INTERTIDAL

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi

10 May - 4 June 2005

Julie Gough

Intertidal - artist statementJulie Gough May 2005

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi3/75 Flinders LaneMelbournehttp://www.gabriellepizzi.com.au/

Intertidal is an exhibition that visually articulates how I have been feeling since I left Australia in September 2001 for a year of residencies and since that date have undergone a non stop array of personal, employment and life changing experiences.

The only constant in my life seems to be an endless sense of movement somewhat like the tides. This connection with the seas and salt waters gives me some courage and much comfort and I feel its pull wherever I am. This is likely why I am now living five house distances from the beach in Townsville.

I created my first significant Intertidal work in 2003 at ANU for the <ABSTRACTIONS> exhibition http://www.anu.edu.au/culture/abstractions/artists/jg_1.htm because this sense of beingpulled in different directions, living between and within varied states and places then conveyed and still best conveys the mysteries of place, seeming coincidence and the relief and release of locating story and medium in my everyday.

Some of the works in this exhibition are celebratory and peaceful renditions of my inner state of being, in flux,between land and sea, not settled in new places, but testing waters and finding much. Other pieces that pair with these emotive painted renditions are ink jet print critical responses to the commodification of Indigenous art and process through the digitalisation of time, space and identities.

"Intertidal" is an exhibition, like those past, about me now navigating my reality. Consisting of reflections in to thedeep past of my self, family, ancestors and the means of materialising form there are also works about me now and questions about the expectations of the art market.

Julie GoughLifebearer, 2005Beach found pumice, brass wire, driftwood100 x 60 x 34 cm Acquired National Gallery of Victoria

Julie GoughDrift, 2005Driftwood, nylon130 x 90 x 20 cmAcquired National Gallery of Victoria

Julie GoughSeam, 2005Beach found coal, nylon130 x 90 x 15 cmAcquired National Gallery of Victoria

"Some commentary about the necklace works: Drift, Seam, Lifebearer and Raft and Transmitting Devicein my solo exhibition: Intertidal at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi 10 May – 4 June 2005”Julie Gough May 2005

I like to think about what it means for me to make necklaces that are bigger-than-me; that are not necessarily beautifuland not clearly necklaces either ... I ask is the traditional Tasmanian Aboriginal shell necklace today a carefullymaintained sign of cultural continuity, connectivity, authenticity and authority and if so is this different to what it represented 200 years + ago ? - my answer is that I can't know what it once was and provided outside of my own time and perspective. My use of macro [and maybe future micro scale works] are about that navigation of myself in my work =physically challenging myself, my arms, my lifting, my body - around traditional practice, place, materiality and culturalexpectation of what something is used for/is supposed to "DO".

These floating medium necklace forms work for me as life Preservers ie: operating perhaps as memory retainers forpeople on the edge (the peripheral me - the whole interstitial 'bit') . The wood and the pumice necklaces - "drift" and "lifebearer” seem very much to me about returning home (to Tasmania) sometime. They are my evidence to me that I have an emergency means - a facility - to make a craft tobring me home in the form of a necklace - a magical necklace. I feel I can (in my mind's eye) walk into Townsville beach with these wrapped around me and float into the sea and wash up back in North East Tasmania.

I feel that when I am collecting these materials - that if I lose almost everything of myself - even the possibilityof asking for help to return , If I cannot articulate my need in cogent language to explain my need to return - that I could still, if I can stay near a beach - make the means of my return – these necklaces or a raft... My sense is that if I drowned with these around me it would be in the arms of the sea and the maker of all necklaces and would be peaceful. I was rescued off a rock I was stranded on off Rodrigues Island in 2002 - after near drowning - I so nearly drowned - was embraced by the dark, warm drift downwards - that I don't fear or question the sea's ability to decide whento take someone.

