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Chips Mackinolty SOCIAL FABRIC Banners from the Northern Territory 2010-2013 Sydney Trades Hall 11–25 July 2013 Dedicated to the memory of Pippa Duncan 1953–2012 inside front Social fabric: banners from the Bush to the Big Smoke Social Fabric, a splendid installation access to media. These are artworks movement and the art that promoted of banners by Territory artist Chips that have been produced for clients a the great women’s, Aboriginal, Mackinolty in the historic Sydney long distance from the Murdochs and environmental, heritage and gay and Trades Hall, encourages and cajoles others who purport to speak for the lesbian rights social movements. His individual action as it claims public betterment of Aboriginal Australians. work is currently part of a retrospective space for Aboriginal and alternative Artists and activists like Chips exhibition with Therese Ritchie by cultures, ideas and economies. Mackinolty continue to imagine new Charles Darwin University Gallery Apart from a few scraps in collective actions and models for participation, touring Australia, Not dead yet. shows, this is the first time in over engagement and opposition. As an artist, journalist and health 35 years that Chips has exhibited in Chips Mackinolty’s innovative activist, Chips knows the politics from Sydney. Welcome home. propaganda has flourished for over four the grassroots up to the dastardly How do we in First World Australia decades as he rides the waves of change decision makers. His art remains a talk about social cohesion and human in technology, writing and cultural beacon of integrity and the power of the rights abuses while ignoring appalling politics. Social Fabric shows the artist’s creative imagination to sort truth from outcomes in Aboriginal health, housing, commitment to Aboriginal rights as a dross spin. employment and the injustice of liberation movement, but reflects other Jo Holder increasing incarceration rates? issues besides: anti militarism, trade unionism and the lives of other activists. The Cross Art Projects Sydney Prompted by the coercive reconciliation policies of the Howard/Rudd/Gillard Chips has worked in the flourishing governments, Social Fabric shows art scenes of the 1970s and 1980s. His the positive side of the battle over posters were part of the alternative art Social fabric: banners from the Northern Territory 2010–2013 Chips Mackinolty Social fabric: banners from the Northern Territory The status of “public art” in the When some drunks damaged the While some of my work, yes, has community has always been sculpture of the “explorer” John been produced for galleries and contested, from the display of McDouall Stuart in my home town domestic interiors, art for the streets State aggrandisement to the anti- of Darwin a few years ago it was is what has always made the most government graffitist. quickly replaced at public expense: sense for me. it was part of “our history” after For the State, public art is more And so to banners. often than not architectural: the all. Meanwhile there is yet to be a Surely they are the most intimate, triumphalist Fascist architecture of public artwork of similar significance Mussolini’s Italy and Stalinist edifices celebrating the Larrakia traditional tactile and vocal of all public art. in Warsaw come to mind, as readily owners of Darwin—other than They are strapped to walls and as Parliament House in Canberra a bronze by Koolpinyah Richard buildings by hand; they are held by (old and new) or just about any of Barnes of Chinute Chinute, the people marching down the street; Washington’s monuments. They all Tawny Frogmouth Owl. Public they are unfurled as backdrops to our glorify the State and its power. art rarely celebrates those that events and meetings; they flow with triumphalist histories regard as the the wind; they speak to us on a wall, And then there are public sculptures vanquished. or at the vanguard of a movement of the mythological, rich and on the march. In a sense, they are famous, something which in But the State has no monopoly over part of public performance and the western tradition at least has beauty—let alone truth. display. They assert to the world: involved stone, bronze, steel and For my part, public art has always “here we are, and this is what we concrete. The ruins of past cultures been my domain, but one that has stand for!” and empires are, as often as not, always been far more ephemeral than marked by the remnants of these concrete or bronze: from posters, to Marie McMahon first taught me displays. graffiti, to T-shirts to mural work. the process of one-off paper stencils 2 • Social fabric: banners from the Northern Territory 2010–2013 Chips Mackinolty in creating a large scale banner in I rediscovered the banner in 2010 understand such as inkjet printing the late 1970s for Women Behind for the Fresh Food Summit in and dye sublimation. The knowledge Bars1. Adorned by her with hand Tennant Creek, organised by my and skills