FROM ABC.COM MESSAGESTICK
A collective of seven Aboriginal artists who in 2004 established the Brisbane based collective ProppaNOW. Giving urban artist a voice the collective is at the forefront of contemporary art in Australia.
This story of ProppaNOW reveals what motivates and inspires each of the seven artists and highlights how they support each other within the collective and their work and how ProppaNOW the collective contributes to the Indigenous art movement.
RICHARD BELL: I absolutely can change the world... will change the world. (BLEEP) hear me? I want to change the world. (BLEEP)
VERNON AH KEE: Richard one day just said, 'That's it! We should start up our own artist group.' Because we thought - if we start our own artists' group, we'll have, you know, a bit more power as a group, and a bit more political power as a united group, and also maybe lobbying power.
RICHARD BELL: Basically, ProppaNOW is... is a group of friends, like... Um... like-minded friends. We all have common interests of... um... seeking... um... fair and just treatment for us, our people and the future generations.
GORDON HOOKEY: ProppaNOW becomes a brand which stands for something. Um... you know, it stands for being... on the frontier, on the frontier where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures converge. We try and comment on concerns and issues as they arise. Like the name 'ProppaNOW' - it's about being proper, it's about the protocol. And now it's about reacting to now. Like we don't make art about what happened in the Dreaming. We don't make art about what happened in the Creation Time. We make art about now.
VERNON AH KEE: We've got to, you know, make it a proper group... make it a proper group, proper now. That's where it came up. Richard said, 'That's what we should call ourselves. We should call ourselves ProppaNOW.'
LAURIE NILSEN: When I think back on it, art hasn't been happening for a long time, especially in Queensland. 1990, the big Balance show that Michael Eather and Marshall Bell helped curate, was probably... I look back and that was the watershed. That was the start of a move... that time in Brisbane when we as artists started to get... things started to happen. It was one of the biggest shows ever held at the Queensland Art Gallery.
RICHARD BELL: Indeed. The fact that we started... um... ProppaNOW... got people talking.
JENNIFER HERD: It's like being involved in... a group where they're all mates. They're all good friends. That's what brought us together at the start, was we were all like-minded people. We were all good friends, we all liked making art.
GORDON HOOKEY: Yeah, my people come from North Queensland, and... and they all moved down to Cloncurry pretty early, I think, I was thinking in the piece, you know, around... in the early '60s, and I grew up in Cloncurry, over the Copper Mine Creek. Here we are. And... I guess I've always been an artist. Um... I'm of the opinion that... that you don't actually make a decision... you know, to be an artist. You either are or you aren't. You know... you know, to romanticise a bit, I think, you know, the arts, it chooses you. And art to me is just kind of like a way of self-expression, of... um... of expression... expressing who I am, and also in another way, responding to the environment in which I live. It's about my identity, and, most of all, I think it's about being honest too. Like there's no other voc... there's no other job, or there's no other vocation in the world, where you're constantly called upon to ask that old question - who am I?
JENNIFER HERD: My mother was in Yarrabah, which is a North Queensland mission. She came down from Yarrabah, and had all the children down here in Brisbane. Then, you know, she was sort of... How would you say? coerced into putting us into homes, and sort of telling her that she, you know, she wasn't in the position to look after her children... because she didn't have a means to support. I don't dwell on it. I'm not someone that thinks of myself as a 'poor bugger me'. (LAUGHS) I'm... I choose to think about the future, and what I can do and what I can become. The Warrior Woman has... grown into this... being that... You know, it is about me, you know. I totally think it's about making me strong and giving me strength. It's almost like wanting to make myself into this warrior woman, so that I don't have to... (CHUCKLES) Life is... has been quite a struggle for me at times, and I've had to take a deep breath and sort of... you know, just keep going.
