Jason Wing Battleground
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Jason Wing Battleground 12 June – 11 July 2020 Artereal Gallery 747 Darling Street, Rozelle NSW Australia 2039 +61 (2) 9818 7473 [email protected] www.artereal.com.au This June, Artereal Gallery is Artereal Gallery is pleased to present Jason Wing's first solo exhibition with the gallery, showcasing important new works from his ongoing Captain James Crook series alongside a recent survey of both new and existing works from his Battleground series of shields. Described as “tough, necessarily blunt, yet often witty and lyrical, Jason Wing challenges dominant accounts of Australian history”1. Jason Wing is a Sydney based artist who strongly identifies with his Chinese and Aboriginal Biripi heritage. With works held in the collections of many of Australia’s major cultural institutions, his art protests the loss of the rich traditions and cultural identities of his layered dual heritage and challenges prevailing perspectives of Australian history and settlement. 1 https://visual.artshub.com.au/news-article/reviews/visual-arts/helen-wyatt/review-jason-wing-and-nicole-welch-glasshouse- regional-gallery-256707 BLACK LIVES MATTER! The plea and call to action is Captain James Cook when he sailed into Kamay (but named resonating worldwide. by Cook in his charts as Botany Bay), the home of the Eora and Gweagal people. It is at the heart of Jason Wing’s art. He challenges, protests and mourns Australia’s fraught colonising and indigenous It is a flawed colonial victor perspective perpetuated by histories and the continuing contemporary impact of lawmakers, many historians and school and university contested Country and the loss of the rich indigenous curricula that denies the sovereignty of Aboriginal and traditions and cultural identities of Aboriginal and Torres Torres Strait Islander peoples. Strait Islander peoples. Wing’s response is a succession of works created since Jason Wing’s mother is an Aboriginal woman of the Biripi 2012 around versions of busts of Captain James Cook to people in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales. His challenge audiences to rethink dual and alternate histories father is Chinese (Cantonese). The artist’s many layered to those that are embedded in the Australian psyche of Australian heritage and DNA powers and drives his potent Australia as terra nullius (meaning a land belonging to no installations and objects: one) and having been peacefully settled by European colonizers: “The common thread throughout my practice is the everyday battle which Aboriginal people fight living in this The artist emphatically asserts: “There are many politically colonial institutional framework. We fight for re-writing correct terms such as "colonised, peacefully settled, Aboriginal history that has been erased, destroyed, hidden occupied, discovered etc. The truth is that Australia was and lost. We fight for equal human rights. We fight for our stolen by armed robbery. History is often written and erased culture to be respected, valued and celebrated in a genuine by the victors, so I decided to challenge colonial history of way. We fight for equal rights socially, culturally, politically Australia from an Aboriginal perspective.” and economically”. Australia was stolen by armed robbery is a found fiberglass Battleground assembles a serried armory of symbolic battle- bust of Cook on which the artist placed a black balaclava. It shields-for-our-time. Ground-in glyphs of surveyors’ marks won the 2012 Parliament of New South Wales Aboriginal Art alongside other universal cultural symbols of Country and Prize and is held in the permanent collection of the New ownership applied in ochre pigments of white and red, scar, South Wales Parliament House. It attracted a furor of leach and bleed into harsh rusted Corten steel surfaces. controversy. Subsequent cast bronze versions by Wing of Such marks universally bode a change of occupier and of Cook, both masked and unmasked have followed. purpose, whether to the natural environment, to inhabitants, and inevitably their histories… Captain James Crook (black light), a screen-print edition The artist’s ritualistic shields are at once a call to arms created in 2019-2020 and coincides with the two-hundred- signaling both defense and attack. And a memorial. United and-fiftieth anniversary of Cook’s arrival in Australia. It in protesting the corrosive impact of invasive settlement, of depicts a barefaced bust of Cook. Supplied with the work is a law-making practices, of mining with its desecration of Black Light Torch, a device used by forensic scientists to sacred grounds and destruction of natural habitats, and analyse crime scenes. When shone on the work it reveals against the ingrained and systemic discriminatory attitudes Cook/Crook wearing a black balaclava - significantly the that alienate peoples, endanger culture and threaten disguise of choice for bandits. The clever visual pun serves Country. to ‘shine a light’, to ‘enlighten’ and importantly to confront and reconcile the divided issues