennale, and the potential subordination of the Tjanpi Desert

Weavers. However, specific analysis of the intentions of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers’ enterprise recognizes the ways in which cross-cultural engagement enables marginalized cultures to reclaim their social and political agency.

The chapters are arranged chronologically from the earliest to the most recent years

Hall undertook each residency. This decision functions to demonstrate the conclusive argument that the varying successes of Hall upholding a relationship of reciprocity during and over the course of her cross-cultural experiences was not simply a matter increased experience. Rather, that the structure, aims and longevity of experiences inform how generative cross-cultural exchanges are for both visiting artists and hosting cultures.

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Chapter 1: Asialink-sponsored Residency at Lunuganga

Estate at Colombo, Sri Lanka

Lunuganga Estate: People and Places, Past and Present

Fiona Hall’s residency on the lush tropical grounds of Lunuganga Estate in Sri Lanka was an organic development from a planned one-month stay into an ongoing relationship with the nation’s landscape and people. The residency at Lunuganga

Estate was initially offered to Hall as a month-long program between 6 November and

4 December 1999.43 However, the rich cross-cultural environment of Sri Lanka proved to be such a fertile site for the development of Hall’s art that it brought Hall to return annually until 2005.44 The residency was the first of its kind to take place upon the private grounds of Lunuganga Estate, which is a garden estate, situated two hours south of the island nations capital, Colombo. The idea to open up the property to artists was sparked when the late-distinguished architect of Lunuganga Estate,

Geoffrey Bawa met Hall at the Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane in 1996.45

The residency took shape through funding from Asialink, which is a multidisciplinary arts organization based at The University of Melbourne, Australia.46 The mission of

Asialink is to, “generate new models and platforms for cultural exchange in the Asian region through an ongoing program of touring exhibitions, residencies, research and

43 Ewington, 2005, p. 155. 44 Ewington, 2005, p. 155. 45 Raffel, 1999, p. 4 46 Annual Report 2015- 2016, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2016, p. 2. 18 special projects.”47 This mission is intended to be reciprocal whereby generative effects of cross-cultural exchange are experience by both visiting and hosting participants.48 Asialink perceives that reciprocal exchange is achieved through developing personal and enduring relationships.49 Attempts to uphold reciprocity between Hall and Sri Lankan communities are evident in the longevity, exhibitions and the art associated to Hall’s residency. The two exhibitions that were an outcome of the residency at Lunuganga Estate were A Transit Through Paradise in 1999 and

Leaf Litter in 2005 and each was expressed in their respective catalogue as successfully conveying insights into Sri Lankan culture. These catalogues form the basis of visual analysis into how Hall’s intentions and actions were conveyed through art. Secondary literature offers a critical perspective on the history, culture and people that are articulated as informing Hall’s capacity to build a genuine relationship with

Sri Lanka.

Fiona Hall’s network of support whilst staying on the estate over the years included local curators, gardeners, architects and artists. These figures are considered local experts, and were instrumental in educating Hall as she explored the gardens of

Lunugnaga Estate as well as Sri Lankan culture more broadly.50 Sri Lankan-born curator Suhanya Raffel is a central figure to understanding Hall’s experiences in Sri

Lanka. Raffel developed a close creative relationship with Hall, and curated the two exhibitions that were an outcome of Hall’s residency.51 In the catalogue for Hall’s

47 Annual Report 2015- 2016, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2016, p. 2. 48 Annual Report 2015- 2016, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2016, p. 2. 49 Annual Report 2015- 2016, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2016, p. 2. 50 Raffel, 1999, p. 3. 51 Raffel, 1999, p. 4. 19 first exhibition, Raffel expresses her willingness to work with Hall, as she perceived a genuine resonance between Hall’s creative process and what Sri Lanka has to offer.52

Raffel cites this generative relationship as emerging out of Hall’s interest in the botanical world, which aligned with Bawa’s vision to slowly animate Lunuganga with activities and discussion.53 As well as being an established curator Raffel is also a board member of the Bawa and Lunuganga Trusts in Colombo, which manages

Geoffrey Bawa’s large number of properties and gardens designed by the architect.54

Asialink played an active role in facilitating the relationship between Hall and Raffel, as they perceived that the combination of Raffel’s knowledge of the Lunuganga Trust with the artist’s own “mercurial interest in the history and environments of places like

Sri Lanka”,55 would lead to an informed and insightful outcome for all involved.

Sri Lanka transported Hall into what Julie Ewington identifies as a new international frame, as well as into a de-colonised culture, and a civil war.56 Even without leaving the gardens of Lunuganga Estate the effects of colonisation and intercultural tension are apparent. Texts on the architect Geoffrey Bawa, such as Bawa: The Sri Lanka

Gardens and Geoffrey Bawa emphasise Bawa’s experiences growing up in Sri Lanka whilst being educated at Cambridge in England and travelling through Europe.57

52 Raffel, 1999, p. 4. 53 Raffel, 1999, p. 4. Fiona Hall was a central figure in forming workshops for local artists at Lunuganga Estate. 54 David Robson and Dominic Sansoni, Bawa: The Sri Lanka Gardens, London: Thames & Hudson, 2008, p. 173. 55 A Transit Through Paradise, 1999, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 1999. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/arts/exhibitions-and-projects/past- exhibitions/exhibitions/a-transit-through-paradise. 56 Ewington, 2005, p. 155. 57 Brian B. Taylor, Geoffrey Bawa, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995, pp. 9-18; Robson, 2008, p. 96. 20

These biographical facts are perceived as informing the stylisation of Lunuganga, in that it “combines memories of a thousand and one experiences”,58 and therefore fuses

European and Asian traditions in an ultimately unique fashion.59 Cultural geographer

James Duncan perceives Bawa’s cultivation of Lunuganga Estate as a metaphor for cultivating an ideology. Duncan makes a conceptual differentiation between the terms landscape and environment, stating that “a landscape . . . is a culturally produced model of how the environment should look.”60 Accordingly, as Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then called) had just become independent from British colonisation in 1948, in the same year work on Lunuganga began, Bawa’s fusion of Asian and European aesthetics represents a hybrid aesthetic. 61 It is widely understood that Bawa actively cultivated a hybrid-style at Lunuganga until 1998, when the last house was added to the estate.62

The year 1948 marked the first time since 1505 that Sri Lanka was free from colonial rule, having thrice undergone the trauma of colonisation. Sri Lanka sits at the crossroads of ancient trading routes between Europe and Asia. Its central location prompted the Portuguese to first colonise the nation in 1505, and in 1602 the Dutch colonised Sri Lanka also noting its great potential.63 The Dutch went on to trade Sri

58 Robson, 2008, p. 96. 59 Taylor, 1995, pp. 9-18; Robson, 2008, p. 96. 60 James Duncan and John Agnew (ed.), The power of place: bringing together geographical and sociological imaginations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 17. 61 Robson, 2008, p. 98. 62 Robson, 2008, p. 98. 63 Øivind Fuglerud, Life on the Outside, London: Pluto Press, 1999. Accessible: http://www.jstor.org.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/stable/j.ctt18dzs5h, pp. 12-3. 21

Lanka to Britain in 1976 for protection against the French who had taken over their homeland.64

Given the longstanding history of colonial rule in Sri Lanka, 1948 was widely considered an opportunity to herald in a process of de-colonisation.65 Postcolonial academic Homi K. Bhabha suggests that that experience of moving into a postcolonial era does not mean breaking from the past, but recognising what has been.66 Art critic and historian Geeta Kapur reiterates this point, by stating that nations who have undergone colonization, “should see our trajectories crisscrossing the western mainstream and in their very dis-alignment from it, make up the ground that restructures the international”,67 whereby nations recognise their relationship with the coloniser whilst simultaneously understanding their difference. Robin Jones perceives that these concepts characterise Geoffrey Bawa’s lived experience, seen in the hybrid aesthetics of Lunuganga Estate. 68 Although Lunuganga functioned as a distant retreat for Bawa himself, literature on the property dating back to 1986 emphasises the conceptual and historical significance of the gardens.69 Beyond being a haven,

Lunuganga Estates is noted by professor of architecture, David Robson as being renowned for defining a new era of ‘Modern’ and postcolonial architecture in Sri

Lanka.70 Lunugnaga Estate’s embodiment of colonial and postcolonial history meant

64 Fuglerud, 1999, pp. 14-5. 65 Jones, 2011, p. 10. 66 Homi K Bhabha in Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, London: Pluto Press, 1986, p. xxiii. 67 Geeta Kapur, When was modernism: essays on contemporary cultural practice in India, New Delhi: Tulika Press, p. 297. 68 Jones, 2011 p. 9. 69 Robson, 2008, pp. 97-9. 70 Robson, 2008, pp. 97-9. 22 that Hall’s residency was not a ‘distant retreat’ from the realities of Sri Lankan history and life, rather an intense confrontation with them.

However, Lunuganga did function as an escape in one sense. Beyond the bounds of

Lunuganga Estate, a civil war that had begun in 1987, and was still in full force when

Hall first arrived for her residency in 1999 and even after she completed it, as an immediate ceasefire was not called until February 2009.71 Over the course of Hall’s residency in Sri Lanka, she travelled extensively around the small island nation.72

Hall describes in an interview with writer, curator, and Hall’s biographer Julie

Ewington, how soldiers stood guard at frequent checkpoints whilst travelling across the country, and then upon arriving at any destination continued awareness of military presence was unavoidable, as the press relentlessly reported on military campaigns and suicide bombings.73 Over the course of Hall’s residency in Sri Lanka she witnessed a country where conflict and death were part of daily life.

Unresolvable violence overtook Sri Lanka for 25-years due to tensions between the dominant cultural groups. The Singhalese and the Tamils are both native to pre- colonial Ceylon, whilst the Burgher community is a distinct racial group within colonial Ceylon characterised as descendants of Dutch and local marriages.74 When

Sri Lanka gained independence in 1947 the United National Party (UNP) came to power. Although the UNP was intended to represent all cultural groups, it became

71 Fuglerud, 1999, pp. 19-22. 72 Ewington, 2005, pp. 155-8. 73 Ewington, 2005, pp. 155-8. 74 Fuglerud, 1999, p. 24. 23 clear that their policies only represented the interests of the English speaking elite.75

The lack of representation of Singhalese peoples within the party subsequently encouraged a movement towards Singhalese nationalism, which surmounted to the formation of the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) in 1956, which was quickly voted into power.76 Tensions between the Singhalese and the still unrepresented Tamils, became most apparent when the Tamils formed their own front know as the

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or the Tamil Tigers who, by the 1970s were demanding their own independent state.77 By 1987 the opposition of agendas between the Tamils and Singhalese was paramount and violent conflicts that had begun emerging in the early 1980s officially escalated into a civil war that claimed more that 100,000 lives.78

Art, Beauty and Violence

Fiona Hall responded to the violent, and militaristic aspects of her time in Sri Lanka with a significant sculptural work entitled Understorey, 1999-2004 (Fig. 2). Although the work was not exhibited in Sri Lanka its materialisation is indebted to the residency experience.79 Understorey visually marries beauty with violence to explicitly narrate the historical and contemporary realities of Sri Lanka. Individual bead sculptures are presented in a sleek glass and iron vitrine that presents vividly coloured and camouflaged patterned renderings of flowers and fruits such as a mango

75 Fuglerud, 1999, pp. 19-20. 76 Fuglerud, 1999, pp. 19-20. 77 Deborah Winslow and Michael D. Woost, Economy, Culture and Civil War in Sri Lanka, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004, p. 60. 78 Winslow et al., 2004, p. 68. 79 Ewington, 2005, p. 165 24 and hibiscus, alongside human body parts such as a kidney, a brain and a femur broken in two. Typical of Hall’s style, every material element of Understorey is intensely coded according to her observations whilst in Sri Lanka. Hall expressly noted that whilst travelling through Sri Lanka she noticed many varied camouflage patterns that signify military presence, particularly as she moved through checkpoints, or passed by bunkers and blockhouses.80 Julie Ewington astutely notes that in

Understorey, “camouflage marks even the innocent”,81 whereby fruits, flowers, and people are all brought into the same register in a comment on the universality of life and death.

Hall acknowledges that whilst she was in Sri Lanka she was directly exposed to the themes represented in Understorey, however she does not claim that the work is an outcome of a specific tragedy encountered in Sri Lanka.82 Concurrently curator

Kendrah Morgan uses careful language in her catalogue essay for a survey exhibition of Hall’s work in 2013, whereby she locates the meaning of Understorey within a wider postcolonial framework, rather than a specifically in Sri Lankan history.83

Morgan interprets the choice of the unusually vibrant colour palette for Hall, which includes salmon pink, orange, deep blood red and acidic green, as reflecting the intensity of the struggles over life and death in many contemporary postcolonial societies.84 Morgan’s analysis of Understorey aligns with Hall’s assertion that the work is an “an exuberant yet shocking account of the inter-relationships of life and

80 O’brien et al., 2008, p. 12. 81 Ewington, 2005, p. 165. 82 Fiona Hall in Ewington, 2005, p. 158 83 Morgan, 2013, p. 13. 84 Morgan, 2013, p. 20. 25 death.”85 Statements by the artist and curator resolve that the work is an index into considering how violence and the destruction of innocence prevail in many countries in the contemporary world.

