Decolonised gaze: ‘Terra inFirma’ at Blacktown Arts
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As Blacktown Arts’s response to the 250 years since Cook’s arrival in Australia, staged across multiple iterations, ‘Terra inFirma’ weaves a narrative of British colonisation and its rippling devastation beyond the confines of the Australian coastline. The first exhibition (on view at the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre until 10 July) was produced in close consultation with local Darug elders, and features works by Kristone Capistrano, Jumaadi, Shivanjani Lal, Venessa Possum, Teivao Pupu Tamariki, Judy Watson and Fozia Zahid that reflect the diverse local populations and communities within Blacktown. While the British colonial project was one of violence and horror, the exhibition employs soft tones and gentle non-graphic imagery with multiple perspectives to provide a shared narrative grounded in common experience.
The exhibition resides within the high-ceilinged, reverent hall of the former church building. A simple curatorial hang disperses the works evenly throughout, allowing them to breathe and inviting prolonged attention. Situated in this way, the works not only map narratives but also the geographical progression of British settlement. In Murura – Pathways (2020), Possum explores the colonial landscape through the layering and weaving together of old tea towels. Representative of colonial possession, the cloths are reclaimed through illustrations that demark the natural environment. This process of reclamation, also reflected in Watson’s documentation of Indigenous massacres in her video witness tree (2018), aims to decolonise and provide alternative maps to the possessive Eurocentric formula.
The storyboard created by Zahid in her recent series of seven miniature paintings charts the violent history of British colonial rule in India using intricate illustrations in a traditional form also used in the artist’s birthplace of Pakistan. This narrative is continued in Lal’s artwork I am not an island, I am an archipelago (2020), in which khadi paper is stained by burnt turmeric to trace the movement of Indian people to Fiji, brought by the British as indentured labour to work on sugar plantations.
By presenting such mappings that have been largely absent from the Australian public view, and by giving them space to breathe, ‘Terra inFirma’ shifts focus away from the official colonial narrative to gently illuminate the importance of community, collective memory, memorialisation and resilience.
Nikita Holcombe, Sydney
The second iteration of ‘Terra inFirma’ will be exhibited from 5 September until 1 November 2020, with the project continuing into 2021.