surrounding our colonial Rio Tinto detonating explosives in the Juukan Gorge of past. Western Australia on 15 May 2020 destroying a significant site dating back 46,000 years for the Puutu Kunti Kurrama Artist and activist, Jason Wing is exhibited widely nationally and Pinikura people bears witness to the distressing and internationally. He has delivered a range of significant disregard and ongoing massacre by corporate giants of public art commissions and is represented in major Aboriginal heritage. Australian collections including the National Gallery of Australia and prestigious Australian and International public, Stenciled texts and portentous cut-out holes in selected of corporate and private collections. Wing’s shields ominously admonish and attest “... that once culture is cut out - it is so, so hard to put back.” Barbara Dowse At school in Sydney, Jason Wing, like so many generations of students, was taught that Australia was discovered by ‘When I attended high school I was taught that Australia was discovered by Captain James Cook. Since 1770, when Captain James Cook first sailed into Camay (Botany Bay), home of the Eora people and what is now commonly known as Sydney, Australia, this has been a popular narrative shared by our law-makers, school curriculum, media outlets and historians. This narrative is one that depicts Australia as, until recently, not only terra nullius (meaning a land belonging to no one) but also as having been peacefully settled by European colonisers. This oppressive and violent history continues to impact our communities today and is perpetuated by racist Government policies such as the Intervention; a policy which seeks to control and disempower people, predominately minority groups and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It seems ironic that the Intervention limits the rights of Indigenous people as though they were criminals, when it this very policy that breaks the international UN human rights convention. Fundamentally nothing has changed in since 1770. The violent and racist legacy left by Captain James Cook and his fellow colonisers is enmeshed in the fabric of contemporary Australian society . There are many politically correct terms such as "colonised, peacefully settled, occupied, discovered etc. The truth is that Australia was stolen by armed robbery. History is often written and erased by the victors, so I decided to challenge colonial history of Australia from an Aboriginal perspective and simply tell the truth. In 2012 I found a fibreglass bust of Captain Cook on Gumtree for $200. I placed a balaclava on Cook’s head and became the Winner of the 2012 Parliament of NSW Indigenous Art Prize. This artwork, known as Australia was stolen by armed robbery, is held in the permanent collection of NSW Parliament House. Winning this prize led to a media furore. The controversy that surrounded both the creation of this artwork and its conceptual underpinning, I was publicly attacked by media figures such as Steve Price, Andrew Bolt etc, which I wear as a badge of honour. I received death treats, trolling etc. Following on from this storm of controversy I decided to create a second iteration of the sculpture titled Captain James Crook, in which a Bronze bust of Cook is depicted wearing a balaclava. During the process of creating the Captain James Crook edition, I also created one unique Bronze bust which depicted Cook without a balaclava. This piece shows Cook unmasked – his now iconic face immediately recognisable. In 2019-20 I created my most recent work Captain James Crook (black light). This screenprint depicts an unmasked bronze bust of Captain James Cook. Audiences are invited to consider the dual and alternate history’s which exist in our country by taking an active and performative role in how they engage with this artwork. By activating the UV light (or black light), they can choose to reveal a depiction of Cook in which he is seen wearing a balaclava. In showcasing these two opposing depictions of Cook, audiences are faced with two alternative views of Australian history and asked to confront the internal fissure which exists within the Australian psyche. Australian’s today are still divided on issues surrounding our colonial past. Through these two artworks I hope that audiences will begin to rethink the various narratives that exist within Australian history. The common thread throughout my practice is the everyday battle which Aboriginal people fight living in this colonial institutional framework. We fight for re-writing Aboriginal history that has been erased, destroyed, hidden and lost. We fight for equal human rights. We fight for our culture to be respected, valued and celebrated in a genuine way. We fight for equal rights socially, culturally, politically and economically. We have serpent blood in our veins and we will never stop fighting for our culture.’ Jason Wing, Artist Statement “This work is about acknowledging the largely untold history of biological warfare used by British colonisers as an invasive military tactic against Indigenous peoples.