The pumice necklace has come out of land into fire (volcano) and into water [sea] to float back to land and be built into afloating land - a kind of island - that could take me away. The coal necklace (SEAM) is also a bit elemental in material -there is a lot of coal mined up in QLD - but I am unsure where this coal [ covered with barnacles and other sea life ] hascome from. I found it up here north of Townsville at lowest tide like black spots that seem/seam at first to be a mirageof poor vision (black spot) yet announce a possibility of home and hearth to me - they are a source of warmth from fire and in the water they are the firestick doused and "OUT" - I collect them and think about how my ancestor's firesticks havenot yet been entirely relit from flicker to full flame by us, their descendants. continues…

I feel afraid to light my coal necklace at this point in my life, I am unsure of the spirits of the dark and night that I wouldhave to encounter to be able to walk properly and cross into the two worlds that I have trained myself to tightrope'between'. The coal necklace - the seam - is like the weighty lifeblood of ancestry - the coal black materiality of theearth that I haven't answered nor perhaps recognised the call. The coal coming to me from the sea is a bit like areminder to face the land and remember responsibility to all sides of self - land and waters.

The necklace-like works operate as my imaginings of how to merge and move myself around (kind of like with time and tide) back to from where I come. The necklaces are elemental ways of re-joining myself back to traditions that seem lost in their recognisable popularised makings in my immediate family. The necklace and multiple object in my art forms (over a decade) articulate my connection to a culture that did collect (and still does collect) to survive. Through repetition and rhythm and staccato in my work a language of understanding place and being-ness is articulated and presented to outsiders. In this way I offer viewers a way into forms such as necklaces - and materials provided by nature impact on me, seem to urge me to spell out myself through them.

The Transmitting Device represents, for me, a means of sending my thoughts back to my people/the old people and homeland and also it is by extension a Receiving Device for hearing back from home. It is an apparatus of travel/communication through time and place - whether actual or providing for me the security of imagining possible what this device promises to achieve - see website (http://homes.jcu.edu.au/~jc156215/) - see work "Time Capsules (Bitter Pills)" that is a work about the all consuming (literally in that artwork) need to travel back to times of old people to feel what it is/was like - to be THERE.

I made Time Capsules in the Eddystone Residency mid 2001 - whilst sitting on beach and grabbed a cuttlefish and suddenly carved a pile of these tablets as though in a manic yet trancelike state ! - those pills evidenced/materialised this desire for my impossible return to past of my imagining - where I could dive deftly for abalone, climb for possum, sing in language that came out of country and sang true - unlike the tongue that I now speak that I suspect would have me killed by my old people if they didn't see I was them. Word and voice wouldn't save me in my current form/manifestation (out of man – sealer Briggs) - only action and evidenced/trace of recognised behaviour could rescue me from swift death. RAFT is a raft - I feel great making things that are about movements and travel through real and imagined TIME/SPACE back to Tasmania and to a place in Tasmania and a community of people there where I can be myself and it would be called home.

As an artist I am a outsider in my own culture/s - alwayslooking in or across at peoples/places/times and figuringthrough art making my responses to being where I am and how or determining whether I wish to show that place I inhabit ='me' in relation to that other place (mainstream society) or whether I rework cultural matters from my own perspective.

continues…

Julie GoughLand and Sky from Sea 1, 2005Oxides and inks on canvas82 x 43 cmAcquired National Gallery of Victoria

Julie GoughLand and Sky from Sea 2, 2005Oxides and inks on canvas80 x 52 cmAcquired National Gallery of Victoria

Julie GoughTransmitting Device, 2005Lomandra longifolia, limpets40 x 25 x 25 cmAcquired: private collection

Julie GoughRaft, 2005Driftwood, lomandra longifolia185 x 63 x 15 cmAcquired: private collection

Julie GoughRaft, 2005Digital print on canvas76 x 102 cm

Julie GoughRegeneration, 2005bronze, eucalypt branchapprox. 200 x 8 x 20 cm

Julie GoughRegeneration, 2005Bronze, eucalypt branch

Regeneration is the result of an opportunity to work both indoors and outdoors at Chewton in the Victorian Goldfields in 2004 and 2005 courtesy of Andrea and Peter Hylands. Over a year of visiting that place I developed ideas as to what form an outdoor art work could take that would not elementally disturb the environment of that area that is distinguishable by eruptions of quartz signalling former alluvial mining activities.