Understorey as an autonomous artwork is arguably one of Hall’s most potent representations of the trauma of de-colonisation, cultural tension and contemporary violence.86 However, through considering the work of postcolonial theorists such as

Edward Said, Shirley Chew, Homi K. Bhabha, bell hooks, and Leela Ghandhi, Hall’s evasive and non-specific claims to the experiences that informed Understorey reinforce the colonial traditions it seeks to make the viewer wary of.87 Edward Said’s writing on the colonial space asserts that western imperialism was “an act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control.”88 Hall is quoted in her biography as perceiving this to be a reality in Sri Lanka; she states that “the contemporary reality of civil unrest and the displacement of people from traditional territories due to land clearance, urbanisation and the political after-effects of colonisation”,89 are inescapable. Professor of postcolonial literature Shirley Chew in elaborating on Said’s argument, asserts that in order for a newly independent nation to recover its identity and undergo de-colonisation, the priority must be to recover a sense of “local place whose concrete geographical identity must . . . be searched for and somehow

85 Fiona Hall quoted in Ewington, 2005, p. 163. 86 Ewington, 2005, p. 165. 87 Ewington, 2005, p. 165. 88 Edward Said, Nationalism, colonialism and literature, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1990, p. 77. 89 Fiona Hall quoted in Julie Ewington, 2005, p. 163. 26 restored.”90 Hall’s observations of local practices in Sri Lanka over the six years she worked on Understorey are embodied in its materiality. However, Chew, and postcolonial theorists such as bell hooks are critical of how effective the colonial

‘visitor’ can really be in restoring and articulating the experiences of the colonised. hooks states that the ‘visitor’ is fundamentally an exploiter:

I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you

in a new way. Tell it back to you in a way that it has become

mine, my own… I am still the colonizer the speaking subject

and you are now at the center of my talk.91 hooks’ critique of co-opting narratives that belong to the colonised emerges from her first hand experience of belonging to a culture marginalised through colonisation. hooks’ agency and argument informs my understanding of the real and raw implications of Hall representing the trauma of colonization.

In grappling with the painful and complex trauma of colonisation, Hall encounters what Leela Gandhi considers the dangers of simplification.92 Despite Hall’s critique of colonialism, Gandhi argues that the postcolonial lens is inherently subversive as it is ultimately a western-centric theory, and thus comes from a place of privilege.93

Homi K. Bhabha offers an alternative approach to Hall’s broad sweeping meditation on colonisation. Bhabha asserts that the appropriate distribution of agency can be enacted through actively working to put together “the dismembered past to make

90 Shirley Chew, ‘Strangers to ourselves: landscape, memory and identity’, Journal of Caribbean Literatures, vol. 5, no. 2, 2008, pp. 103-4. 91 bell hooks, ‘Marginality as a site of resistance’, Marcia Tucker (ed.) Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990, p. 143. 92 Gandhi, 1998, p. 23-41. 93 Gandhi, 1998, p. 23-41. 27 sense of the trauma of the present”,94 whereby the retelling of history does not deny the specific pains of the past. Instead, rigorous postcolonial practice should embrace the multiplicity and specificity of experience, rather than homogenizing the experience of colonisation under the singular theme of destruction.

Negating the Naiveté of the Novelty Experience

Whilst Understorey explicitly represents imagery of the violent impacts of de- colonisation in Sri Lanka, it is the two exhibitions held at Gallery 706 in Colombo respectively in 1999 and 2002 that played a more progressive role in demonstrating the generative capacity of cross-cultural engagement. A Transit through Paradise was the exhibition that underpinned the focus and outcome of Hall’s one-month residency at Lunuganga Estate. Although the residency proved to be ongoing, this exhibition was fundamental to Hall receiving ongoing support from Asialink and the Bawa

Trust.95 The central work of the exhibition is a suite of six embossed sardine tins that form the series entitled Paradisus Terrestris (Fig. 3). The suite is a subset of the original series, Paradisus Terrestris (Fig. 4), which Hall made between 1989 and

1990. This first series of Paradisus Terrestris is a suite of twenty-three sardine tins that draws specific focus upon the sexual organs of plants and humans to form an analogy of connection between culture and nature.96 Julie Ewington astutely points how Hall uses the dual naming devices of Latin and English terminologies to simultaneously honor and gently mock the studied detachment of botany.97 Hall’s

94 Bhabha, 1986, p. xxiii. 95 A Transit Through Paradise, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 1999. 96 Ewington, 2005, p. 101. 97 Ewington, 2005, p. 101. 28 sources of insight into rendering botany include scientific texts such as John

Parkinson’s florilegium of 1629,98 which inspired the title for the series. Hall’s research is wittily juxtaposed against more personal insights in order to animate the essentially common characteristic of ‘sex’ that underpins both plant and animal life.

This commonality is visually represented in the blatant imagery of genitalia intricately metamorphosing into imagery of plants. Curator Deborah Hart deduces that by outlining the common experience of flora and fauna, Hall is doubly commenting on the need to find a way to coexist sustainably as the destruction of nature will be the demise of man also.99

Another subset was made in 1996, however with the slightly altered title, Paradisus

Terrestris entitled (Fig. 5). ‘Entitled’ specifically denotes the concepts of ownership that Hall grapples with in this suite. Paradisus Terrestris entitled continues to offer visual imagery of plant life and sexual organs, however Hall introduces devices to specifically explore the subject of the oppression of Indigenous culture in Australia.

The subject matter was in response to the legitimisation of Native Title that was passed in 1993, which was a watershed moment in recognising the unique and longstanding relationship Indigenous peoples have with the land of Australia.100 In

Paradisus Terrestris entitled Hall introduces the an additional naming taxonomy that acknowledges Aboriginal, botanical, and common naming terminology that relates to the native Australian plants featured in the sculpture. Through these devices, Hall

98 Kate Davidson, Garden of Earthly Delights the work of Fiona Hall, A National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition, 2 March- 11 April 1994, exhibition flyer, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1994, p. 1. 99 Deborah Hart, ‘Fiona Hall’s Garden: fertile interactions’, Art and Australia vol. 36, 1998, p. 206. 100 Ewington, 2005, p. 23. 29 seeks to alert the viewer to the urgency of respecting the land and cultures of

Australia, she states:

This land and the plants that grow in it and the people whose

land it originally was, have together a very long history of

coexistence that must be acknowledged and respected.101

Hall is symbolically advocating the mobilisation of Indigenous representation and rights.

The reprise of six sardine tins that Hall made whilst in Sri Lanka in 1999 offers a modest commentary on the specificity and scope of the local environs. Considering the planned length, or rather brevity of the residency, Hall’s interest in always, “making meaning”102 runs the risk of causing Hall be over ambitious, which manifests in the over-simplification of ideas as seen in Understorey. Kobena Mercer asserts that the perceived “social responsibility of the artist”103 often manifests as “a burden of representation”,104 particularly when a social group or subject matter has not received visibility before. Mercer critiques that overly ambitious gestures are illegible and tokenistic rather than articulate and transformative. There was an articulated expectation stated by the Australian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, H.E. Kathy

Klugman that Hall was responsible for “making the first impression”,105 in the young cross-cultural relationship between Australia and Sri Lanka. Despite the brevity,

101 Fiona Hall quoted in Raffel, 1999, p.6. 102 Ewington, 2005, p. 23. 103 Kobena Mercer, ‘Black Art and the Burden of Representation’, Third Text: Third World Perspectives on Contemporary Art & Culture, vol. 4, no. 10, Spring 1990, p. 369 104 Mercer, 1990, p. 359. 105 Raffel, 1999, P. 1. 30 intensity and ambitiousness of the residency, Hall negates offering a tokenistic insight into Sri Lankan history and culture. Alternatively, Hall is reflexive in her lack of agency in the experience of colonisation, and seeks to reconcile with colonialisms exclusory tendencies. Hall achieves this by literally including the languages and therefore the representation of marginalised peoples in her overarching series

Paradisus Terrestris. In the Sri Lankan subset of Paradisus Terrestris, each sculpture is labeled according to the plant name in vernacular English, Linnean Latin, and Sri

Lankan names in both Tamil and Sinhala. Through breaking down the overall ‘end point’ of the sculptural series, as well as acknowledging the multiplicity of knowledge systems that can be applied to the material world, Paradisus Terrestris embodies a postcolonial approach. Homi K. Bhabha’s perceives that a postcolonial approach is maintained by debunking western-centric master narratives.106 Bhabha asserts that knowledge systems, including those of the West are inherently arbitrary, and thus irrational, and by reifying events as objects and knowledge systems as doctrines more people are excluded than accounted for.107 Hall also identifies with this sentiment, stating: “the multiple parallel systems of plant names seem to me to eloquently indicate widely different outlooks and levels of awareness”,108 and moreover uphold a postcolonial approach by identifying that no system is more ‘right’ than the other.

Sri Lankan-born Suhanya Raffel curated both of Hall’s exhibitions. Raffel comments in each exhibition catalogue that she intended to ground the exhibitions within the

106 Bhabha, 1986, p. xxiii. 107 Bhabha, 1986, p. xxiii. 108 Fiona Hall quoted in Raffel, 1999, p. 6. 31 context of Lunuganga Estate as it was central to Hall’s residency.109 For both exhibitions Raffel chose works that were an outcome, or were conceptually resonant with the time Hall spent on the Estate over the years. On face value, both the

Paradisus Terrestris suite of 1999 and Leaf Litter (Fig. 6) 2000-2003 visually convey renderings of the native Sri Lankan plants seen in Lunuganga Estate, however these works also enlist what Raffel considers “a host of historical readings and visual sources”,110 percieved by Hall. A Transit Through Paradise explored the idea that

Lunuganga Estate is a manifestation of a wider tension that exists between Sri Lanka being perceived as a tropical paradise whilst also being wrought with cultural conflict.

The exhibition featured five works, including the subset of Paradisus Terrestris 1999, as well as Fern Garden 1998 (Fig. 7), Medicine bundle for the non-born child 1993

(Fig. 8), The Real Thing 1998 (Fig. 9) and Divine Comedy 1988 (Fig. 10). Leaf Litter was the second and last exhibition in conjunction with Hall’s residency at Lunuganga

Estate. Interestingly the exhibition was just one work, which evidently gave the exhibition its title.111 Although Raffel employed different curatorial systems for these two exhibitions, both were considered successful in upholding Asialink’s mission to foster ongoing and reciprocal relationships. Moreover, they were both well revived amongst the local communities, as well as Asialink, and representatives from the

Bawa and Lunuganga Trust.112 Alessandra Marino explores the fraught practice of making art or exhibitions about or within a once colonised culture. Marino asserts that curatorship is a particularly fraught discipline, as “curators of arts bear an incredible onus, needing to carefully mediate between local understandings of any given piece

109 Raffel, 1999; Raffel 2002. 110 Raffel, 1999, p. 4 111 Raffel, 2002, p. 3. 112 A Transit Through Paradise, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 1999. 32 and global expectations mapped on to it”,113 which signals how thematic exhibitions risk being subversive and simplistic in the way they grapple with articulating experiences.

The thematic exhibition, A Transit Through Paradise negates subverting the experience of the colonized as Raffel is aware of local expectations, such as living in a ‘paradise lost’ which is a notion that colours Hall’s work. Raffel’s relationship with the Lunuganga Trust and Sri Lanka openly informs the direction of her curatorial frame. Raffel’s thematic focus on the fraught concept of maintaining paradise is a testament to Bawa’s dedication to cultivating his own paradise.114 Raffel makes the subjective and constructed notion of paradise her muse, and thus embraces Hall’s subjective gaze and position as an outsider to her own culture within the parameters of Hall’s work simply offering, like Bawa “a perspective.”115 Although none of the works other than Paradisus Terrestris are a specific reference to local or first hand experiences in Sri Lanka, the tight curatorial lens directed by Raffel positions the resonant notion of “how we [the viewer] might wish or choose to consume our various paradises.”116 This resounding concept functions to position the local or visiting viewer as the agent in their environment rather than imposing universal meaning.