BIANCA BEETSON: We're here at Mary Cairncross Park in Maleny, which is the top of the Blackall Ranges. This place is really quite significant to me, 'cause it's got, you know, my ancestors. It's a really important sacred spot for my ancestors. Originally, this site was the site of the bunya festival. Most of my work is talking about country, and my connection to country, and my connection to family. A lot of the work that I've been creating talks about the body-paint designs, and the body-line designs of this area. And when you look at the linear, the way the trees are growing, you can also see a lot of that relationship being, sort of rainforest mob - we all had these, you know, straight lines. And I can sort of probably see, in some ways, where a lot of the lines came from now, being here and looking at the rainforest. And... my work just really deals with how I feel in country, my spirit and soul, and my connection to country, and how important it is. I often believe that a lot of people forget that there were traditional people in this country, there was a history beyond, you know, settlement. That there was so much importance and magic and significance that happened in these places. Particularly... you know, some of my country takes in Noosa. You go there now and it's a soulless, spiritless place. It's been stripped bare. I would like to remind people that, you know they... They killed our people, they took our land, and now this. You look at what they've done and it's a soulless, spiritless place. As I've gotten older and becoming a mother, I've become... probably more interested and found... You know, pushed more of that sort of storytelling, and identity line within my work, because I feel that I want my kids... Even if I... If I shuffle off this mortal coil, they'll know who their mum is. More than, you know... not just from memories, from what they've said - they'll be able to look at my work and know who I am, know stories about me. Sort of know that internal me. I feel like I want to stay here. It's that place you feel comfortable, when they say home is where you put your hat kind of thing. But it's always 'Home is where your heart is.' And, you know, this is where my heart is. I often call, you know, my country 'my heartland', because that's like the blood running through my veins. Like the rivers and the water systems - it's all part of what makes country and me.
RICHARD BELL: Well, it IS a long way... you know, from Charleville to New York. I was born in Charleville Base Hospital. It was built by the Americans during World War II. Um... After I left the hospital, my mother took me to our home, which was, at that time, a tent, 'cause we was waiting for the white people in town to throw away enough tin, so we could make some tin shacks. There were other people ahead of us in the queue, so... Well, I spent the first two years of my life living in a tent. I took up art-making in... 1987. I started... you know, painting boomerangs... um... pretty pictures for tourists and that sort of thing. Then I headed down the track of making fine art. I make art... you know, about the issues... that matter in my life. Like... It's contemporary art that I'm making. It's art of... now, you know. I want to make... comments on certain issues. I want to... state... um... my case, from an Aboriginal perspective, for people to look at in the future. Like... um... It's now a permanent record, these works. That means that people looking at these, they're going to... recognise that there was something else going on in this period. Given the way that Aboriginal people were treated... while I was growing up... it's a miracle the way that they treat Aboriginal people right now. We've made our way... um... into the mainstream despite... what obstacles have been put in front of us.
TONY ALBERT: There's so many, I guess, untold stories that have happened within our communities, and I see it as one of my jobs as an artist is to retell those stories, and it makes sense to start with my own family. Those own stories that we were brought up with and told, which did shape who were are, did give us... that mindset that we have, and make us think about the current situation that we're in. Cardwell was home to both my mum and my dad. Um... My mum is non-Indigenous and my father is Aboriginal. This street was named after my grandfather Edward Albert, who served in World War II, where he travelled to Germany enlisted as a British ally. And he was held captive in Germany as a prisoner of war. The significant repercussions of that story, and then having the street named after my grandfather, is that on returning back to Australia, service men and women were given land as settlement for their work. Not only did the Aboriginal people not receive any of that land, they were still getting their land taken off them. So... I think that was a real... from what I hear from my family, quite a disheartening story for my grandfather. He finally felt, I guess, an equal to the other Australian people, and he thought he had served his country and earned some respect, but when returning to this country, things were exactly the same as when he had left. I always look at the way in which my community works, um... with a... maybe a great sense of pride at the way in which we share and look after each other, and look after all the people that are sharing and caring for this land. Um... you know, I have always liked to listen to stories about where I'm from and... you know, things that are very contemporary. Stories about just growing up and family dynamics, and... um... what happened in town, to stories related to... um... you know, our family through the old people and the way in which this land was created and the people were created. And how our objects and things we use in day-to-day life, came about being so. It all really excites me. I think the stories that are happening now are equally as valid and are going to become important stories for our next generation of people too. The work I do, that's reflective of my life living and working in Brisbane, with its social and political connotations. It's important to come back to places like this that sort of ground me - I think is good terminology. Quite often I come back to country just with a small sketch pad and a pen, and draw different formations or different objects that we use in this area. Um... So... You know, whilst it doesn't directly impact on the style or the kind of work I'm doing, you know, I think being able to come here and reflect on certain things does have an impact. If it's not visually in my work, inside my head, I know the impact that it has, and the way it... um... you know, makes me think about different things, and that's really important.
