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LANDSCAPE AS WITNESS / RECONCILIATION
2015 (In arrested development)
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An idea came looking for me.
In 2007 I began a friendship with Jann Williams and Tony Norton. They are respected ecologist based in the Australian state of Tasmania. Jann and I participated in a cultural roundtable associated with my exhibit, Echoes and Apparitions at the University of Northern Iowa. I met Tony later in the home of the prairie ecologist, Laura Jackson. Jann and I kept in touch over the subsequent years as we had shared interest in land-use, wild-land fire and forest ecology. In addition, Jann and Tony are long time collectors of Aboriginal art, which gives us a kindred interest in how the environment and a sense of place influence art and culture.
In November 2011 I received an email from Tony. He inquired if I had an idea for an art exhibit that might evoke awareness of an issue with no easy answers. Tony expressed concern about the over-population of Bennett’s Wallabies and their conflict with agriculture on Tasmania’s King Island. Jann and Tony were aware of some of my past exhibits that utilized decorated animal skulls. Tony suggested there could be a large number of wallaby skulls available for a possible project.
The possibility of a project in a country I had never visited seemed improbable. Yet, my curiosity compelled me to look into it. My research indicated that the issue was complex and controversial. Tony had described the competition the high wallaby numbers presented for livestock grazing and their negative impact on native vegetation. Yet, environmental activist were gravely alarmed by a mass extermination of wallabies on King Island. They used the word “massacre” to describe a 2005 event that killed two hundred thousand wallabies with poison laced carrots. There was great concern that the poisoned carrion would have a negative effect on the broader ecosystem as it worked through the food chain.
It became impossible for me to not see the indiscriminate poisoning of the wallabies as a metaphor for the historic persecution and attempted genocide of Tasmania’s Aborigines during the Black War between 1828 and 1832. In 1839 Charles Darwin and his ship the Beagle visited Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and he reported the Island “being free of a native population.” He commented that the conflict appeared unavoidable but that, “without a doubt, the misconduct of the whites first led to the necessity.” Despite reports otherwise, some Tasmanian Aborigines survived the persecution and their descendants are steadily rebuilding their culture today.
These were among my thoughts as I contemplated how Tony’s overture to me might assume form as an artwork. My thinking started out with a large number of painted wallaby skulls. From the beginning, I thought about how this project could engage the contemporary Aboriginal community. I imagined each of the individual wallaby skulls decorated by individual Aboriginal artists and community members, including children. In this sense, the project would be attributed to the work of a collective rather than to me as an individual artist. Each artist would sign the back of their painted skull as a record of their participation. The exhibiting artist of record would be the collective.
I had to consider how this idea would assume sculptural form in an exhibition space. Jann directed me towards a 2009 exhibit at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Tayenebe: Tasmanian Aboriginal Women’s Fibre Work. Tayenebe is a Bruny Island language word for exchange. In the Tayenebe exhibit, there was a distinctively shaped form of basket that was identified as being used in collecting abalones. In 1802 the French explorer François Peron remarked on the sophistication of the Tasmanian basket’s “elegant and unusual” form.
I visualized creating a nearly human sized sculpture in this basket form suspended from the ceiling. This hanging basket would then be ornamented with a large number of painted wallaby skulls, as many as we can produce. These decorated skulls look out in every direction. The viewer would be able to see through and into the hanging sculpture that forms an airy vessel of contained conceptual space.
I have an idea about the emotional content of this basket/vessel. A subliminal memory must have been rooting around in my sub-consciousness. Early in my thinking about the project, I began reflecting on South Africa’s post apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and the great courage they embodied. The masterstrokes of this official policy were both bold and elegant in concept: an admission of the truth and a blameless reconciliation. There is a poignant account of this history in Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull. While the histories of South Africa and Tasmania are different in many ways, there are lessons to be learnt from her account.
As my ideas about Tasmania evolved, the word Reconciliation became integral to my thinking about the socio-ecological elements of the project. I knew it would evoke the Aboriginal history. As I continued my reading, it was unavoidable to not encounter the island’s complicated colonial period convict history. It is clear that acts of inhumanity were not just perpetrated upon the Aborigines.
The landscape of Tasmania has witnessed many layers of angst and pathos. Approaching these subjects must be done with great sensitivity. Yet, an artwork, produced by a collective of community members with a stake in the future could produce a powerful expression of reconciliation, place, memory, and the durability of identity.
ADDENDUM
In 2014, while this project was coming into credible focus, I worked to cultivate support. While in Washington D.C. I visited the Australian Embassy where I met Teresa Keleher, the Director of Cultural Affairs. I summarized the project and she gave me a copy of Icons of the Desert, a catalogue of an aboriginal exhibit in the embassy.
Also around this same time, I had walked in a parade with my then congressman, Bruce Braley. I took advantage of that moment to ask him if the State Department might help me. His office contacted the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs on my behalf. I received communications from Scott Feeken and Shannon Dorsey that my materials had been forwarded to our embassy in Canberra.
Even with all my groundwork, there was a missing component. I was not successful at generating critical support from arts administrators on my side of the pond. The project is active but with the faintest pulse.
Earlier in the project development, I wanted to get my hands on an actual wallaby skull. I purchased one on eBay and painted it with an aboriginal motif. As I got deeper into my research, I realized that my design was a mainland motif not representative of the Tasmanian population. Yet, I liked it and gave it to Jann Williams and Tony Norton for their friendship and inviting me into this rich and interesting endeavor.
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