Raffel’s decision to exhibit Leaf Litter as a stand-alone piece is a testament to the way

Hall has tactfully grappled with the experience of colonisation from the perspective of

113 Marino, 2014, p. 185. 114 Raffel, 1999, p. 4 115 Raffel, 1999, p. 4 116 Raffel, 1999, p. 4. 33 the coloniser. Created over the course of Hall’s time spent in Sri Lanka, Leaf Litter is comprised of two hundred banknotes from different countries that feature intricately and exactly proportional hand painted plants on their surface. As in Paradisus terrestris Hall continues to uphold a postcolonial approach by naming each banknote and its corresponding leaf in both Linnaean and local botanical classifications, as well as introducing the third vernacular of currency design.117 However, Leaf Litter is considered by Raffel to be a work in which Hall realises most fully the “serendipitous intersections of multiple codes.” 118 Raffel argues the potent legibility of Hall’s characteristic codification of material is in this work informed by heightened specificity, which can only emerge through genuine experiences and examples that function to substantiate a message.119 Julie Ewington offers insight into the specific marriages of each plant and banknote stating,

The once fabulously valuable nutmeg from ‘East India’

adorns a modern Indonesian note… whilst the notoriously

malodorous durian is pained over the face of the Sultan on an

old note from Brunei; a leaf from the magnificent fishtail

palm flutters again on brilliant Sri Lankan currency.120

Hall has researched and subsequently matched each banknote with a leaf to form a critical commentary on the past and present trajectories of trade and colonisation. The ambiguity of cultural boarders is reiterated in how the banknotes are arranged. Hall specifies that the work is hung alphabetically according to the Latin botanical names

117 Deborah Hart, New acquisitions 2003: Fiona Hall- Leaf Litter 2000-02, National Gallery of Australia, 2003. Accessible: http://nga.gov.au/NewAquisitions/2003/hall.htm. 118 Raffel, 2002, p. 5. 119 Raffel, 2002, p. 5. 120 Ewington, 2005, p. 171. 34 of the plant depicted on each banknote, which effectively brings together plants from widespread seemingly origins in order to demonstrate the diverse histories and associations of each plant.121 For example, the inclusion of many varieties of ficus, such as the Morton Bay fig, which is treasured throughout Sydney and Brisbane

(Ficus macrophylla), is also the same plant variety under which the Buddha found enlightenment, the sacred Indian Bo tree (Ficus religiosa).122 Raffel asserts in this work Hall demonstrates maturity and perspective whilst participating in local discourse on the abundance of hybridity.123

Examining the environments, histories and people that Hall encountered whilst undertaking a six-year residency in Sri Lanka contextualised the conditions and practices that enable Hall to uphold a postcolonial approach. My understanding of the success of Hall’s engagement with the complexities of colonisation was achieved through asserting her agency and responsibilities an artist. Subsequent discussion of

Hall’s two exhibitions associated to Lunuganga Estate demonstrates some of the successes that can prevail through cross-cultural engagement. Hall’s rigorous exploration into the multiplicities of cultural values cites that success is inextricable from mutually generative outcomes for Hall and the cultures in which she was immersed. For example this success is evident in Raffel’s decision to exhibit Leaf

Litter alone.124 The curatorial simplicity of the Leaf Litter exhibition enabled viewers to be complimentary, or critical of Hall’s work rather than of the curatorship. The focused exhibition space was deemed reciprocal and generative for the local

121 Ewington, 2005, p. 172. 122 Ewington, 2005, p. 172. 123 Raffel, 2002, p. 4. 124 Raffel, 2002, p. 4. 35 communities through fostering constructive and creative discourse between local and international voices.125

125 Annual Report 2015- 2016, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2016. 36

Chapter 2: Nomad Art Productions Artists Residency,

Djalkiri: We are standing on their names, Blue Mud Bay,

Australia

Habitus and Logic

The one-off artist-in-residency program Djalkiri: We are standing on their names was envisaged as a celebration of the diversity within in social systems and beliefs.

Knowing this intention, in October 2009 Fiona Hall undertook the artists-in-residence program, which involved camping in Blue Mud Bay in Arnhem Land, north Australia, a region she had never been to before.126 The concept of the residency emerged in response to the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species by

Charles Darwin in 1859. Charles Darwin demonstrated that all species of life have evolved from common ancestors. His evolutionary theory of natural selection forms the foundation of modern biology and an explanation for Western understandings of the diversity of life.127 Organiser of the residency Angus Cameron notes that whilst

Darwin’s theory is widely accepted, he also recognizes that the Yolngu people of

Blue Mud Bay have a different understanding of life and time.128

Cameron’s experience working through his self-founded organization Nomad Art

Productions through which the residency occurred, has granted him opportunities to work closely with Indigenous centres and communities, and subsequently perceive

126 Cameron et al., 2010, p. 8. 127 Cameron et al., 2010, p. 8. 128 Cameron et al., 2010, p. 5. 37 how Yolngu belief and knowledge is contained within songs, stories, ritual and art.129

Cameron’s capacity to observe and appreciate different systems of knowledge can be understood through Leela Gandhi’s notion of the impetus of postcolonial discourse.130

Gandhi recognizes that postcolonial discourse and practices should require us to examine the epistemological agency and value of those outside of the West.131

Growing awareness of the rich cultures of Indigenous Australian’s is seen in the body of literature that recognises Aboriginal societies as ancient and ongoing, specific and various, experiential and universal, structured and dynamic.132 These words and concepts have been extracted from academic texts that seek to intelligently grapple with the lore and histories of the Indigenous peoples of Australia. However, these words are English terms and thus Western-centric concepts that are being used to understand non-Western systems.133

The fraught project of understanding a culture that is not one’s own can be understood through Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. Although this concept is conceptualised by a 20th century French social theorist, Bourdieu’s elaborate theorisation offers insight into the complex relationships between individual, society and place that underpin civil systems. Bourdieu’s text offers a theoretical perspective on the development of kinship patterns, the social construction of domestic space, social

129 About Nomad Art Productions, Nomad Art, 1 August 2016. Accessible: http://www.nomadart.com.au/?page_id=28. 130 Gandhi, 1998, pp. 23-5. 131 Gandhi, 1998, pp. 23-5. 132 Sasha Grishin, Australian art: a history, Victoria: The Miegunyah Press, an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2015; McLean, 1998; Morphy et al., 2006. 133 Tom Anderson, ‘Toward a Cross-cultural Approach to Art Criticism, Studies in Art Education, vol. 36, no. 4, Summer 1995, pp. 198-209. 38 categories of perception and classification, and ritualised actions and exchanges.134

Moreover, Bourdieu’s text explains the diversity of social systems whilst also recognizing the prevalence of collective experience within history.135 Historian

Sanjay Subrahmanyan suggests that the debunking of master narratives does not mean that there are not collective experiences, but a departure from a Eurocentric history is necessary.136 Engaging with Bourdieu’s concept of habitus in conjunction with postcolonial theory, informs my interpretation of anthropological texts that explore the beliefs and systems of the Yolngu people, and the history of Blue Mud Bay. This theory demonstrates the complexity of genuinely experiencing a culture other than ones own. Through applying this theory to the context of Hall’s residency in Blue

Mud Bay, I determine the extent to which Hall’s engagement with the specific logics of Yolngu culture in her art is a form of cultural appropriation.

Djalkiri and Blue Mud Bay

The intention of Djalkiri: We are standing on their names was to facilitate a point of contrast, communication and collaboration between Yolngu and non-Indigenous peoples.137 This ambition was represented through structuring the residency as a print- focused camping residency in the community of Yilpara on the shores of Blue Mud

Bay. Nomad Art Productions is the organisation that conceptualised and facilitated

Djalkiri: We are standing on their names. Nomad Art Productions is private gallery in the Northern Territory that is run by husband and wife Angus and Rose Cameron. The

134 Peirre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, Sanford, California: Sanford University Press, 1990. 135 Bourdieu, 1990, pp. 9-11. 136 Sanjay Subrahmany in Gandhi, 1998, pp. 23-5. 137 Cameron et al., 2010, p. 5. 39

Camerons specifically invited Fiona Hall and each artist-in-residence to participate in the expedition. Djambawa Marawili, Marrirra Marawili, Liyawaday Wirrpanda,

Marrnyula Mununggurr and Mulkun Wirrpanda are all artists who were selected from the Yithuwa Madarrpa clan.138 The visiting artists included Hall, John Wolseley, Jörg

Schmeisser and Judy Watson.139 All of the artists were also accompanied by ethno- biologist Glenn Wightman, anthropologist Howard Morphy and photographer Peter

Eve, who were each invited for their respective expertise, and to contribute by offering advice and support, and to document the expedition.140 To help with work in the medium of print, all of the participating artists worked under the guidance of master printmaker Basil Hall on site during the ten-day residency, as well as post- residency at Hall’s printing studios, Basil Hall Editions in Darwin for as long as it took to complete their print.141 Each individual’s invitation to participate was informed by the specific vision of Nomad Art Productions. Nomad Art Productions is a gallery and business that seeks to foster art that involves cross-cultural collaborations amongst artists and between master practitioners.142 Angus Cameron asserts that the concept of this particular residency and the ensuing exhibition was to

“promote collaboration, reconciliation and understanding with an educational focus.”143 Through this attempt at a genuine exchange between non-Indigenous and

138 Cameron et al., 2010, p.1. 139 Rannersberger, 2010, p. 2. Judy Watson is an indigenous artist, however she is belongs to the people of Waanyi from the south of the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland. 140 Caroline Rannersberger, ‘Review: Djalkiri: We are standing on their names’, Artlink, vol.30, no.4, 2010, p. 84. 141 Cameron, 2010, p. 84. 142 About Nomad Art Productions, Nomad Art, 2016. 143 Cameron et al., 2010, p. 1 40

Indigenous artists it was predicted that original and insightful prints would be created as an outcome of the residency.

The decision to establish the artists residency program within the region of Blue Mud

Bay was a deliberate decision made by Nomad Art Productions. The region has been a site of violent and legal disputes due to the impact of colonisation.144 Journalist

Avani Dias asserts that most recently, Blue Mud Bay has been strongly associated to the Blue Mud Bay case.145 The Blue Mud Bay case was legal battle fought by Yolngu traditional owners in the Northern Territory with the ambition to control all entry by boat to coastal Aboriginal land and water known as the intertidal zone.146 The disputed land and water spans 600 kilometers along the coastline of Darwin, which is a region that has always belonged to Yolngu people.147 The battle was between the traditional custodians of the land and the Northern Territory government who was backed by the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory Seafood Council.148 The legal battle ended with a landmark victory in the High Court for Yolngu people on 30

144 Richard Ian Trudgen, Why Warriors Lie Down and Die: Towards an Understanding of Why the Aboriginal People of Arnhem Land Face the Greatest Crisis in Health and Education since European Contact: Djambatj Mala, Darwin: Aboriginal Resource & Development Services Inc., 2000, p. 6-10. 145 Avani Dias, Blue Mud Bay: What you need to know about Aboriginal people's hope to control intertidal zone, Melbourne: ABC News, June 1 2017. Accessible: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-01/what-you-need-to-know-about-blue-mud- bay-decision/8573420. 146 Dias, 2017. The case is still developing today, with the intention of the Yolngu people reclaiming and controlling more land under the same Act, the 1993 Native Title Act. 147 Dias, 2017. The intertidal zone is the area between the high-tide mark and the low- tide mark. 148 Sean Brennan, ‘Wet or Dry, It’s Aboriginal Land: The Blue Mud Bay Decision on the Intertidal Zone’, in Indigenous Law Bulletin, August/ September 2008, Vol.7, no.7, p. 8. 41

July 2008.149 The decision has remained to stand as one of the most significant affirmations of Indigenous legal rights in recent Australian history.150 The tension between Indigenous and non-Indigenous entitlement to Blue Mud Bay is acknowledged in the title of the residency, Djalkiri: We are standing on their names.

The term Djalkiri literally means foot or footprints, but when applied to Yolngu law it takes on a more profound meaning referring to the underlying “foundation of the world.”151 The phrase ‘”we are standing on their names” recognizes the legal battle and ongoing subjugation the Indigenous peoples in Blue Mud Bay have endured. The title offers a visceral image of what it can mean to stand and make a mark; to either stand oppressively or with the capacity to forge the foundations of a new path.

The Yolngu artists who took part in the project were all closely related to the community of Yilpara where Djalkiri: We are standing on their names was based.152

Together the Yolngu artists, in accordance with their cultural values saw their role as making the visiting artists welcome and showing them their ancestral footprint

(djalkiri).153 Over the course of the residency Hall engaged in the exchanging of ideas, stories and images within the remarkable natural environment. One expedition was a day trip to Yathikpa on the coast, the place of Bäru the land of the ancestral crocodile. It was here that fellow artist Djambawa Marawili talked about the importance of the place in the Blue Mud Bay Native Title Claim.154 Marawili recounted that it was the dance of Bäru, bringer of fire, and paintings of Bäru that

149 Brennan, 2008, p. 8. 150 Brennan, 2008, p. 8. 151 William Stubbs, Ancestral Figure, Darwin: Nomad Art, 2010, p. 1. 152 Morphy et al., 2010, p.4. 153 Marawili in Cameron et al., 2010, p. 7. 154 Hall in Cameron et al., 2010, p. 18. 42 were submitted to the court as evidence during the Blue Mud Bay case. Together these cultural expressions formed fundamental evidence of the Yolngu peoples’ unique relationship with the land, which constitutes Native Title under the Native Title Act

1993.155 The retelling of the expedition in the exhibition catalogue emphasises how upon returning from this excursion the artists expressly noticed the blue and white flags that stand in the sea just below the low water mark.156 The flags are symbolic of the saltwater country called Mungurru, and have been placed there since the High

Court finally determined the court case in favor of the Yolngu applicants.157 Exposure to the stories, histories and observations of the Yolngu artists were formative in what the visiting artists, began to see in the landscape.