The quartz brought ideas of memorial and memory, like bone it surfaces to reveal what is never totally concealed about the actions of the past. I eventually placed quartz onsite adjacent to a state forest such a way that the elements would eventually regain their hold on the form created to move and remove it from whatever story I invoked and impressed it into. Quartz is a magical and potent material existing before and outliving human time. Sensing that this aspect of timelessness was central to my appreciation of the material enabled me to understand into what form to configure the quartz. Nature to nature, place to place, within me I carry some knowledge, some blood, some cultural memory of my ancestors.

One ancestor, Woretermoeteyenner, was a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman who travelled widely during her life, meeting and working with people of many cultures through the first half of the 1800s. Woretermoeteyenner means a eucalypt leaf and I always feel strongly connected to this ancestor in the presence of these majesterial beings. Before moving far north to Townsville I realised that a representation of a Tasmanian eucalypt leaf would be an object, placed, left signalling my visit that I could ably make to leave behind outside as an ephemeral marker in a marked place, from and of that region and yet also from deep within me, my story and past.

Regeneration is an activated form of the quartz installation that remains to wear at Chewton. This branch with its leaves seeming to march upwards and out of a space is able to be carried and live indoors or out whilst it traces and takes me and my connections to people and place onwards. The trail of six bronze eucalyptus leaves tracking up a length of timber provide a different means of memorial than the more unstructured external quartz leaf that changes with every rain. The golden bronze of each leaf references also the alluvial goldfields of Chewton and the alchemical magic of molten metal. Each cast leaf also traces the generations from Woretermoeteyenner to me, the same leaf, our regeneration.

With sincere thanks to Andrea and Peter Hylands, Jean-Pierre Chabrol, Clive Willman and Ray for their ongoing assistance in the creation, exhibition and relocation of this work to Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi. http://www.andreahylands.com

Julie GoughPromissory Note ~ Opposite Swan Island, 2005Tea-tree, timber, string, fur229 h x 240 w x 130 d cmAcquired Flinders University, South Australia

Artist’s Statement:

Julie Gough, 2005Promissory note – opposite Swan IslandTea tree, timber, string, possum fur229 h x 240 w x 130 d cm

Opposite Swan Island on the north east corner of Tasmania on 6th August 1831 at least one of my ancestors was made a crucial promise by an envoy of the Government that has not been kept… we are waiting…

George Augustus Robinson 6th August 1831:This morning I developed my plans to the chief Mannalargenna and explained to him the benevolent views of the governmenttowards himself and people.

He cordially acquiesced and expressed his entire approbation of the salutary measure, and promised his utmost aid and assistance.

I informed him in the presence of Kickerterpoller that I was commissioned by the Governor to inform them that, if the natives would desist from their wonted outrages upon the whites,

they would be allowed to remain in their respective districts and would have flour, tea and sugar, clothes &c given them;

that a good white man would dwell with them who would take care of them and would not allow any bad white man to shoot them, and he would go about the bush like myself and they then could hunt. He was much delighted.

The chief and the other natives went to hunt kangaroo: returned with some swan's eggs which the chief presented me as a present from himself - this was an instance of gratitude seldom met with from the whites.

