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Artworks The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives) Judy Watson. and education in their native language. Throughout the witness tree, 2018 the subsequent crisis and Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, On the next visit I made rubbings of some of the Serbian language came to be perceived as the language trees and ground on the memorial site using charcoal of the oppressor. Today it is largely abandoned by the and earth from the site. There is an indelible memory majority Albanian population. within this place which I wanted to convey within the The community's fraught relationship towards its works on canvas and back in my studio in Brisbane. recent history and the violence of language, resonates I overlaid these ground pieces with the maps of the with the wider questions of trauma, memory, identity, perpetrators journey to Myall Creek and the journey of breakdown, and loss. Sgt Denny Day to bring them to justice. Counter to common opinion, it is much easier to I took lengths of muslin and wound them around face the prospect of one’s own death than to imagine several of the trees. It felt like covering a deep wound the death of the symbolic universe articulated in within the psyche of the trees, a reparative gesture on language. And this is precisely what Collins’ film is my part. about – the irreducible corporeality and, consequently, Then Greg attached microphones to the trees, the finitude of language. If the viewers believe there listening to the sounds deep within them. is a message for them here it could be only a brutal It felt like covering a deep wound within the psyche one: not only your body but your language too will dry of the trees, a reparative gesture on my part to ashes and blow away. In other words: abandon your On the next visit I made rubbings of some of the hope of surviving in language, it doesn’t assure you any trees and ground on the memorial site using charcoal transcendence; forget memory too, it is as fragile – and and earth from the site. There is an indelible memory as mortal – as the body. within this place which I wanted to convey within the — Boris Buden, ‘Is There Anything Else… Apart From works on canvas and back in my studio in Brisbane. Bodies And Languages?’, 2011 I overlaid these ground pieces with the maps of the perpetrators journey to Myall Creek and the journey of Judy Watson bomb drawings Sgt Denny Day to bring them to justice. I made six little bomb drawings in 1995 when I had a I took lengths of muslin and wound them around Moet et Chandon residency in France. They were among several of the trees. It felt like covering a deep wound the first works I made in Hautvilliers, in the Champagne within the psyche of the trees, a reparative gesture on region. my part At the time I was feeling appalled by France’s Then Greg attached microphones to the trees, decision to conduct nuclear tests in the Pacific. While listening to the sounds deep within them. these small bomb drawings only numbered six, France’s It felt like covering a deep wound within the psyche plan had been to conduct nine nuclear tests. I like to of the trees, a reparative gesture on my part pretend that I held them back from completing that From: http://thewitnesstree.com.au/ number by my visualisations of only six tests. My ink drawings are phallic, I think of them as small boys. Phil Collins I did make some other drawings of bombs on paper zašto ne govorim srpski (na srpskom), 2008 and also other works on canvas. The canvas works [why i don’t speak serbian (in serbian)] were: ‘pacific vessel’, ( referencing a canoe as seen from beneath the water with oars out, ( like a creature in Amidst the political turmoil in Kosovo at the time of defence mode) and that Pacifique means peace. its unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia, ‘the water boiled and turned white’ ( referencing a number of contributors, mainly Albanian — from the actual look of one of the tests at Muroroa Atoll. I politicians, intellectuals and public figures to ordinary saw a bit of coverage on television and what I read in people — recount in Serbo-Croat the reasons why they newspapers over there. ‘the confetti of empire’ this no longer speak the language. title came from a description by French politician During communism in Former Yugoslavia, Kosovo Giscard D’Estang who was talking about the outflung had bilingual administration, in Serbian and in Albanian. French territories in the Pacific. In 1989, after the overthrow of its constitutional I did a show some of my bomb works on paper in position as an autonomous province, many of the an exhibition at Boomerang Gallery in Boomstraat, rights which Albanians had previously exercised were Amsterdam in 1995. The exhibition was of work by abolished, amongst them the right to the official use Australian artists. The small bomb drawings are ink on paper. 