Comparing Cultures

Whilst the other visiting artists developed their prior interests in the biodiversity, colonial history and materiality of within the new environment of Blue Mud Bay,

Hall’s educative experience focused on perceiving that land as experienced by the

Yolngu people. In a post residency essay published in the exhibition catalogue, Hall’s characteristic interest in the tension between nature and culture prevails as an admiration for the flux of Yolngu beliefs; she notes, “Yolngu culture is a fluid one,

155 Brennan, 2008, p. 6. “Native title is the legal recognition that some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have rights to, and interests in, certain land because of their traditional laws and customs. To have native title recognized under the Native Title Act 1993, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must prove that they have a continuous connection to the land in question, and that they have not done anything to break that connection (such as selling or leasing the land).” 156 Cameron et al., 2010, p. 10. 157 Brennan, 2008, p. 6. 43 with a deep knowledge of and respect for the source from which it flows.”158 Hall’s first encounter with Yolngu culture was seeing fellow resident artist Djambawa

Marawili sing a song of his country at an exhibition in Moscow.159 Hall’s developing interest and exposure to Yolngu culture sees her compare and contrast their beliefs with her own sense of time and place. She states:

For each of us, home is a place that is not only fixed on a map but

floats along the tributaries of our consciousness…the place I

come from is, I think, located somewhere on the ebb tide of the

world at large, a place in a culture in a continual state of flux

drifting without an anchor.160

Hall’s contemplation of Yolngu practices and perceptions does not deviate from her ongoing research into how different cultures form relationships with nature. However,

Hall begins to align her own principles with a culture that is not her own.

Hall relates the Yolngu experience of cultural flux to her own experience of flux.

Hall’s point of comparison emerges from her own sense of place being obstructed due to her itinerant lifestyle. In Bourdieu’s terms Hall’s experience of flux sees her being

“defined and redefined”,161 according to the particular condition in which she is producing her art. However, Bourdieu’s perceives that in order to achieve a common experience of culture, such as having a genuinely common experience of flux, habitus must be realized. Bourdieu’s conceptualization of habitus is specific, long and complex, however he does succinctly assert that habitus requires sustained “practice

158 Cameron et al., 2010, p. 18. 159 Hall in Mawawili, 2011, pp. 6-10. 160 Cameron et al., 2010, p. 18. 161 Bourdieu, 1990, p. 55. 44 and is always oriented towards practical functions”,162which are determined by social rather than individual processes. These practical functions are informed by environmental, psychological and spiritual demands that come produce deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions.163 Bourdieu’s research into the power of relations reveals how socially cognizant values are produced and reproduced. He deduces that although socially produced values generate cultural capital that can be transferred between social fields, socially cognizant values are not experienced the same unless they are produced through shared and sustained social exchanges.164 This process is fundamental to habitus. Whilst Hall’s conceptualisation of flux may resonate with how the Yolngu people experience social fluidity, upon considering the conditions necessary to produce habitus, notions such as flux are not generated and experienced in the same way.

The colonial history of Blue Mud Bay delineates that there are in fact fundamental differences between the past and present lived experiences of Indigenous and non-

Indigenous peoples of Australia.165 Whilst, independence and cultural rehabilitation is slowly occurring through a process of understanding, many perceive that the scar of

162 Bourdieu, 1990, p. 55. 163 Bourdieu, 1990, p. 170. 164 Bourdieu, 1990, p. 170-5. 165 For a thorough history on the events and impacts of colonization in the region of Arnhem Land, see Trudgen, 2000. Richard Trudgen’s fieldwork for this book involved working with the Yolngu clans of Arnhem Land, to recount the traumas of colonization. Trudgen identifies a colonial history that has induced four wars in the region spanning over fifty years from around 1885. The systemic oppression of Yolngu clans subsequently demonstrates differences between Indigenous and non- Indigenous social systems. These differences are explored by Trudgen to offer insight into how the lack of acceptance of Indigenous lores and knowledge in colonial Australia was instrumental in causing the ongoing and systemic oppression of Indigenous cultures in contemporary Australia. 45 colonization will forever mark the difference in equity and experience between the

Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples of Australia.166 Professor of Humanities,

Alison Ravenscroft poetically articulates this perception in an article entitled ‘Coming to Matter: the Grounds of Our Embodied Difference.’ Ravenscroft asserts that there are conditioned differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians that manifest in distinctions in spirituality, morality, perceptions of time, and understandings of death. Ravenscroft’s article opens with a visceral narrative of a young Arrernte boy inheriting knowledge by way of spoken word that goes onto mould the boy into a man. This process is juxtaposed against Western processes of circulating knowledge, which blatantly privileges written over spoken word.167

Ravenscroft argues that the dominance of colonial constructs within Australia posits

Indigenous Australian culture at high risk of being subsumed, as it is not recognised within a system that is obsessed with the archive.

Sydney-based Koori (Bandjalang) curator, writer and artist Djon Mundine OAM asserts in Art Monthly that there are definite limitations to engaging with a culture that is not your own. Mundine asserts that “every society has its own logic and its own form of expression”,168 which cannot and be embodied by anyone other than those who live through and within that cultural system wholeheartedly. Indeed, whilst

Mundine as a curator facilitates cross-cultural engagement, he perceives this as

166 Fiona Foley, “When the Circus Came to Town” Art Monthly, 2011 p. 5; Jim Barr, Cross-cultural dialogue panel discussion, Wellington: School of Design, Wellington Polytechnic, 1 June 1993; Mundine, 2012; Ted Egan, Justice All Their Own, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996. 167 Ravenscroft, 2012, pp. 31-44. 168 Mundine, 2012, p. 44. 46 possible through each being agents in their own role.169 Djalkiri: We are standing on their names is specifically articulated as being a “cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, creative exchange”,170 rather than an opportunity to explore cultural commonalities.

Hall is aware of cultural differences. She states in a post-residency essay: “their [the

Yolngu] idea of space must be vastly different to the way non-Indigenous artists see it.”171 Like Mundine, anthropologist William Stanner in his text Traditional

Aboriginal Society asserts that some Aboriginal concepts are not easily or even possible to conceive within the non-Indigenous mind. Stanner specifically focuses on the practice of Dreaming. Although Stanner seeks to grapple with the concept, he does openly assert the limits of his agency and insight, as he is a non-Indigenous person. Stanner conclusively argues that Dreaming is a not a general philosophy, nor is it comparable to any systems of the Western-world it is a self-referential Indigenous belief system.172 Given the specificity of culture, social systems and beliefs such as

Dreaming, Stanner, Ravenscroft and Mundine assert that one cannot completely simulate the logics of another culture.

Appreciation and Transformation

The residency Djalkiri: We are standing on their names facilitated the production of twenty-three prints created by all of the resident artists. Fiona Hall’s series entitled

Burning Bright, 2009-2011 includes six different prints; Brachychiton-Nanungguwa

(Fig. 11); Fan Palm-Dhalpi (Fig. 12); Cycads-Ngathu (Fig. 13); Casuarina-

169 Mundine, 2012, p. 44. 170 Cameron et al., 2010, p. 5. 171 Hall quoted in Cameron et al., 2010, p. 18. 172 Stanner, 1990, pp. 225-36. 47

Mawurraki (Fig. 14); Mangrove-Wälmu (Fig. 15); Pandanus-Gunga (Fig. 16). Hall’s subject of flux is typified in the etching Pandanus-Gungna, which is an exploration into what she perceives to be a common experience between herself and the Yolngu people.173 Hall’s visual representation of notions of flux and empirical equality is furthermore informed by how she felt “swept up by the way Indigenous artists organise the picture plane”,174 through colour, texture and repetition. Hall’s resonance with Yolngu conceptual and aesthetic principle can be seen in Pandanus-Gungna whereby Hall explores the relationship between man and culture. Hall explores the notion of flux and equity by “bringing very little things into focus, where the minute and large might exist equally side by side”,175 to emphasise the fluidity of all forms when examined through the lens of the life cycle and universal matter. This can be aesthetically seen in how Hall arranges identifiable imagery of plants, rocks, birds, insects, and motifs of the sun and moon so that they are harmoniously intertwined.

Although Hall’s elevated interest in existential ideas is informed by her cross-cultural experiences, they are not totally abstract from Hall’s wider practice.176 In a catalogue essay by Kate Davidson from 1994, which accompanied the travelling exhibition

Garden of Earthly Delights the work of Fiona Hall, A National Gallery of Australia

Travelling Exhibition, Hall’s practice is recognised for having consistently grappled with ideas relating to the sense of fluidity and cyclicality that underpins life on earth.177 Moreover, Hall’s art was geared towards her ongoing study of mans tenuous

173 Rannersberger, 2010, p. 84. 174 Hall quoted in Cameron et al., 2010, p. 18. 175 Ewington, 2005, p. 46. 176 Hart, 1998, p. 16. 177 Davidson, 1994. 48 relationship with nature.178 Pandanus-Gungna explores the ideas of cyclicality and tension exactly. These ideas are expressed within the intermingling of the foreground, background, textures and colours, which evokes a coherent atmosphere that invites the viewer into a world beyond the threshold of visibility. Inside the intricate folds of the wilting dried leaves of the pandanus the viewer experiences a world of tiny insects and arachnids weaving their threads across the spiral layers.179 The imagery is but one little window of the intricate microcosms that constitute the macrocosm of the world.

Hall is offering the viewer an entry point into grappling with this web of interconnectivity. Aesthetically and conceptually, the work offers a more meditative and hopeful image of man’s relationship with nature than the tone of lamentation that typically colours Hall’s work. In a review of a retrospective of Hall’s work at Heide

Museum of Modern Art in 2013, Robert Nelson wrote of Hall’s comprehensive practice, “In a field riddled with paradox’s Hall provokes critical thought as well as lamentation”,180 a statement that characterizes Hall’s typically critical perception of man’s destructive capacity. In relations to her time in Blue Mud Bay Hall notes that she “transcended another realm”,181 by representing the relationship between nature and culture as ubiquitous, rather than doomed.

Alternative to Mundine and Ravenscroft’s recognition of intrinsic cultural differences, as well as Bourdieu’s principles of habitus, anthropologists Howard Morphy and

Frances Morphy argue that Yolngu social logics and metaphors have synergies with

178 Davidson, 1994. 179 Rannersberger, 2010, p. 84. 180 Robert Nelson, ‘Funeral set for apt work on extinction’, The Age, Wednesday, April 24, 2013, p. 53. 181 Hall quoted in Cameron et al., 2010, p. 18. 49 western ecological, climatological and geographical models.182 Morphy and Morphy apply Barbara Bender’s notion of “the active presence of landscapes”,183 to their observations of how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous societies have an active engagement with landscapes and their contested nature.184 They argue that man’s relationship with nature is part of a process that makes human relationships stable at the centre.185 Morphy and Morphy offer insight into the social logic by which the

Yolngu people live. Yolngu social logics are often expressed through metaphors of the land and water. Morphy and Morphy state:

Through the rhetoric of sea ownership and the metaphoric

discourse in which relationships between different estate areas

are embedded, the land/seascape serves as an underlying

template for spiritual and social relationships which

simultaneously underlie, and emerge through, social action.186

In essence Yolngu logic has developed out of observing and experiencing the cyclical flow of water from the inland to the ocean and back. Djalkiri resident artist

Djambawa Marawili explains in Morphy and Morphy’s paper that Yolngu people know that, “the land always pulls us back” against man.187 The relationship between man and nature is what underpins the social systems of the Yolngu people. Bender,

Morphy and Morphy actually employ a common methodology to Bourdieu, as they each use the connections between place and people to form an argument. However,

182 Morphy, 2006, p. 68. 183 Barbara Bender (ed.), Landscape: Politics and Perspectives, Providence: Berg, 1995, p. 733-55. 184 Morphy, 2006, p. 68. 185 Morphy, 2006, p. 68. 186 Morphy, 2006, p. 67. 187 Morphy, 2006, p. 69. 50

Bender, Morphy and Morphy’s recognition of there being an inextricable relationship between man and environment suggests that a genuine cross-cultural connection can be experienced through immersion. Through considering the anthropological principle that man succumbs to the force of the landscape despite cultural practice, one can understand Hall’s appreciation of the fluidity and flux of life as an authentic manifestation of a cross-cultural encounter. However, this affinity belongs to a deep resonance with the forces present within the landscape of Blue Mud Bay.

A less contested aspect of Djalkiri: We are standing on their names is evaluating aspects of Hall’s experience that represented clear movements towards transforming understanding, appreciations and platforms for communication between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures. Indeed, the risk of this cross-cultural exchange being exploitative rather than reciprocal was overcome through privileging the voices of the

Yolngu people throughout the residency. Djambawa Marawili recognizes that this intention was fulfilled. He states:

We were learning together and having a good partnership.