so many of us had in the sewn applique, the screen printed employer, the Aboriginal Medical 1970s as designers and printers are The jails are the crime banner is now Services Alliance Northern long gone in the face of these new part of the Australian National Territory [AMSANT]. That technologies, and are now produced Museum collection, after life on image was followed by the others by workers with other skills, and the streets of Sydney. For me, this in this exhibition, for other other knowledge. I pay tribute to was followed in the ’80s by hand organisations, for other causes: them: they can do things which painted banners for the Northern from the commemoration of the astonish and delight me. Land Council which served on the 45th anniversary of the Wave But we still have the banners, streets of Sydney for the 1988 anti- Hill Walk off, to trade unionists’ however created: alive, up front, in Bicentennial march and, in another perspective on the bombing of your face. context, for the return of Nitmiluk Darwin, to a Grog Summit held by to its Jawoyn Traditional Owners the Aboriginal Peak Organisations And blowin’ in the wind. in 1989. After this was work in Northern Territory, to the marking Chips Mackinolty 2000 for a series of banners with of the history of the notorious Darwin June 2013 Joanna Barrkman, Mumkurla-nginyi- Kahlin Compound last century. ma Parrngalinyparla—Out of the They are no longer hand painted, Darkness into the light, a collection no longer screen printed. The of banners celebrating the Wave Hill 1 designs are emailed to Melbourne And it was Marie who came up with the name Walk Off. “Social Fabric” that titles this exhibition, and for- and are digitally printed, and merly the name of a design and printing company New times, new technologies. subject to processes I barely established in the 1980s by her and Jan Mackay. 3 • Social fabric: banners from the Northern Territory 2010–2013 Chips Mackinolty Mackinolty, Year of the Aboriginal Health Worker, 2010, 133 x 400cm Year of the Aboriginal Health Worker The Northern Territory’s Senior Health Worker Network and Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory [AMSANT] declared 1 Jul 2011–30 June 2012 the Year of the Aboriginal Health Worker in recognition of the work carried out by this critical part of the 4 • Social fabric: banners from the Northern Territory 2010–2013 Chips Mackinolty Mackinolty, Year of the Aboriginal Health Worker, 2010, 133 x 400cm Aboriginal comprehensive primary bags, tickets and awards, DVD Larger banners (1.33 x 400cm) were health care workforce. covers, newspaper advertisments and used at meetings, as well as in a stories. historic march by Aboriginal Health Over a period of a year or so, a Workers and their supporters leading number of images were produced for The banners above, printed on Darwin’s May Day March in 2012. this period of celebration. polyester, were distributed to AMSANT Members services and The banner and print designs were The work was transformed from government clinics throughout the created in Beirut in January 2011. banners and posters, to T-shirts, Northern Territory. 5 • Social fabric: banners from the Northern Territory 2010–2013 Chips Mackinolty Grog in the Territory A summit staged by the Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory [APO NT], made up of the Central and Northern land councils, the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service, the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency and Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory. The Summit called for, among other things, the implementation of population level supply reduction measures as a “circuit breaker” for problems in Aboriginal communities; significant new resources into early childhood programs as an absolute priority; and the expansion of government support for community-based recovery strategies. Mackinolty, Grog in the Territory, 2012, 170 x 295cm 6 • Social fabric: banners from the Northern Territory 2010–2013 Chips Mackinolty An APO NT Summit that attracted 300 Aboriginal people from across the Territory. The meeting was designed to tackle the challenges and common barriers to achieving greater governance control for Aboriginal people and to work towards solutions that address these challenges, including understanding skills, resources and capacities that people and their communities, regions, clans, and nations need for greater decision making control. Mackinolty, Who makes the decisions?, 2013, 178.5 x 397cm Who makes the decisons? 7 • Social fabric: banners from the Northern Territory 2010–2013 Chips Mackinolty 45th Gurindji Freedom Day The modern land rights movement began as an industrial dispute when the Gurindji people—and others— walked off Wave Hill Station. In one characterisation, the Gurindji walked off the stock camps into the pages of history. And that history was one of a demand for land rights, a demand which reverberates to this day.

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