3 Appalled was a mild description of how I felt about Kumanara Boogar the French nuclear tests. It was so much more. Kumanara Boogar made a number of works about Email from the artist. Maralinga prior to their death. Nina Sanadze Pam Dimmet Apotheosis is an iteration of 100 Years After and 30 Years On, an installation originally presented at Unbound Collective the 3rd Tbilisi Triennial, in Georgia. It is constructed Purple Flowers and Dust honours legacies of from the surviving studio archive of a prominent soviet un-ending relationality through histories of activism, monumental sculptor, Valentin Topuridze (1907-1980), resilience and protest, and the active reconnection and whose public sculptures were torn down in 1989 with repatriation of old stories lost, found and re-imagined. the fall of the Soviet regime. These stories shape and rupture our skin as Country, Displaced, disembodied, de-contextualised and through colonial archives and beating hearts. Our piled together like corpses, the sculptural archive bodies layered with landscape, records and memory – forms a different kind of monument, a memorial. The we wear it all to shine a light on anti-nuclear activism in unexpected interactions between individual sculptures South Australia and the ongoing relevance of the Irati create random, evocative and dramatic compositions. Wanti, Leave the Poisoncampaign led by the Kupa Piti Once monumental and victorious, they now appear Kungka Tjuta (senior Aboriginal women from Coober fragile and insignificant, alluding to the impermanence Pedy, South Australia) from the late 1990s to the early of every political era and ideology. The installation re- 2000s. materialises and re-examines an erased visual history, This is an old love story about radio-active dust its unorthodox and seemingly violent arrangement and ideas that refuses to settle, the refusal to accept prompting us to consider its ongoing sociological value. desecration through uranium mining, the transport of waste and uranium oxide concentrate through lands/ Rosemary Laing rivers/seas, and the ongoing struggle against a waste Earlier, I had met a former sailor who was on a naval dump on Aboriginal lands. We honour all First Nations boat with the first atomic bomb test at Monte Bello. and Pacific communities who fight to protect country He told me of his mates on the boat who'd watched the and black lives. blast from the deck and then died too young. He had This is our call and response responsibility to gone under deck and refused to watch. He wanted to protect Country and refuse the old fixed-imaginings talk about it. of State. We are indebted to the wisdom, strength In October 2013, I went to Emu to mark out the 60 and love of our ancestors and activists such as the years since the first tests on the Australian mainland. Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta. We sing, write and project our I needed to witness for myself how it had marked the fallout-stories against this larger epic backdrop to land. Around the Totems there was sluggy green glass our collective-collected lives, and we continue to talk globules where the desert sand had melted from the straight out. blast. The land hadn't recovered. At Totem 1, I worked with an antique British flag Jelena Talecki and installed it in-view of the brutalist monument. At I have always been attracted to pervasive, signpost Totem 2, I wrote a poem – written by Thomas Keneally in images embedded in collective memory and national 2011 for the 20th Anniversary of the Australian Republic identity. Yet, what interests me the most is the way Movement – on the degraded bottom part of the these shared images are similarly recognised as being nearby sign. uniquely ours- private even. Tito’s portrait was such To get to Emu, we drove through the Tallaringa an image: greeting now ex-Yugoslavs from the walls Conservation Park. There, in almost dreadful contrast, of classrooms, offices and homes, it was a part of our it was heart-breakingly beautiful. As we drove everyday lives. Civil war and the end of Yugoslavia through the Park – instead of the cockroach-survival- may have exorcised Tito from our walls, but the image like-vegetation around the Totems – we had been remained: against the red-brown background persists surrounded by flowers. The desert had bloomed from a proud face of a leader, looking forward. Apart from the rare occurrence of rain. There were no flowers being inseparable from notions of before and after; anywhere near the sites I photographed. utopia and dystopia, failure of unity, nationalism and suffering that is still unfolding on the territory of a Artworks The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives) country once known as Yugoslavia, this image also Corroborree each night.

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