Working together to lift the art from the country to make it really

strong. It was really important for us to be working at the

foundation. It was Djalkiri-puyŋu (people from the foundation,

footprint people) that made it really strong… and that is really

important to me.188

The significance of reciprocity is, as Marawili expresses the difference between cross- cultural exploitation and cross-cultural engagement. This difference is simultaneously

188 Marawili in Cameron et al., 2010, p. 7. 51 argued and demonstrated throughout the research of William Stanner and Howard

Morphy and Frances Morphy. Stanner specifically states:

I greatly hope that artists and men of letters who (it seems

increasingly) find inspiration in aboriginal Australia will use all

their gifts of empathy, but avoid banal projection and

subjectivism, if they seek to borrow the notion.189

Evidently, as expressed through the voices of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous agents of academia, it is through a specific focus and a reflexive tone that understanding and a genuine experience can be realised during a cultural-cultural residency.

There is a tension within Postcolonial theory as to whether it is constructive or reductive to strive towards a world that perceives commonality amongst all cultures and people.190 Bourdieu’s notion of habitus asserts that specific logic is inextricable from the field in which a community is practicing. 191 Alternatively, figures such as

Judith Ryan, Senior Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, asserts that Aboriginal art has the capacity to be read through the same objective lens that is used to appreciate non-Indigenous art.192 Fiona Hall’s art and experience that emerged out of Djalkiri: We are standing on their names embodied her interest in

189 Stanner, 1990, p. 230. 190Darren Jorgensen and Ian McLean (eds.) Indigenous Archives: The Making and Unmaking of Aboriginal Art. Crawley, W.A.: UWA Publishing, 2017; Egan, 1996; Fish, 1997; Foley, 2011; McLean, 1998. 191 Bourdieu, 1990, p. 33. 192 Judith Ryan, ‘The Raw and the Cooked: the Aesthetic Principle in Aboriginal Art’, Art Bulletin of Victoria, no. 36, 1995, pp. 34. Accessible: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/the-raw-and-the-cooked-the-aesthetic-principle-in- aboriginal-art/. 52 finding commonality between herself and the Yolngu people. However, Hall’s simplistic representation of Yolngu beliefs and logics within her art demonstrates that artists cannot genuinely simulate the complex logics of another culture, as integrity to specific concepts only emerge through lived experiences, and habitus. However, through exploring the specific educational processes of Djalkiri: We are standing on their names from both the perspective of the Yolngu artists as well as Hall herself, it is clear that the residency enabled Hall to gain genuine insight into complexities, hardships and social systems of the Yolngu people.

Historically Blue Mud Bay is an intense site for demonstrating the changes in the relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The Blue Mud Bay case not only received publicity for the case itself, but also for the way in which the public responded to the positive outcome for the Yolngu people. Sean Brennan in the article ‘Wet or Dry, It’s Aboriginal Land: The Blue Mud Bay Decision on the

Intertidal Zone’ asserts that in the past, a strong legal outcome for traditional owners, with an impact on industry and activity would have brought a torrent of negative responses.193 However, the outcome only elicited positive and relaxed responses, even from parties directly affected.194 If one is to look at the colonial tensions represented within the landscape of Blue Mud Bay, perhaps outcomes such as the Blue Mud Bay case, and the educational outcomes of Djalkiri: We are standing on their names offer a glimmer of hope in the returning of agency to the Indigenous people of Australia.

Artist and essayist Allen Kaprow in his book, Essays On The Blurring Of Art And Life explores the function of art within society. He states:

193 Brennan, 2008, p. 7. 194 Brennan, 2008, p. 7. 53

A picture can change our dreams; and a picture may in time

clarify our values. The power of the artist is precisely the

influence they wield over the fantasies of their public.195

Kaprow asserts that the role of the novelty experience (such as Djalkiri: We are standing on their names) is to offer hope.196 Thus perhaps Hall was just prematurely hopeful in her vision of complete cross-cultural congruence within Australia.

195 Allen Kaprow and Jeff Kelley, Essays On The Blurring Of Art And Life, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, p. 46. 196 Kaprow, 1993, p. 45. 54

Chapter 3: The Venice Biennale Collaboration with the

Tjanpi Desert Weavers

The Venice Biennale: Representing Australia

Since its inauguration in 1895, the Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia) has been a platform for bringing artists and works together that are otherwise unlikely to have formed a dialogue.197 Australia has participated in this ‘global conversation’ since 1954, and has since shown gradual developments in diversifying the artists and therefore voices selected to exhibit in the Australian pavilion. This is seen in a growing variety of artists working in with different media and subject matter, and who are female and/or who are from diverse backgrounds.198 However, one cannot ignore how little representation Indigenous Australian cultures have had over the course of the Australia Pavilion’s exhibition history. Up until this year with Tracey

Moffatt, Indigenous Australian’s have only ever been granted the opportunity to represent their own country in a group shows, which moreover has only totaled four out of twenty-two exhibitions to date.199 This number of group shows includes Fiona

Hall’s exhibition for the 56th Venice Biennale. Hall’s exhibition, Wrong Way Time featured a series of sculptures entitled Kuka Irititja (Animals from Another Time)

(Fig. 17) that were the outcome of collaborating with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers during an artists’ camp held in country near Pilakatilyuru in Western Australia. Hall is

197 Anthony Gardner and Charles Green, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2016, p. 34. 198 Australian Representation at the Venice Biennale Since 1954, Australia Council for the Arts, 2017. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/venice-biennale- timeline/. 199 Australian Representation at the Venice Biennale Since 1954, Australia Council for the Arts, 2017.

55 reflexively aware of how fortunate she is to have influence through the power of visibility, stating “you are fortunate to have a voice at all, as many clamor to have a voice”,200 and thus seeks to use her own acceptance and visibility within the public sphere to mobilize the representation of Indigenous Australian voices.201

Despite Hall’s evaluation of the value of visibility, art historical literature on the structure of the Venice Biennale202 signals the subversive agendas that come with such prominence. Critic Peter Schjeldahl explores the number of agendas operative at the Venice Biennale. Schjeldahl asserts that the specific balance between the predominantly political art and ‘crowd-control’ makes for a very particular aesthetic that undeniably informs the screening process of selecting artists, and hence explains the exclusion of many important artists.203 Like, Schjeldahl who explores the complexes of power and control that inform the construction of major art events,

Michael Foucault and Antoni Gramsci are seminal social theorists in analyzing how power is mobilized through the strict construction of norms. Although Foucault and

Gramsci each develop different theories on where power is located, they are united in their observations that power manifests unevenly within contemporary society.

Through surveying how Foucault and Gramsci perceive the production of power, their common recognition of power’s conditioning effect within public sphere can

200 Daniel Browning, Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 11 May 2015. Accessible: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/fiona-hall-at-the-venice- biennale/6456038. 201 Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 2015. 202 Carlos Basualdo, ‘The Unstable Institution’, Manifesta Journal, no. 2, Winter– Spring 2003–2004, pp. 50-61; Green, 2016; Peter Schjeldahl, ‘The global salon’, The New Yorker, New York, July 1 2002, p. 94. 203 Schjeldahl, 2002, p. 94. 56 accurately be applied to the collaboration between Fiona Hall and the Tjanpi Desert

Weavers. This sociological framework will inform my analysis of how the eleven

Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Roma Butler, Yangi Yangi Fox, Rene Kulitja, Niningka

Lewis, Yvonne Lewis, Molly Miller, Angkaliya Nelson, Mary Pan, Sandra Peterman,

Tjawina Roberts, Nyanu Watson who participated in the collaboration with Hall, managed to uphold their own creative and social agency within the context of the

Venice Biennale. This analysis is geared towards determining whether Hall’s inclusion of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers in her installation resembled exploitation or a genuine cross-cultural engagement with Indigenous art and culture in an international arena.

Through incorporating the work and artistic traditions of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers within her installation, Hall includes their art within the visual, political, economic and social lexicon of the Venice Biennale. Anthony Gardner and Charles Green assert that the range of agendas include the artists’ creative integrity, upholding national image, and responding to the annual theme.204 The theme for the 56th Venice Biennale was All the World’s Futures, chosen by curator, art critic, and writer Okwui

Enwezor.205 An additional element was also added to Hall’s list of responsibilities, as

2015 marked the inauguration of the permanent Australian pavilion designed by architects Denton Corker Marshall.206 Some reviews claim that Hall’s ‘belated’ selection to represent Australia at Venice was a strategic decision in accordance with this opening, as Hall is unanimously recognized as upholding a dynamic image of

204 Gardner et al., 2016, p. 34. 205 John McDonald, 56th Venice Biennale, Sydney Morning Herald, May 16 2015. Accessible: http://johnmcdonald.netau/2015/56th-venice-biennale-2015/. 206McDonald, 2015. 57

Australia’s cultural and environmental landscape that compliments the expectations of the Biennale.207 Hall’s installation Wrong Way Time was promoted and widely perceived as being consistent with ongoing themes seen throughout her forty-year practice.208 However, Hall stated in an interview that “a retrospective at the Biennale is just not going to cut it.”209 Therefore, whilst there were a number of previously shown works amongst the 350 on display, more than eighty-percent were new works.

Hall asserts that participating in the Venice Biennale is not a matter of consolidating her career, being over sixty-years of age and more that thirty-five-years working as an artist.210 She recognizes that the Venice Biennale is a site of new pressures, expectations and opportunities that arise when over half a million people visit the

Biennale each year, and in 2015 this included 287,690 people taking the time to see the Australian pavilion.211 Throughout Fiona Hall’s encounters with the press over the course of the Biennale, Hall acknowledges the responsibility of representing herself, a nation and the current global zeitgeist.212

In alignment with her wider practice Hall’s artworks in Wrong Way Time are mimetic in their form, and witty in their choice of material that together form a commentary on

207 Green et al. 2016, p. 23; Media Release Australian Pavilion, Australia Council for the Arts, 5 May 2015. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media- centre/media-releases/artist-fiona-hall-inaugurates-new-pavilion-of-australia-with- wrong-way-time-2/; McDonald, 2015. 208 Michael, 2015. 209 Rachel Hurst, ‘Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time’, Architecture Australia, July/ August 2015, pp. 28-31. 210 Hall in Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 2015. 211 Hurst, 2015, p. 29. 212 Fran Kelly, Fiona Hall, ABC Radio National, last modified 22 April 2016. Accessible: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/fiona- hall/7349516; Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 2015. 58 the degradation of the earth we all share and are responsible for.213 Many of the artworks featured in the exhibition are renderings of objects from the “mad, bad and sad”,214 world that she sees around her, which she subsequently makes her muse. The diversity of Hall’s ideas manifests with the range of objects presented in the exhibition that include found objects, sculpture, paintings, prints and photographs that come together with the effect of a wunderkammer-like installation.215 The impending presence of the objects is heighted by the claustrophobic effect of painting the originally white walls, charcoal black.216 The installation entitled Wrong Way Time

(Fig. 18), which lends itself to the title of the exhibition, is a series of clocks loosely painted in a graffiti-style with images and texts on the installation's interlinked themes.217 The installation is indicative of the ominous message of Hall’s entire pavilion. Curator Linda Michael comments on the atmosphere of the exhibition, writing “the resonant chimes of floor and mantle clocks offer a strange calm and certainty, but the cuckoos and caws unsettle as much as the images, evoking the sense that time is running out.” 218 This effect speaks to the wider function of Hall’s work, which is characterized by Michael as forming “one of many hoarse canaries in the mine”,219 that seeks to call the viewer to arms.