continues…

In 1994 I first made note of those words found on page 394 of 1073 pages in the 1966 mammoth transcription by N.J.B. Plomley of George Augustus Robinson’s journal. In 1996 my first artwork clearly based on the incomplete transaction, our unfinished business : Shadow of the Spear was completed. The words from this diary extract sang strong when I visited the area of that verbal and inscribed promise six generations later to realise that looking across to Swan Island brought much personal anguish about losses and absences. Standing there, alone at that place, also brought vivid clarity about the importance of remembering what has gone before. I realised during the making of Shadow of the Spear that I had a path and task set; that of translati ng into inviting and approachable visual art forms the written and subsumed histories of cultural invasion, collision and trauma that has plagued Tasmania, Australia and Indigenous peoples everywhere. Four years after Robinson made that promise Mannarlargenna was exiled from his homeland to Flinders Island in Bass Strait - where most Ta smanian Aboriginal people were shipped who survived the first 30 years of invasion. On the journey across, after stopping at Swan Island, Mannarlargenna held a telescope and studied his country with great intent as it grew ever smaller. Mooring next at Green Island Mannarlargenna cut off all his hair, symbolic of great loss. Mannarlargenna died on Flinders Island one month later from what was medically diagnosed as pneumonia.

continues…

Promissory note – opposite Swan Island as with Shadow of the Spear takes that same moment and day of a promise later seen to be empty and reworks things present of the place and transaction into visual art : Tea tree, time, memory, light and dark, words burnt into memory and string that binds. My understanding is that Tasmanian Aboriginal people on that day were promised that if they put down their weapons, here taken to mean spears, they would, in return, be able to live and hunt freely in their country ever more. Robinson is making explicit his, and by extension as an employed representative of the British Government, the Official understanding that Tasmanian Aboriginal people clearly recognised and held ownership and rights to their own country. They laid their spears down in surrender as a clear response to this and other such 'promises' in order to regain responsibility for and free movements across their respective lands. In Promissory note – opposite Swan Island tea tree sticks activate story and place from the past into a pointed formation reminiscent of a light. They metaphorically track movement through time of countless unlit firesticks. Awaiting re-ignition these bare bones of traditional means of warmth, light, meals shared and stories told have been essentially extinguished over the past 200 years through the actions of European invasion. The tea tree sticks also resemble a glowing ball of artificial light that emanates today from Swan Island lighthouse. Built in 1842 some years after the events I am referring to, its light powerfully cuts into the dark of the night across my north eastern coastal country today and for me ties past and present together as it sears the skies. The stick of symbolic light is placed geographically in the work at the point on the silhouette of Swan Island where the lighthouse is located in actuality. The tea tree sticks also take the form of a dandelion, symbolically blown by some cultures to make wish come true, as I today often do in reflection of this promise and how it could have been and never was. The winds and the plants and the rocks still hold secrets and lies told to and by people, the loneliness and windswept beauty of my sleeping country is in barren form in this work about the loss in remembering what no longer is. Julie Gough 13 February 2005 Ref 1: Robinson, G.A., Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers (of) George Augustus Robinson, 1829 - 1834, ed. N.J.B. Plomley, Tasmanian Historical Research Society, Hobart, 1966. Ref 2: Julie Gough, Shadow of the Spear, 1997. Six ti-tree spears, six slip-cast ceramic swans’ eggs, six rows of pyrographically (hand burnt) copperplate text on Tasmanian oak slats placed in the six shadows cast by the spears leaning on the wall. Dimensions 6 x 6 ft, acquired by the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Julie GoughIntertidal Zone, 2005crushed cuttlefish, crushed beach found charcoal, beach oxides, beach graphite, wax on nine pieces of timber220 x 300 x130 cmAcquired: Art Gallery of South Australia

Julie GoughIntertidal, 2005found ground cuttlefish, charcoal, graphite, oxides, ground pumice, bought oxide on canvas106 x 140 cm Acquired: Private collection

Julie GoughMe-bay, 2005Digital print on canvas77 x 105 cmAcquired: private collection

Julie GoughMe-bay, 2005Digital print on canvas77 x 105 cmAcquired: private collection

Julie GoughTidal, 2005Beach found, crushed cuttlefish, oxides, charcoal, graphite, bought oxide on canvas86 x 107 cm Acquired: private collection

Julie GoughIntertidal Drift, 2005Beach found ground cuttlefish, charcoal, graphite, oxides, pumice, bought oxide on canvas70 x 96 cmAcquired: private collection

