CITIZENSHIP

10 May – 10 May 2011

Like many people I find it very disturbing that we still celebrate Australia Day on the day of the landing of the first fleet, a day that represents the invasion, colonization and genocide of one people by another.

Where I live the celebration of Australia Day and Anzac Day seems to become more crass and lurid every year. Cars appropriating the Southern Cross Eureka Stockade flag or displaying “Australia love it or leave it” stickers are joined by cars festooned with Australian flags in mindless celebration. It represents a need to belong, a need for community, but at the cost of denying the suffering and/or contribution of others with a different story and reality. I believe that we could collectively imagine a more complex and inclusive sense of nationhood and belonging on any other day

Some of these works are a limited response to the ‘history wars’ that 1990’s that continue still. I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but we still have many politicians who inflame fear and racial prejudice for political ends

Partly this work is a response to the so called ‘history wars’ of the 1990’s and partly a response to a certain kind of growing patriotism that is fed by politicians and populist broadcasters who regularly inflame fear and racial prejudice for political ends; and partly a response to reading the stories of the survivors of the SEIVX and similar.

In some of these images I have used souvenirs, which represent the consumption of an idealized experience. What is the bigger picture that these objects are part of? Can they be redeemed in any way? What are our containing or fracturing cultural mythologies? How can we experience these objects as part of a different story?

“Solidarity is not discovered by reflection, but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people. Such increased sensitivity makes it more difficult to marginialize people different from ourselves by thinking, 'They do not feel as WE would,' or 'There must always be suffering, so why not let THEM suffer?'”

Richard Rorty American Philosopher