Fifty-one years after the historic Wave Hill Walk-Off sparked the national land rights movement, an exhibition exploring the event is on show at the UQ Art Museum.
Still in my mind: Gurindji location, experience and visuality features artworks created in response to the Walk-Off, including photographs, a multichannel video installation, paintings, and archives.
Curator and participating artist Brenda L. Croft developed the exhibition through long-standing practice-led research with her father’s community, Karungkarni Art and Culture Aboriginal Corporation and UNSW Galleries, UNSW Art & Design.
“The 1966 Walk-Off was a trigger point in the national land rights movement in Australia, so the events of this time and place are significant to me as a Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra woman, through my direct family connection to the area, and through my family’s experience as members of the Stolen Generations,” Ms Croft said.
Gurindji/Malngin elder Vincent Lingiari led more than 200 countrymen, women and children working at Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory in their protest over poor wages and conditions, and his words were the inspiration behind the exhibition.
“Lingari’s words, ‘That land ... I still got it on my mind’ have resonated with me for some time – both inspiring the exhibition’s title and becoming a touchstone for the stories to be retold from diverse yet interlinked Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives,” Ms Croft said.
Throughout her doctoral research, and with the support of family and community members, Croft retraced the journey of those who covered the 22-kilometre Wave Hill Walk-Off Track half a century ago, immersing herself in and on her patrilineal customary homeland and its multiple histories.
“My family’s layered history has always informed my creative practice, and I was motivated to develop this exhibition in partnership with Karungkarni artists and Gurindji community members in tribute to those whose profound communal act of courage, resilience and determination changed the course of history,” Ms Croft said.
UQ School of Languages and Cultures linguist Dr Felicity Meakins specialises in Gurindji language, and worked alongside the artists.
"Many of the artworks were created during an artist camp at Warrijkuny on Gurindji country in 2015,” Dr Meakins said.
“Artists listened to the recorded stories and produced beautiful visual interpretations of them over a number of days.
“They brought cultural protocols to their works for Still in my mind, restricting themselves to painting events that were told by close family members or which they had experienced themselves, many relating to early life on Wave Hill Station and the Gurindji Walk-Off.”
The exhibition enables audiences to explore events of historical and cultural significance to all Australians and, specifically, the Gurindji people – those still living on homelands and those part of the diaspora.
Still in my mind, developed in partnership with UNSW Galleries, UQ Art Museum, and Karungkarni Art and Culture Aboriginal Corporation, runs from 12 August to 19 October 2017.
Download images for print and web here.
Media: Sonia Uranishi, sonia@soniauranishicommunication.com, +61 409 387 623;
Sebastian Moody, s.moody@uq.edu.au, +61 7 3346 8761.