Julie GoughResignation, 2005Digital print on canvas87 x 115 cm

Artist statement:

Resignation, 2005Digital print on canvas82 x 116 cm

and

Me-bay, 2005Digital print on canvas77 x 105 cm

“Opening EBAY recently I looked up the category of “Aboriginal Art” to find many dozens of paintings for auction that are authenticated by the inclusion of an obviously Aboriginal person holding up said painting/s in unknown backyard/s to unknown photographer/s. Photo after photo of unimpressed-looking people presented (for me) a scene of depressing resignation. The subjects of the photos became objects of commodification alongside their art making. Thinking about the intent of the photos I wondered whether the artists may not be holding up their own work but that of forgers. I fear that forgers may be paying increasingly famous Aboriginal artists to sign a pile of pre-produced paintings and to be photographed holding up each in a production line of profitable abuse. I decided to be photographed in my yard holding one of my own paintings. Fortuitously, one of these photographs was taken by the manager of an Aboriginal arts centre who was staying with me at the time and understood with mirth and grief what I was trying to say. I am an Aboriginal artist. My pale-skinned presence in the photographs may ironically serve to de-authenticate the “Aboriginality” of the painting I am holding and thus reduce its perceived value. I am resigned!”.

Julie GoughApril 2005

Julie GoughLimpet, 2005 (and detail)Beach found ground cuttlefish, beach found ground charcoal, linen stitching on canvas102 x 77 cm Acquired: private collection

Julie GoughCowrie, 2005Beach found oxides, bought oxides, beeswax, eucalyptus oil, ground shells on canvas73 x 102 cmAcquired: private collection

Julie Gough - Biography and general artist statement

Julie Gough is a visual artist working predominantly in sculpture and installation art who is also currently employedas a Lecturer in Visual Arts at James Cook University, Townsville. Julie’s art and research practice involvesuncovering and re-presenting historical stories as part of an ongoing project that questions and re-evaluates the impact ofthe past on our present lives. Much of her sculptural work refers to her own and her family’s experiences as TasmanianAboriginal people and is concerned with developing a visual language to express and engage with conflicting and subsumedhistories. A central intention of Julie’s art is to invite a viewer to a closer understanding of our continuing roles in,and proximity to unresolved National stories.

“My work revisits sites of history and memory often recorded only in text. I rework versions of the past from between thelines, seeking voices and direction in a detective-like search for alternative and visual means of representation. I sculptas my way to retrieve the forgotten or unspoken narratives of this nation, and to invite the viewer to engage with storiesand implications perhaps not otherwise voluntarily approached.” Julie Gough, 1999

Since undertaking a solo artist residency (Arts Tasmania Wilderness Residency, Eddystone Light, 2001) in her maternal(Trawlwoolway) ancestral homeland of Tebrikunna in far north east Tasmania Julie Gough’s work has evolved into morepersonal, introspective musings about intangible states of being. Formerly hard-edged sometimes satirical politicalcommentary about race and identity today Julie Gough’s work reflects [on] both internal and external states of being andnegotiation.

“I am interested in shorelines; the places between past and present, day and night, conscious and unconscious. My artmaking navigates these spaces of evocation in an effort to trigger re-surfacings of cultural memories beyond habituatedcontemporary frameworks that distrust the sensorial. My feeling is that there is something ‘other’ through whichhumans individually mediate the world. Working with this spirit of our presence provides me meaning, reason and a way(art making) to engage with the often detached exteriorised public world. My intention is to investigate and provide newways to reflect upon and hence understand places of time, memory, history and the past within a personal present.” JulieGough, 2001

continues…

Julie Gough’s first major exhibiting opportunity was Perspecta 1995, curated by Judy Annear, at the Art Gallery of New SouthWales and that same year Gabrielle Pizzi invited Julie to exhibit in Melbourne for the first time in the exhibition NewFaces – New Directions. Since that initial group showing Julie has exhibited in solo exhibitions at Gallery GabriellePizzi on three occasions : Heartland in 2001, Re-collections in 1997 and Dark Secrets/Home Truths in 1996. Since 1994 JulieGough has exhibited in over eighty exhibitions, nationally and internationally and Julie’s work is represented in collectionsincluding the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, National Gallery ofVictoria, Melbourne, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, The National Museum Australia, Canberra, Mildura ArtsCentre, Victoria, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, City of Port Phillip, Victoria.

