HOME at the ART GALLERY NEW SOUTH WALES
Home can mean a variety of things: place of residence, an attachment to place or a sense of belonging. For Aboriginal people, home may also be the country of their ancestors or their family.
This exhibition explores the idea of home through the works of Aboriginal artists who belong to nations and language groups that today fall within the area defined as New South Wales. All of these groups have felt the full force of colonisation, which will forever inform their notions of home.
Works included provide diverse interpretations of home, from childhood memories and personal insights into living conditions to land rights. Drawn mostly from the Gallery’s collection, they provide commentary on life in New South Wales for Aboriginal people, an alternative history that is specific to this place.
A strong element in this exhibition are photographic portraits of Aboriginal women by Michael Riley (1960-2004), Indigenous photographer, film maker and co-founder of Boomalli Aboriginal Arts Cooperative. Riley grew up on the Talbragar Aboriginal Reserve near Dubbo, NSW and moved to Sydney in 1976 where he studied photography and worked at Sydney College of the Arts, COFA. Through his photographs and films he explores Indigenous identity , experience and politics. In this exhibition Riley portrays Aboriginal women as dignified and empowered. In doing so he engages consciously with political history and cultural memory and challenges past representations by white people of Aboriginal people.
Catherine Hickson, Assistant Curator
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until December 2, 2012
Home :: Art Gallery NSW: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/