LAURIE NILSEN: I feel as an older artist now - I'm 56... And a part of that experimentation and the knowledge that I've learned from other people, I feel obligated to pass that on to whoever I can. You know, the younger people in my own community - there's a few artists coming through now, and I love nothing better than to sit and talk with them about art. I go into a lot of schools, and it's always special when you go out to Roma, and work with the students there, because a lot of the teachers sort of prick their ears and go, 'Oh! We didn't know we had such a high-profile artist come from here.' And that always makes your chest stick out a little bit and go, 'Oh! I didn't either.' (CHUCKLES) My education in Roma here wasn't that great. I left school in the second week of grade nine. I was only a tiny, little bloke and I wanted to be a jockey. When you're 16, you're a bit restless and ambitious and... So I headed off, which a lot of our people didn't do back then. You didn't leave your family, and especially to head to a big city. But that was my dream. I always knew I'd get too big to be a jockey. At the back of my mind I was always going to be an artist - somewhere, I'm not sure what, but... This is Mandandanji country, my country. This spot here was the last camp before we moved into a house. We came and went from the camp. Some of the families, they had to go away with work, and we'd come back and we'd set up here until another job. A lot of my... my boyhood was... up till 14, was growing up along this section of the creek, and it was always called the camping ground. Working the way I do, with the ProppaNOW group, that's using different materials. I've decided to... to blow these up, or enlarge them, so that people can see this quite ingenious little lock that happens when barbed wire is produced. Um... These look a bit pretty, but, I mean, it's still about a dangerous product. But what I'm trying to do is sort of move that... get people to look at the wire a little bit differently, as an art medium, rather than, yeah, something that's a horrific piece of wire that'll tear your skin. So the new show that I'm working on at the moment, it's, yeah... it's about entrapment, and that goes along with barbed wire too. I've always been pretty outspoken of... You know, barbed wire's not only meant to keep cattle in - it's meant to keep Aboriginal people out too, and other people out from... Um... Every time I go fishing or hunting out at Roma, or anywhere in the bush, you're running the gauntlet of angry farmers, you know. So not a lot has changed since I was a kid. They still got the deeds to the land and they still got the guns. It hasn't been that long - the journey - when you think about it. It's been 20 years, and I always feel like we're still doing our apprenticeships, and probably will till the day we die. We're always experimenting and doing new stuff. I still think we've got a way to go, but things are happening now for urban-based Aboriginal artists. It's good to see the opportunities we got now. People like Vern - Vern Ah Kee in our group, that represented Australia in the Biennale. Those things just didn't happen.
VERNON AH KEE: I have to say Venice. I mean, you know, Venice has to be the highlight of my career for sure. It's such a big thing to be in, and it was exciting being there for it. It was exciting knowing that I was going there and installing a work, and that... the numbers of people who were going to be seeing it was a lot more than anything else I've experienced before. When you go overseas as an Aboriginal person, you realise straight away that when you become an international traveller, your status is like everybody else. When you have a passport and you're in transit, and you have a destination and you arrive somewhere, you're treated differently. Because in Australia, Aboriginal people are only treated... um... you know, as someone belonging to the lowest rung. We're, you know, pushed to the edges, always. And that's our existence, and it's normal in Australia. It's just... That's a very normal existence and we... There's a willingness to accept that that's our lot in life - there's a willingness to kind of say, 'Well, you know, let's just make the best of it and let's move forward.' But that's moving forward from a false premise. My family's from North Queensland. I was born in Innisfail. When I was a child, there weren't too many people who could actually teach me to draw, but I was only ever obsessed with drawing in my childhood, and I became more obsessed with it right into my teens, and I really wanted to bend myself into that shape of being a drawer. Even now, I primarily describe myself as a drawer. It's what I... it's what I like doing, it's what I enjoy most. And it's what I'm best at. So it's what I am. My art is, um... derived primarily from my own life and my family's history... and my own experiences. The things that I say in my work are what I know is true, 'cause I've either seen it happen or I've experienced it myself. So if someone wants to come up to me and say, 'Oh look, I don't agree with that,' I'll just say, 'Well, what don't you agree with? That it didn't happen? 'Or that it's not true?' Because I know it happened - it happened to me. You know, a lot of our work and a lot of what we say is uncomfortable... um... you know, to people who aren't Aboriginal, and also to Aboriginal people. I mean, some of it is uncomfortable to us, but we just think things are better said than unsaid. One of the big things about our group is that we like laughing, we spend time with each other, and Gordie's somebody who was... His sense of humour anchors a lot of what we do. Him and Laurie.
GORDON HOOKEY: And it's like I've got this support network who are there to help, you know, in whatever way. I might be out of money, you know, I might not have... um... any petrol in my car, or... or I might need a little bit of sugar or flour, or something, or a feed. Like these other members would give me money, and, you know? And it's just like that.
JENNIFER HERD: You know, every one of them... I would consider a friend and... You know? Worth doing a journey with.
VERNON AH KEE: We're changing the idea of what Aboriginal art is and what the Aboriginal artist is. And I think that's something we wanted to do from the start, and it's something we gave ourselves permission to charge headlong into.