Julie has previously been employed as a Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, a lecturer inAboriginal studies at Riawunna at the University of Tasmania and as an Interpretation Officer, Aboriginal Culture at theTasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service. Other experiences include Co-judging the annual Telstra NATSIAA (NationalAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards) Awards hosted by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territoryin 2004, co-judging the National Interpretation Awards, Australia 2004 and as Tasmanian representative on theAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council, 2003.

Julie has undertaken artist residencies in Tasmania (Wilderness Residency, Arts Tasmania, 2001), New York (GreeneSt Studio, Australia Council for the Arts, 2002, London (Samstag Scholarship, MVA, University of London 1997-8), Parisand Mauritius (Commonwealth Award, 2001-2) and was awarded a PhD from the University of Tasmania in 2001 (TransformingHistories: the visual disclosure of contentious pasts, 2000), MFA (University of London, Goldsmith’s College,1998), BFA 1stclass Honours (University of Tasmania 1994), BVA (Curtin University, 1993) and BA (Prehistory and English Literature,UWA, 1986). Selected websites:http://homes.jcu.edu.au/~jc156215/http://www.arts.tas.gov.au/index.htmlhttp://www.andreahylands.com

INTERTIDAL Art works by Julie Gough 10th May - 4th June 2005

Paintings on canvas ‘Tidal’, 2005beach found ground cuttlefish, charcoal, graphite, oxides,pumice, bought oxide on canvas  86 x 107 cm

‘Intertidal’, 2005found ground cuttlefish, charcoal, graphite, oxides,grit, bought oxide on canvas106 x 140 cm

‘Intertidal Drift’, 2005Beach found ground cuttlefish, charcoal, graphite, oxides,grit, bought oxide on canvas70 x 96 cm

‘Cowrie’, 2005beach found ground  graphite, beach found ground oxides,beach found ground shell grit, bought oxides, beeswax,eucalyptus oil on canvas  73 x 102 cm

‘Limpet’, 2005beach found ground cuttlefish, beach found ground charcoal,linen stitching on canvas102 x 77 cm

‘Land and Sky from Sea’, 1oxides and inks on canvas 82 x 43 cm

‘Land and Sky from Sea’, 2oxides and inks on canvas 80 x 52 cm

continues…

Sculptures

‘Intertidal Zone’, 2005Beach found ground cuttlefish, charcoal, graphite, oxides,grit, bought oxide on timber220 x 300 x 130 cm

‘Drift’, 2005driftwood, nylon130 x 90 x 20 cm

‘Lifebearer’, 2005beach found pumice*, brass wire *floated from Tonga region eruption which occurred 2 years ago 100 x 60 x 34 cm

‘Seam’, 2005beach found coal, nylon 130 x 90 x 15cm

‘Promissory Note ~ Opposite Swan Island’, 2005timber, tea tree, possum fur, string, pyrography230 x 250 x 100 cm (approx.) ‘Regeneration’, 2005eucalypt branch, bronze210 x 8 x 140 cm (approx.)

‘Transmitting Device’, 2005limpets, lomandra longfolia, driftwood 40 x 25 x 25 cm

‘Raft’, 2005driftwood, lomandra185 x 63 x 15 cm continues…

Digital Prints on canvas

‘Me-Bay’, 2005digital print on canvas77 x 105 cm

‘Resignation’, 2005digital print on canvas87 x 115 cm

‘Raft’, 2005digital print on canvas76 x 102 cm