DRAWING THE LINE BETWEEN NATIVE AND STRANGER Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of New South Wales for the degree of Master of Fine Arts by Research by Fiona Melanay MacDonald March 2010 ABSTRACT Drawing the Line between Native and Stranger Fiona MacDonald The Research Project Drawing the Line between Native and Stranger explores the repercussions of the foundational meeting at Botany Bay through a culture of protest and opposition. The project took form as sets of print works presented in an exhibition and thus the work contributes to the ongoing body of Art produced about the ways that this foundational meeting has shaped our culture. The Research Project is set out in three broad overlapping categories: Natives and Strangers indicated in the artwork by the use of Sydney Language and specific historic texts; Environment; the cultural clash over land use, and Continuing Contest — the cycle of exploitation and loss. These categories are also integrated within a Legend that details historical material that was used in the development of the key compositional elements of the print folio. The relationship between Native and Stranger resonates in the work of many Australian artists. To create a sense of the scope, range and depth of the dialogue between Native and Stranger, artists whose heritage informs their work were discussed to throw some light from their particular points of view. In conclusion, a document and suite of print-based work traces the interaction and transformation of both Native and Stranger despite a relationship based on antagonism and ambivalence. ii CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 .................................................................................................6 SETTING THE SCENE.............................................................................6 CHAPTER 2 ...............................................................................................26 THE WORK OF OTHER PLAYERS .....................................................26 William Henry Fernyhough.................................................................29 Tracey Moffatt......................................................................................30 Mulkun Wirrpanda...............................................................................31 Bea Maddock........................................................................................33 Guan Wei..............................................................................................34 Juan Davila ..........................................................................................35 CHAPTER 3 ...............................................................................................37 DRAWING THREADS: THEMES ........................................................37 Native and Stranger .............................................................................37 Land and Environment ........................................................................39 Continuing Contest ..............................................................................40 CHAPTER 4 ...............................................................................................45 THE ARTWORK LEGEND: NATIVE AND STRANGER ..................45 Along the coastline from bay to bay....................................................45 Casting shadows ..................................................................................47 Legend: images and words..................................................................47 CHAPTER 5 ...............................................................................................62 CONCLUSION........................................................................................62 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................65 APPENDIX ............................................................................................... 73 iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Order Page 1. Millennium Tympanum, 2000 7 2. Public/Private, 2006 8 3. Drawing a line between Native and Stranger, No.’s 1 and 2, 2010 12 4. Mob, No. 18, 1993 13 5. Gauguin Suite No. 7, 1990 16 6. M o S, No. 1B (Colbee and nine Governors), 1994 19 7. Sea of Hands, Canberra 1997 22 8. Face to face (Treaty Now), No.’s 5, 9, 13, 2000 23 9. Fall Wall, 2005 27 10. W. H. Fernyhough, Ombres Fantastiques, No.1, 1836 28 11. Tracey Moffatt, Nice Coloured Girls, 1987 (film still) 29 12. Mulkun Wirrpanda, Yalata (3598O), 2009 30 13. Bea Maddock, Terra Spiritus...with a darker shade of pale, 1998 32 14. Guan Wei, Echo, 2005 33 15. Juan Davila, A Panorama of Melbourne, 2008 (detail) 34 16. Drawing the Line, No. 4, 2010 46 17. Drawing the Line, No. 8, 2010 50 18. Drawing a line between Native and Stranger, No.’s 3, 4, 2010 64 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to the individuals who gave their approval to the Millennium Tympanum project: Moira Cann, George Cann jnr and John Cann; Marcia Ella, Gary Ella, Mark Ella and Glen Ella; Laddie Timbery and Jeff Timbery: Eleanor Williams-Gilbert: Doreen Unicomb. Acknowledgment is made of the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council and Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council. Metropolitan is the custodian of Sydney Language and the Kevin Gilbert Trust. Valuable advice and assistance were received over the long gestation period of this project from the following community members, curators and cultural and education officers. Nerida Campbell, Judy Duke, Ken Foster, Barbara Keely-Sims, Jim Kohen, John Lennis, Allen Madden, Irene Munroe, Hettie Perkins, Herb Sims, Stephen Thompson, Ken Watson, Ellen Waugh, Joseph Waugh, Keith Vincent Smith and Eric Riddle. Research was made possible by Botany Council Local History Archive, George Hanna Memorial Museum, Randwick District Historical Society, Rockdale City Library Local History Collection, La Perouse Museum, National Parks and Wildlife Service, Cadigal Garden Project Royal Botanic Gardens, Mitchell and Dixon Libraries State Library of NSW, National Library of Australia and State Archives Office. Special personal thanks to art curator and friend Jo Holder for her support, encouragement and wise counsel throughout. My thanks also go to Michael Kempson for his sympathetic and astute supervision of this research project. Thanks to Richard Crampton, Coordinator Digital Print & Copy College of Fine Art UNSW for technical support and production. Thanks especially to my family for their patience and forbearance from the start. v Chapter 1 SETTING THE SCENE The project and print artwork Drawing the Line between Native and Stranger explores the legacy of Botany Bay as white Australia’s foundational site. In April 1770, two vastly different civilisations met in a large estuary originally called Kamay (Gamay) when a sailing ship pulled up alongside people fishing from canoes. Official Australian history began on the thin stretch of sand they called Kundull. The site wears the consequences of this extraordinary encounter and the ensuing contest for justice, ownership and management. Drawing the Line between Native and Stranger (2010) revisits this fraught archival space first charted in a public art project at Sydney International Airport for the Sydney Olympics. Re-making the earlier large-scale installation as an archival work on paper is a reminder that public art projects themselves do not guarantee monumentality or even permanence. Millennium Tympanum (2000) comprised laser cut anodised aluminium silhouettes and words in English and Eora (Sydney Language) installed along the bulkhead of the terminal’s Departures Pier B, a length of 26 metres, and two ground level interpretation stations. In this case, Sydney Airports Corporation sold the airport soon after the Olympics to Macquarie Bank and most art commissions were removed to allow for a more commercial use of public space. 6 Millennium Tympanum, 2000 Installation view Sydney International Airport Today public art commissions are as vulnerable and ephemeral as any archival document or for that matter landscape. My work Public Private (2007), comprising eight paper shopping bags made from aerial photographs over painted with stencilled text, shows the radically altered shapes of the bay and harbour over several decades. The re-shaping is ceaseless. Dredges work day and night to deepen the Bay and expand Port Botany. Bland concrete and glass towers crowd out Sydney’s former lively working harbour: the latest is the state’s massive privatisation and development at the former Hungry Mile wharves renamed, without irony, Barangaroo after Bennelong’s wife (who died in 1791). As Sydney Opera House is at Bennelong Point, the aim is to dignify a blatantly capitalist precinct. Here re-naming also obliterates maritime working class history and enhances property values with the phonetic strangeness of an indigenous name.1 1 Historian of Eora culture and language, Keith Vincent Smith notes Bennelong and Barangaroo are from the north side of the harbour. Ace Bourke and Smith curated the exhibition Eora: Mapping Aboriginal Sydney 1770 – 1850, Mitchell Galleries State Library of NSW in 2006. 7 Public/Private, 2006 Paper bags constructed from poster prints with acrylic text, 8 parts, each 55 x 37 cm Source images: RTA aerial photographs Botany Bay and glittering Sydney Harbour remain the most popular single signifiers of Australia to the world. The coastline linking the two harbours is the first sight of the New World for many new arrivals by sea or air. The print folio Drawing the