Despite Hall’s independent ability to create powerful commentaries on the world around her, Hall’s ambition to put forward an Australian narrative that would also

213 Michael, 2015, p. 28. 214 Michael, p, 2015, p. 27. 215 Michael, 2015, p. 27. 216 Michael, 2015, p. 27. 217 Michael, 2015, p. 33. 218 Michael, 2015, p. 33. 219 Michael, 2015, p. 27. 59 resonate with the world, led her to the “obvious decision” 220 to include the Tjanpi

Desert Weavers in the exhibition. Hall was eager to offer a space for Aboriginal presence and representation, Hall stated in an interview with Daniel Browning whilst at the Australian pavilion in Venice:

I not only thought that the Tjanpi Desert Weavers could be a very

rich part of my installation, but that there should be an Aboriginal

art representation at the opening of the new pavilion and so all of

that fell into place very serendipitously.221

Thus when the opportunity to collaborate with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers arose, Hall took the initiative to invite her collaborators to include their works in her installation at the Venice Biennale, which they duly accepted.222

The collaboration between the Tjanpi Desert Weavers and Hall explores the impacts of colonisation according to the experiences of the eleven participating Indigenous women and their corresponding communities. The exhibition catalogue has a number of interviews with individual Tjanpi artists both in English and in Pitjantjatjara that detail the narratives that informed the creation of the sculptures in Kuka Irititja

(Animals from Another Time). The interviews recount specific events such as the atomic testing in Maralinga in the 1950s, the introduction of non-native animals, as well as changes in climate, which have all impeded the community’s capacity to live in rural areas.223 As the animals become extinct, their food and material sources also

220 Fiona Hall, ABC Radio National, 2016; Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 2015; Michaels, 2015. 221 Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 2015. 222 Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 2015. 223 Michaels, 2015, p. 50. 60 diminish. The focus on this of subject devastation is in keeping with Hall’s ongoing advocacy against the forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities, as well as her ambition to change the stigma against the Aboriginal “lifestyle”, which was demonized by then Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.224 Tjanpi artist Mary Pan expresses that Hall’s conceptual direction enabled the artists to think, reflect and create within a certain framework, she states:

The bomb was responsible for a lot of deaths. Not many people in

Australia understand this. Yes, there have been bushfires too, and

yes, I know foxes and feral cats have wreaked untold havoc on

our animals, but today I want to focus on the damage that the

bomb has done.225

Hall’s suggestion to the Tjanpi Weavers to explore specific ideas and experiences of colonization enables the women to uphold their personal agency as a victim of colonisation. Hall tactfully negates imposing what Kobena Mercer characterises as the

“burden of representation”,226 whereby marginalised communities are often expected to represent the concerns of their whole community.227 This pressure emerges under the hierarchy of access to cultural capital; whereby cultures that have experienced limited opportunities and visibility have their experiences simplified and generalised in order to shed light on as many vast and diverse experiences as possible.228

224 Janelle Carrigan, ‘Australian Politics at the Venice Biennale’, The New York Times, May 6 2015. Accessible: https://nyti.ms/1FPhcyr. 225 Mary Pan quoted in Michaels, 2015, p. 50. 226 Mercer, 1990, p. 359. 227 Mercer, 1990, p. 359. 228 Mercer, 1990, pp. 61-78. 61

Whilst Hall enables the mobilisation of the specific experiences of Indigenous women from the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) lands, curator Carlos

Basualdo perceives the dual role of a biennials artist as overwhelmingly subordinate.

Basualdo perceives that biennales subject artists to the “appropriation and instrumentalization of the symbolic value of art”,229 whereby the agenda of the Venice

Biennale positions the work of Hall and the Tjanpi Desert Weavers as ultimately mediated by the image of the Australian nation. Gardner and Green who draw attention to the nationalist foundations of the Venice Biennale reiterate Basualdo’s point. Green and Gardner argue that the nationalist and neo-liberalist foundations of the Biennale have only solidified over time, which is observable in how artists are encouraged to reduce exhibitions to an easily identifiable trope in order to resonate with such a diverse audience.230 They ascertain, that despite clear neo-liberal tendencies, there in an illogical assumption that the Venice Biennale is an appropriate platform for art from all cultures, countries and religions.231 Postcolonial theorist

Denis Ekpo criticises exhibitions, events and institutions that systemically privilege

Eurocentric agendas and models of display. Ekpo agues Eurocentricity, which was forcefully introduced during nineteenth-century colonisation and mobilised during globalisation from the twentieth-century, continues within the contemporary art world in the form of exhibition aesthetics.232 Concurrently, Schjeldahl argues that biennials represent and reinforce neocolonial flows of international commerce, politics and power, that continue under the guise of spectacle and the sharing of culture, which is a

229 Basualdo, 2003-04, p. 54. 230 Green et al. 2016, p. 23. 231 Green et al., 2016, p. 4. 232 Ekpo, 2005, pp. 107-124. 62 power system he terms “festivalism.”233 The effects of “festivalism” and the dominance of western aesthetics at the Biennial is evident in how the names of the individual names of Tjanpi Desert Weavers were excluded from the wall texts of the installation.234 Schjeldahl characterizes “festivalism”, as making “an aesthetic of crowd control”,235 through fusing entertainment and “soft-core politics” 236 that sees the selection and presentation of art geared towards consumption rather than deliberation.237 In an interview with Daniel Browning on ABC Radio National, Hall comments that the curator “did not want long wall texts”, but repeatedly asserts that their names are “certainly included in the catalogue.”238 Hall sounds both uncomfortable and defensive when answering Browning’s specific question as to why their names are not included. Whether it is up to Hall or not, the exclusion of the

Tjanpi Desert Weavers names say a lot more about their perceived role in the collaboration than if they were there.

Protest through Participation: Having a Seat at the Table

The thinking and observations of Indigenous curator, writer and activist Djon

Mundine can perhaps explain this seemingly disrespectful exclusion. Mundine was the facilitator of the collaboration between Fiona Hall and the Tjanpi Desert Weavers.

Mundine conceptualised the project out of his ongoing support and work with each of

233 Schjeldahl, 2002, p. 94. 234 Br Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 2015. 235 Schjeldahl, 2002, p. 94. 236 Schjeldahl, 2002, p. 94. 237 Schjeldahl, 2002, p. 94. 238 Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 2015. 63 the artists involved.239 It was organised and commissioned on behalf of the 2014

TarraWarra Biennale, Whisper in My Mask that was curated by Natalie King and

Mundine.240 The collaboration was between Hall and eleven of the 400 female artists who make up the collective. Through experience working in the arts and rural

Indigenous communities, Mundine has come to the understanding that even without racial marginalisation, collaboration inherently involves accepting an imbalance of power and control. He states, “I don’t really believe in the normal idea of collaboration or that it can exist, that, in fact, one party is by nature in a dominant power position”,241 whereby he sees and acceptance of one’s role in a scenario as a logistical necessity rather than issue of race. His accepting tone of power relations is reminiscent of art critic Walter Grasskamp who asserts that the relationships within the network of the (dominant western) art world flow between colligiative and collaborative.242 Grasskamp recognises that everyone who chooses to participate, and thus have a chance at visibility has a role to play and everyone fundamentally relies on another to maintain some form of mobility, opportunity and relevance.243 He states that to think otherwise is “naïve.” 244 Mundine concurrently sees collaboration as an opportunity to create new and inspired works, as well as a fluid learning opportunity for all involved.245

239 King et al. 2014, p. 4. 240 Mundine, 2012, p. 37. 241 Mundine, 2012, p. 39. 242 Walter Grasskamp, ‘For Example, Documenta, or, How is Art History Produced?’, Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson and Sandy Nairne (eds.), Thinking About Exhibitions, London and New York City: Routledge, 1996, pp. 67-78. 243 Grasskamp, 1996, p. 67-8. 244 Grasskamp, 1996, p. 69. 245 King et al., 2014b, p. 359. 64

Mundine’s understanding that power is relational, albeit imbalanced resonates with the work of second-generation critical theorists Michael Foucault. Foucault establishes power as a mobile, relational phenomenon that is inextricable from regimes of truth, and thus freedom. Foucault writes, “power exists only when it is put into action, even if, of course it is integrated into a disparate field of possibilities brought to bear upon permanent structures”,246 denoting that power is what constitutes the body of the social. Foucault perceives that power manifests in even the most seemingly lowly individual, and it is the privileging of specialized knowledge that posits non-experts as ‘lowly’ and subordinate to the choices of the expert.247 For

Foucault, oppression through slavery for example, is not a power relation as there is no freedom. Thus a dominant system of knowledge may be mobilised, if there reason to resist this system, whereby “the point where truth of things correspond to a truthful discourse”, 248 meaning that so long as there is freedom there is the capacity for social transformation from the social body. For Foucault the subordinate and the expert, and the slave and the oppressor underpin the two images of the social.249 Within the context of a colonised Australia both images of the social have prevailed for

Indigenous cultures, having lived through violent oppression, and currently living through systemic subordination under a colonial government system.250 For Mundine, the current sociopolitical climate for indigenous communities sees change emerging through ‘class action’. Like Foucault, Mundine perceives ‘class action’ can be implemented through claiming an active presence in positions of power and

246 Michel Foucault, Colin Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980, p. 219. 247 Foucault, 1980, p. 212. 248 Foucault, 1980, p. 221. 249 Foucault, 1980, p. 219. 250 Brennan, 2008, pp. 6-9. 65 visibility.251 Therefore although the platform of the Venice Biennale is Eurocentric, the presence of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers has an impact as sparking ‘truthful discourse’ directly within systems they seek to transform.

Mundine’s choice of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers was informed by their common project of mobilizing Indigenous artists within colonial systems as a means of preserving culture. The Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s

Council established the Tjanpi Desert Weavers in 1995 to enable Indigenous women in remote central deserts to earn their own income from the ongoing tradition of fibre art.252 The NPY Women’s Council, which was formed in 1980 maintains and develops modes of supporting Indigenous women across twenty-five communities and native homelands spread over 350,000 square kilometres of lands in South

Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.253 Tjanpi, means locally harvested wild grasses in Pitjantjatjara, and thus features in the title of Tjanpi Desert

Weavers enterprise, which represents the 400 women who work within the medium of the grass to create woven art.254 Mundine regarded the collaboration between the

Weavers and Hall as an extension of the weavers’ tradition of making sculptural

251 Mundine, 2012, p. 19. 252 Jo Foster (ed.), Tjanpi Desert Weavers; Ilawanti Ungkutjuru Ken, Nyurpaya Kaika Burton, Rene Wanuny Kulitja, Naomi Kantjuriny, Yaritji Young, Tjunkaya Tapaya and Lewis Niningka, ‘Paarpakani: Take flight’, Cultural Studies Review, vol. 21, no.1, Mar 2015, pp. 149-174. Accessible: http://search.informit.com.au.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=2056003 35278710;res=IELHSS , p.150 253 Tjanpi Desert Weavers’ Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council Aboriginal Corporation, Accessible: https://www.npywc.org.au/tjanpi- desert-weavers/. 254 Watson, 2012, p. 11. 66 animals in local grasses and other materials.255 The process also involved the Tjanpi artists Roma Butler, Yangi Yangi Fox, Rene Kulitja, Niningka Lewis, Yvonne Lewis,

Molly Miller, Angkaliya Nelson, Mary Pan, Sandra Peterman, Tjawina Roberts,

Nyanu Watson teaching Hall their method of working with tjanpi (Fig. 19).256

The NPY Women’s Council reflexively recognizes the dominance of western value systems within Australian society and has subsequently extrapolated the unique skills of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers into a viable framework. Professor Marcia Langton is the NPY Women’s Council Co-ordinator. She writes in the forward to a substantial book that explores the history, intentions and outcomes of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers that the enterprise seeks to empower Indigenous women by gaining a better grasp on the market for their work.257 Antoni Gramsci perceives that fostering expert skills is a form of cultivating of power.258 Like Foucault’s conceptualisation that all men possess a latent power, Gramsci perceives that “all men are potentially intellectuals in the sense of having an intellect and using it, but not all are intellectuals by social function.”259 This statement underpins Gramsci’s conceptualisation that power is associated to the level of dependence or respect for intellectuals of social function.260

Langton asserts that the NPY Women’s Council is an accumulation of unique skills and thus power for it marks a point of mediation between authentic Tjanpi art and the

255 King et al., 2014b, p. 359. 256 Michael, 2015, p. 51. 257 Marcia Langton quoted in Watson, 2012, p. 9. 258 Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds. and trans.), Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antoni Gramsci, New York: International Publishers 1971, p. 9. 259 Hoare, 1971, p. 14. 260 Hoare, 1971, p. 14. 67 market. 261 Langton writes that the women “earn an income by producing beautifully handmade works that are nationally and internationally marketed, exhibited and acclaimed.”262 Although the Tjanpi Desert Weavers are working within a western market and value system, they are not rendered subordinate as the enterprise and its women claim their agency over their unique weaving skills.

Integrity and Collaboration

In order to address the question of how generative and genuine the process of cross- cultural exchange was for each of the artists this research focuses on the experiences of the artists. An artists’ camp was established near Pilakatilyuru (about thirty kilometres from the community of Wingellina in Western Australia), where the artists worked closely together for just over two weeks in June 2014.263 Hall’s willingness to

“take on” 264 another project on top of her already tight schedule in the year leading up to the Venice Biennale was once again spurred by her opportunistic nature. Moreover,

Hall perceived an exhibition with this kind of visibility as something that must incorporate a number of perspectives. Hall states in an interview with Radio National,

“it’s not only about expressing the world around you as you see it, expressing one voice, but also a way of reaching out to people.”265 In the exhibition catalogue

Niningka Lewis articulates that the cross-cultural encounter with Hall was that of a

261 Marcia Langton quoted in Watson, 2012, p. 9. 262 Marcia Langton quoted in Watson, 2012, p. 9. 263 Michaels, 2015, p. 18. 264 ‘Fiona Hall’, ABC Radio National, 2016. 265 ‘Fiona Hall’, ABC Radio National, 2016. 68 sharing space, and confirms that “we taught each other.”266 Although the catalogue is intended to honor Hall’s art and process, the generative function of the enterprises’ dynamic collaborations and projects is reiterated in a is a paper facilitated by Tjanpi

Desert Weavers Art and Culture projects manager, Jo Foster in conjunction with

Linda Rive who is the interpreter for the NPY Women’s Council. The text divulges the specific significances, functions and values of the enterprise from the perspective of those the enterprise effects.267 Featured in the text is Tjanpi artist Rene Kulitja, who was one of the twelve artists to collaborate with Hall. Kulitja comments on the dynamic function of the weaving practice in this text, she states, Wiru. Pukulpa palyantjaku, palya, which Rive translates, “As we are making them we are feeling really deeply connected to the stories. They make us feel better, and these are really special objects because of that.”268 Kulitja was also one of the Tjanpi weavers invited to travel with Hall to Venice, and to speak at the opening of Wrong Way Time. It was

Kulitja’s first time travelling to Venice, however her skills as an artist have led her to travel and collaborate a number of times before. Kulitja’s paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally, with one of her designs featuring on a

QANTAS plane.269 Given that Kulitja works incorporate Tjukurrpa, or ancient

Aboriginal lore the support, representation and mobilization of her practice is the preservation of sacred lores.270

266 Michael, 2015, p. 51. 267 Foster et al., 2015, p.150 268 Foster et al., 2015, p.163. 269 Foster et al., 2014, p. 172. 270 Carrigan, 2015. 69

The effect of the collaboration between Hall and the Tjanpi Desert Weavers is an extension the ongoing project of adopting, integrating and fostering the lifespan of

Indigenous culture and stories. Djon Mundine asserts the principles of the artistic process within Indigenous cultures, he stating:

Aboriginal art, historically, was about the coming together of a

number of related players to ‘collaborate’ across artforms and

genders and to allow a wide range of play and interpretation. It is

about bonding and reaffirming relationships… A kind of reciprocity

comes into play.271

A genuine recognition of Indigenous art principles did not appear to be honored through the structure of the Venice Biennale. Collaboration underpinned Kuka Irititja

(Animals from Another Time) although the exhibition model inherently privileges spectacle over specificity, which usurped the experience of ‘bonding’ that underpins the values of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers. This was most apparent in the exclusion of the weavers’ names in the wall texts throughout the exhibition. Contrary to the exhibition, the collaborative process of creative Kuka Irititja was hinged upon the experience of coming together, and sharing skills and stories which functioned to uphold the principle empowerment that the Tjanpi Desert Weavers is founded upon.

However, the art and exhibition alone was an underwhelming translation of this otherwise rich cross-cultural encounter. On the basis Hall’s collaborative experience with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers remains circumstantial and unprogressive in the moving tradition of cross-cultural collaborations between Indigenous and non-

Indigenous Australians forward.

271 Mundine, 2012, p. 19. 70

Conclusion

Order is a narrow path through dark thickets. It is surrounded on all sides by the furious energy of the natural world, which threatens the traveller with confusion. If this path is successfully negotiated, through knowledge and courage, clarity may be found.

-Julie Ewington, Fiona Hall, 2005, p. 53.

Fiona Hall’s practice and art focuses on the point where nature and humankind meet, which she explores in various contexts in Australia and abroad.272 Through action

Hall has developed an evocative artistic style, she states “If I sit in a chair and try concertedly to come up with a good idea, nothing very exciting will happen”,273 whilst experience has imbued her mind and art with clarity, she comments that “I have learned to trust my peripheral mind and to bring quick or fleeting perceptions more sharply into focus.”274 Through the Asialink-sponsored residency at Lunuganga

Estate at Colombo, Sri Lanka between 1999 and 2005; the artists-in-residence program entitled Djalkiri: We Are Standing on Their Names that took place in Blue

Mud Bay in 2009; and a collaboration with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers that was carried out during an artists’ camp Pilakatilyuru in Western Australia in 2014 Hall was granted opportunities to respond to contexts and cultures she had never engaged with before. Hall is self-aware that the variety of cross-cultural experiences she has undertaken has provided her with a diverse conceptual framework in which to make art.

272 Davidson, 1994, p. 1. 273 Hall quoted in Raffel, 1999, p. 11. 274 Hall quoted in Raffel, 1999, p. 11. 71

Despite the variety of influences that have coloured Hall’s practice, she has consistently dedicated herself to exploring the tension between nature and culture.275

This consistency informs the restaging of Hall’s exhibition Wrong Way Time for the

56th Venice Biennale at the National Gallery of Australian in Canberra in 2016. The significance of this restaging is that it involved positioning Wrong Way Time within the context of the artist’s biography. An editorial accompanying the exhibition states that Wrong Way Time “will be placed alongside a display that provides a broader historical framework”,276 which effectively demonstrates how Hall’s pavilion at the

Venice Biennial was in fact a culmination of her life experiences. This perspective was taken by a number of critics of Hall’s exhibition at the Venice Biennial, who perceived the Wunderkammer-like installation as closer to resembling a 30-year retrospective rather than a specific theme.277 In an almost reflexive effort to embrace

Hall’s exhibition for Venice as holistically inextricable from her life and experiences, works such as Divine Comedy Inferno, canto III: The Gates of Hell, 1988, Paradisus terrestris 1989-90, Leaf Litter 1999-2003 and Burning Bright 2009-2011278 were in dialogue with the works in Wrong Way Time.

The restaging of Wrong Way Time at the National Gallery of Australia was an accentuation of Hall’s biography and methodology, which is a clear shift from the thematic emphasis of the exhibition in Venice. Through positioning Wrong Way Time in Hall’s wider biography, the works function as indexes not only universal themes,

275 Ewington, 2005, p. 23. 276 ‘Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time’, Artonview, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, vol. 85, Autumn, 2016, pp. 36-43. 277 McDonald, 2015. 278 National Gallery of Australia, 2016, p. 36. 72 but also highly specific and formative experiences that Hall has undertaken. The emphasis on biography amends some of the issues of the Venice Biennale. Pippa

Milne, one of the assistant curators of Wrong Way Time, revealed that due to Hall’s creative rigor, whereby she worked up until the opening of the exhibition, the time and decisiveness necessary for head curator, Linda Michael to construct a clear theme or narrative was sacrificed.279 Rather, Hall’s perseverance in interrogating “the unfinished project of humanity’s relationship with nature”,280 is what prevailed. This project of interrogation also underpinned the exhibition’s restaging at the National

Gallery of Australia. However, by accentuating biography and methodology the survey-like exhibition invites a necessary reflection upon the cross-cultural experiences that have shaped Hall’s art.281

Hall’s two exhibitions in Colombo curated by Suhanya Raffel, respectively in 1999 and 2005 were articulate and invigorating exhibitions on the specific postcolonial histories in Sri Lanka. Hall’s first exhibition was held after just one month at

Lunuganga Estate. By putting forward a modest number of six sculptures as a reprise of Paradisus Terrestsris, Hall acknowledges the experience of colonization in Sri

Lanka, and negates colonial tendencies of exclusion by including Sinhala and Tamil names within the titles of the work. Hall’s tactful engagement with Sri Lanka’s colonial history was recognized by Sri Lankan curator Suhanya Raffel, who in Hall’s final exhibition that was part of her residency at Lunuganga Estate, featured just the

279 Sophie Prince, Biennales, Triennales and Documentas Seminar Notes, Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2017, p. 20. 280 Ewington, 2005, p. 23. 281 Marino, 2014, p. 188. 73 single work Leaf Litter, in order to honor the complex and long history of colonization in Sri Lanka and abroad.282

The impact that people and places have on Hall’s art is apparent in the intricacy of her works. Moreover, Hall states in an interview leading up to her exhibition at the

Venice Biennale, that the art object is not the end goal, rather her art is fundamentally rooted in social practice.283 The conviction Hall’s sentiment is seen revealed through

Hall’s residency in Sri Lanka that developed over six years, as well as her ongoing relationships with the artists she worked with during residencies. For example, Hall wrote a catalogue essay for Djambawa Marawili284 having established a friendship over the course of Djalkiri: We Are Standing On Their Names.285 Whilst artworks such as Paradisus Terrestris entitled from 1999, and Kuka Irititja (Animals from

Another Time) exemplify Hall’s effort to negate novelty in her art through seeking to return agency and visibility where it is due.

Hall’s artworks are most successful when she employs a postcolonial approach286 of engaging with local issues, rather than broad sweeping notions of multiculturalism.287

Through being immersed in new environments, amid local community members, experts, and guided expeditions during the three cross-cultural residencies, Hall created rich commentaries on the world around her. However, in order for these

282 Raffel, 2002, p. 2. 283 Fiona Hall at the Venice Biennale, ABC Radio National: Books and Arts, 2015. 284 Hall in Mawawili, 2011, pp. 6-10. 285 Mathieson Trevitt, Djambawa Marawili, exh. cat., Syndey: Annandale Galleries, 2011, pp. 6-8. 286 Gandhi, 2013, pp. 412-5. 287 Fish, 1997, pp. 378-80. 74 experiences to be generative for both the visiting artist and colonised cultures, it is integral that the agency of the marginalised individuals and communities is consciously recognised throughout residency programs, exhibitions and ensuing discourse.

75

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Catalogues:

Cameron et al., 2010: Angus Cameron (ed.), Djalkiri: We are Standing on their Names, Blue Mud Bay, Northern Territory: Nomad Art Productions, 2010. Accessible: http://www.nomadart.com.au/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Djalkiri- Catalogue-4mb.pdf [Date Accessed: May 7 2017].

Hall, 1995: Fiona Hall, Subject to Change, Adelaide: Piper Press, 1995.

Johnson, 1996: Vivien Johnson, Copyrites: Aboriginal Arts in the Age of Mechanical Reproductive Technologies, exh. cat., Sydney: National Indigeneous Arts Advocacy Association, 1996.

King et al. 2014: Natalie King, Djon Mundine, Diane Bell, John von Sturmer, The TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper in My Mask, ex. cat., Tarrawarra Museum of Art Ltd, 2014.

Marawili, 2011: Djambawa Marawili exh. cat., Sydney: Annandale Galleries, 2011. Accessible: http://www.annandalegalleries.com.au/images/AnnGall_DJAMBAWA- LIYAWADAY_catalogue_2011.pdf [Date Accessed: 11 June 2017].

Michael, 2015: Linda Michael (ed.), Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time, exh. cat., New South Wales: Australia Council for the Arts and Piper Press, 2015.

Morgan 2013: Kendrah Morgan, Big Game Hunting, exh. cat., Melbourne: Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2013.

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O’Brien et al., 2008: Gregory O’Brien, Paula Savage, and Vivienne Webb, Fiona Hall: Force Field, exh. cat., Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008.

Raffel, 1999: Suhanya Raffel, A Transit Through Paradise: Sri Lanka 1999/ Fiona Hall, exh. cat., Melbourne: Asialink Centre, University of Melbourne, 1999.

Raffel, 2002: Suhanya Raffel, Leaf Litter: An Exhibition by Fiona Hall, exh. cat., Melbourne: Asialink, The University of Melbourne and The Lunuganga Trust, Colombo, 2002.

Smith et al., 1981: Dianne Smith and Chris Weitnauer, The Antipodean Suite: An exhibition of Photographs by Fiona Hall, exh. cat. Tasmania: Tasmanian School of Art University of Tasmania, 1981.

Trevitt, 2011: Mathieson Trevitt, Djambawa Marawili, exh. cat., Syndey: Annandale Galleries, 2011.

Ephemera:

Art Gallery of South Australia, 2002: ‘Aquistition: Fiona Hall, Cell Culture’, Art Gallery of South Australia, recent acquisitions pamphlet, October/ November 2002, p. 12.

Davidson, 1994: Kate Davidson, Garden of Earthly Delights the work of Fiona Hall, A National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition, 2 March- 11 April 1994, exhibition flyer, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1994.

Grishin, 2016: Sasha Grishin, ‘Confronting, Immersive Experience’, Melbourne: The Age Melbourne, 6 May 2016, p. 16.

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National Gallery of Australia, 2016: ‘Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time’, Artonview, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, vol. 85, Autumn, 2016, pp. 36-43.

National Gallery of Victoria, 1994: ‘Fiona Hall Exhibition to Open’, National Gallery of Victoria, exhibition flyer, 25 February 1994.

Nelson, 2013: Robert Nelson, ‘Funeral set for apt work on extinction’, The Age, Wednesday, April 24, 2013, pp.52- 53.

Thomson, 1989: Campbell Thomson, ‘Hall’s men are all damned’, Herald, 1 August 1989, p. 14.

Webology:

Annual Report 2004, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2004. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/2121650/2004-Annual- Report.pdf [Date Accessed: 2 May 2017].

Annual Report 2011- 2012, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2012. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/1968468/2011-2012- Annual-Report-jp.pdf [Date Accessed: 2 May 2017}.

Annual Report 2013- 2014, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2014. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1968478/2012- 2013Asialink-Annual-Report-IN.pdf [Date Accessed: 2 May 2017].

Annual Report 2015- 2016, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 2016. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/1968492/ASIALINK- ARTS-ANNUAL-REPORT-2015-16_English_Individual-pages.pdf [Date Accessed: 2 May 2017].

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Arts in Daily Life: Australian Participation in the Arts, Australia Council for the Arts, May 2014. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/research/fact-sheets-arts- enrich-our-l-5487de7320b24.pdf [Date Accessed 6 March, 2017].

Arts Nation: An Overview of Australian Arts, 2015 Edition, Australia Council for the Arts 2015, Sydney: Creative Commons. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/arts-nation-final-27-feb- 54f5f492882da.pdf [Date Accessed: 7 May 2017].

A Transit Through Paradise, 1999, Asialink the University of Melbourne, 1999. Accessible: http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/arts/exhibitions-and-projects/past- exhibitions/exhibitions/a-transit-through-paradise [Date Accessed: 2 May 2017].

Arts Nation: An Overview of Australian Arts, 2015 Edition, Australia Council for the Arts 2015. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/research/arts-nation-an- overview-of-australian-arts/ [Date Accessed: 13 March 2017].

Australian Representation at the Venice Biennale Since 1954, Australia Council for the Arts 2015. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/venice-biennale- timeline/ [Date Accessed: 6 August 2017].

Britton, 2004: Stephanie Britton, ‘Hybrid World’, Artlink, December 2004. Accessible: https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/2291/hybrid-world/ [Date Accessed: 22 March 2017].

Butterworth, 2017: Deanne Butterworth, Interview with Deanna Butterworth, Boyd Studio-1 Artist in Residence, Melbourne: Creative Spaces Blog, February 13, 2017. Accessible: http://www.creativespaces.net.au/blog/678/interview-with-deanne- butterworth-boyd-studio-1-artist-in-residence. [Date Accessed: 27 February, 2017].

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Carrigan, 2015: Janelle Carrigan, ‘Australian Politics at the Venice Biennale’, The New York Times, May 6 2015. Accessible: https://nyti.ms/1FPhcyr [Date Accessed: 2 June 2017].

Collection of Works, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Accessible: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/185.1989/ [Date Accessed: 11 October 2017]

Definition of Artist Residencies, Resartis, 2016. Accessible: http://www.resartis.org/en/residencies/about_residencies/definition_of_artist_residenc ies/ [Date Accessed: 5 April, 2017].

Dias, 2017: Avani Dias, Blue Mud Bay: What you need to know about Aboriginal people's hope to control intertidal zone, Melbourne: ABC News, June 1 2017. Accessible: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-01/what-you-need-to-know-about- blue-mud-bay-decision/8573420 [Date Accessed: 3 June 2017].

Exhibitions, Geoffrey Bawa Trust, 2017. Accessible: http://www.geoffreybawa.com/trust/programmes [Date Accessed: 11 June 2017]

Fact Sheet: The Longitudinal study of early career artists, Australia Council for the Arts, 2013. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/research/fact-sheet-the- career-developm-543255dbb3190.pdf [Date Accessed: 23 February, 2017].

Fact Sheet, Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council, 2015. Accessible: https://www.npywc.org.au/resources/fact-sheets/ [Date Accessed: 11 July 2017].

Fiona Hall Background Information for Media, Australia Council for the Arts, 2015. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/fiona-hall- background-55389102e3994.pdf [Date Accessed: 13 July 2017].

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Gundlach, 2015: Sarah Gundlach, ‘Q and A with Professor Charles Green, Artist and Art Scholar’, Pursuit an online website published by The University of Melbourne, 26 August 2015. Accessible: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/q-and-a-with- professor-charles-green-artist-and-art-scholar [Date Accessed: 23 May 2017].

Hart, 2003: Deborah Hart, New acquisitions 2003: Fiona Hall- Leaf Litter 2000-02, National Gallery of Australia, 2003. Accessible: http://nga.gov.au/NewAquisitions/2003/hall.htm [Date Accessed: 3 May 2017].

Lunuganga Residency, Geoffrey Bawa Trust, 2017. Accessible: http://www.geoffreybawa.com/trust/programmes [Date Accessed: 11 June 2017]

McDonald, 2015: John McDonald, ‘56th Venice Biennale’, Sydney Morning Herald, May 16 2015. Accessible: http://johnmcdonald.net.au/2015/56th-venice-biennale- 2015/ [Date Accessed: 2 June 2017].

Media Release Australian Pavilion, Australia Council for the Arts, 5 May 2015. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media-centre/media- releases/artist-fiona-hall-inaugurates-new-pavilion-of-australia-with-wrong-way-time- 2/ [Date Accessed: 12 May 2017].

Media Release: Djalkiri: We are standing on their names – Blue Mud Bay, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, 2013. Accessible: http://www.wagga.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/25823/Media-Release- Djalkiri-We-are-standing-on-their-names.pdf [Date Accessed: 2 June 2017].

About Nomad Art Productions, Nomad Art, 1 August 2016. Accessible: http://www.nomadart.com.au/?page_id=28 [Date Accessed: 7 August 2017].

Rizzo, 2015: Maria Rizzo, ‘Fiona Hall’s Wrong Way Time’, Arts Hub, 7 December 2015. Accessible: http://visual.artshub.com.au/news-article/reviews/visual- arts/maria-rizzo/fiona-halls-wrong-way-time-250072 [Date Accessed: 2 June 2017].

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Residency Research, Australia Council for the Arts, 2015. Accessible: http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/strategies-and-frameworks/residencies-research/ [Date Accessed: 6 March, 2017].

Ryan, 1995: Judith Ryan, ‘The Raw and the Cooked: the Aesthetic Principle in Aboriginal Art’, Art Bulletin of Victoria, no. 36, 1995, pp. 37-50. Accessible: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/the-raw-and-the-cooked-the-aesthetic-principle-in- aboriginal-art/ [Date Accessed: 3 June 2017].

Sienkiewicz-Nowaka et al. 2011: Ika Sienkiewicz-Nowaka and Agnieszka Sosnowska,. Re-tooling Residencies: A Closer Look at the Mobility of Art Professionals, Warsaw: Creative Commons, 2011. Accessible: http://www.re-tooling- residencies.org/media/upload/img/ReToolingResidencies_INT.pdf [Date Accessed: 29 February 2017].

Tetzlaff, 2017: Andrew Tetzlaff, ‘Listening for the unspoken’, Deans And Directors Of Creative Arts, 13 April 2017. Accessible: http://www.ddca.edu.au/nitro/articles/2017/4/13/listening-for-the-unspoken [Date Accessed: 3 May 2017].

Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council Aboriginal Corporation, 2016. Accessible: https://www.npywc.org.au/tjanpi- desert-weavers/ [Date Acccessed: 6 August 2017].

Watson, 2016: Bronwyn Watson, ‘Fiona Hall’s Leaf Litter questions advanced societies and environment’, The Australian, May 21 2016. Accessible: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/fiona-halls-leaf-litter-questions- advanced-societies-and-environment/news- story/2c928248259147ce8d3b4e43f9c5bcf0 [Date Accessed: 27 July 2017].

96

Xiao, 2016: An Xiao, ‘Surveying Arts in Residence’, Hyperallergic, April 3 2012. Accessible: https://hyperallergic.com/49397/surveying-arts-residencies-part-1/ [Date Accessed: 2 November, 2016].

Xiao, 2016b: An Xiao, ‘Surveying Arts in Residence’, Hyperallergic, April 4 2012. Accessible: https://hyperallergic.com/49400/surveying-arts-residencies-part-2/ [Date Accessed: 2 November, 2016].

Xiao, 2016c: An Xiao, Surveying Arts in Residence’, Hyperallergic, April 5 2012. Accessible: https://hyperallergic.com/49475/surveying-arts-residencies-part-3/ [Date Accessed: 2 November, 2016].

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List of Illustrations

Fig. 1

Fiona Hall, Comedy Inferno, canto III: The Gates of Hell, 1988

Polaroid photograph

61.0 x 51.8 cm sight; 87.0 x 76.0 cm frame

National Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Fig. 2

Fiona Hall, Understorey 1999- 2004

Glass beads, silver wire, rubber, boar’s teeth, vitrine

176 x 150 x 87 cm

Private collection, Sydney

Fig. 3

Fiona Hall, Subset of Paradisus Terrestris 1999 (installation shot)

6 cut and moulded sardine tins; aluminium, tin and steel

Each approx. 26 x 18 x 4 cm

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

98

Fig. 4

Fiona Hall, Paradisus Terrestris 1989-1990 (installation shot)

23 cut and moulded sardine tins; aluminium, tin and steel

Installation dimensions variable

24.5 x 11.0 x 1.5 cm (each)

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Fig. 5

Fiona Hall , Paradisus Terrestris entitled 1999 (installation shot)

Nine cut and moulded sardine tins; aluminium, tin and steel

26.2 × 716.0 × 5.0 cm (installation)

24.5 x 11.0 x 1.5 cm (each)

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Fig. 6

Fiona Hall, Leaf Litter 2000- 03 (installation shot)

Bank notes, gouache

Installation dimensions variable

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

99

Fig. 7

Fiona Hall Fern Garden 1998 (photograph from aerial view)

Dicksonia antarctica, river pebbles, concrete, wrought iron, water

Installations dimensions variable

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Fig. 8

Fiona Hall Medicine bundles for the non-born child 1993

Aluminium, rubber teats

Installations dimensions variable

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Fig. 9

Fiona Hall The Real Thing 1994

polaroid photographs

68 × 53cm (each), diptych

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

100

Fig. 10

Fiona Hall, Divine Comedy 1988

polaroid photograph

68 × 53cm

1 of a series of 12 images

Fig. 11

Fiona Hall, Brachychiton-Nanungguwa 2009-11

Etching

69 x 79 cm (sheet)

edition AP II

Fig. 12

Fiona Hall Fan Palm-Dhalpi 2009- 11

Etching

69 x 79 cm (sheet)

edition AP II

101

Fig. 13

Fiona Hall Cycads-Ngathu 2009-2011

Etching

69 x 79 cm (sheet)

edition AP II

Fig. 14

Fiona Hall Casuarina-Mawurraki 2009-2011

Etching

69 x 79 cm (sheet)

edition AP II

Fig. 15

Fiona Hall Mangrove-Wälmu 2009-2011

Etching

69 x 79 cm (sheet)

edition AP II

102

Fig. 16

Fiona Hall Pandanus-Gunga 2009-2011

Etching

69 x 79 cm (sheet)

edition AP II

Fig. 17

Fiona Hall, Roma Butler, Yangi Yangi Fox, Rene Kulitja, Niningka Lewis, Yvonne

Lewis, Molly Miller, Angkaliya Nelson, Mary Pan, Sandra Peterman, Tjawina

Roberts, Nyanu Watson, Kuka Iritja (Animals from Another Time) 2014

(installation shot)

Installation of sculptures made from Tjanpi grasses (wild-harvested grasses including

minarri grass), synthetic polymer yarn, wool, raffia, wire, camouflage military garment fabric, cotton and linen thread, buttons, ininti seeds, bamboo, emu and bush

turkey feathers, buttons and camel teeth, on billy cans and burnt volumes of the

British Museum's General Catalogue of Printed Books: Ten-year Supplement, 1956–

1965

Installations dimensions variable

Australian Pavillion, Venice Biennale, 2015

Image credit Christian Corte courtesy of the Artist and Roslyn Oxley9, Sydney

103

Fig. 18

Fiona Hall, Wrong Way Time 2012 -2015 (installation shot)

Installation of longcase clocks, cuckoo clocks, mantle clocks, a banjo clock, and crow recordings; enamel and oil on clocks, wooden walking stick, model aeroplane, alarm clock set into volumes of British Museum's General Catalogue of Printed books: Ten-

year Supplement, 1956–1965

longcase clocks, ranging from approx. 137 x 31 x 18 cm to 220 x 40 x 23 cm; 18

cuckoo clocks, ranging from approx. 30 x 24 x 15 cm to 74 x 36 x 19 cm, not including chimes; 12 mantle clocks, ranging from 22 x 32 x 13 cm to 57 x 36.5 x 13

cm; 1 banjo clock, 104 x 32 x 11 cm

Installations dimensions variable

Australian Pavillion, Venice Biennale, 2015

Image credit Christian Corte courtesy of the Artist and Roslyn Oxley9, Sydney

Fig. 19

Fiona Hall and Tjanpi Desert Weavers with their work at the end of the camp near

Pilakatilyuru, Western Australia, June, 2014.

Back Row from left: Fiona Hall, Mary Pan, Nyanu Watson, Angkaliya Nelson

Front row from left, Nininka Lewis, Yangi Rox, Roma Bulter, Molly Miller, Rene

Kulitja

Photograph: Joanna Foster

Tjanpi Desert Weavers, NPY Women’s Council

104

Illustrations

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

105

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

106

Fig. 7

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

107

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

Fig. 12

108

Fig. 13

Fig. 14

Fig. 15

109

Fig. 16

Fig. 17

110

Fig. 18

Fig. 19

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