TONY ALBERT: We're creating a discussion and a dialogue. Then that's the most important thing - if we're making people think... or challenge their ideals, then that's a pretty amazing thing.
LAURIE NILSEN: I know we do make a change, and art's got the power to do that, especially good, strong works and political works, you know. You put them up on the wall and you'll create discussions.
RICHARD BELL: Yeah well... well, I could answer that with cliches, you know, like 'Think big, do small.' Um... I could sing you a song. Yeah.
# From little things big things grow
# From little things big things grow. #
And, you know... those two cliches are... true, you know, they're instructive in our case. You know... Um... and, yes, we CAN change the world. You know, like every single revolution on Earth was started by small groups of people.
This story of ProppaNOW reveals what motivates and inspires each of the seven artists and highlights how they support each other within the collective and their work and how ProppaNOW the collective contributes to the Indigenous art movement.
RICHARD BELL: I absolutely can change the world... will change the world. (BLEEP) hear me? I want to change the world. (BLEEP)
VERNON AH KEE: Richard one day just said, 'That's it! We should start up our own artist group.' Because we thought - if we start our own artists' group, we'll have, you know, a bit more power as a group, and a bit more political power as a united group, and also maybe lobbying power.
RICHARD BELL: Basically, ProppaNOW is... is a group of friends, like... Um... like-minded friends. We all have common interests of... um... seeking... um... fair and just treatment for us, our people and the future generations.
GORDON HOOKEY: ProppaNOW becomes a brand which stands for something. Um... you know, it stands for being... on the frontier, on the frontier where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures converge. We try and comment on concerns and issues as they arise. Like the name 'ProppaNOW' - it's about being proper, it's about the protocol. And now it's about reacting to now. Like we don't make art about what happened in the Dreaming. We don't make art about what happened in the Creation Time. We make art about now.
VERNON AH KEE: We've got to, you know, make it a proper group... make it a proper group, proper now. That's where it came up. Richard said, 'That's what we should call ourselves. We should call ourselves ProppaNOW.'
LAURIE NILSEN: When I think back on it, art hasn't been happening for a long time, especially in Queensland. 1990, the big Balance show that Michael Eather and Marshall Bell helped curate, was probably... I look back and that was the watershed. That was the start of a move... that time in Brisbane when we as artists started to get... things started to happen. It was one of the biggest shows ever held at the Queensland Art Gallery.
RICHARD BELL: Indeed. The fact that we started... um... ProppaNOW... got people talking.
JENNIFER HERD: It's like being involved in... a group where they're all mates. They're all good friends. That's what brought us together at the start, was we were all like-minded people. We were all good friends, we all liked making art.
GORDON HOOKEY: Yeah, my people come from North Queensland, and... and they all moved down to Cloncurry pretty early, I think, I was thinking in the piece, you know, around... in the early '60s, and I grew up in Cloncurry, over the Copper Mine Creek. Here we are. And... I guess I've always been an artist. Um... I'm of the opinion that... that you don't actually make a decision... you know, to be an artist. You either are or you aren't. You know... you know, to romanticise a bit, I think, you know, the arts, it chooses you. And art to me is just kind of like a way of self-expression, of... um... of expression... expressing who I am, and also in another way, responding to the environment in which I live. It's about my identity, and, most of all, I think it's about being honest too. Like there's no other voc... there's no other job, or there's no other vocation in the world, where you're constantly called upon to ask that old question - who am I?
JENNIFER HERD: My mother was in Yarrabah, which is a North Queensland mission. She came down from Yarrabah, and had all the children down here in Brisbane. Then, you know, she was sort of... How would you say? coerced into putting us into homes, and sort of telling her that she, you know, she wasn't in the position to look after her children... because she didn't have a means to support. I don't dwell on it. I'm not someone that thinks of myself as a 'poor bugger me'. (LAUGHS) I'm... I choose to think about the future, and what I can do and what I can become. The Warrior Woman has... grown into this... being that... You know, it is about me, you know. I totally think it's about making me strong and giving me strength. It's almost like wanting to make myself into this warrior woman, so that I don't have to... (CHUCKLES) Life is... has been quite a struggle for me at times, and I've had to take a deep breath and sort of... you know, just keep going.
BIANCA BEETSON: We're here at Mary Cairncross Park in Maleny, which is the top of the Blackall Ranges. This place is really quite significant to me, 'cause it's got, you know, my ancestors. It's a really important sacred spot for my ancestors. Originally, this site was the site of the bunya festival. Most of my work is talking about country, and my connection to country, and my connection to family. A lot of the work that I've been creating talks about the body-paint designs, and the body-line designs of this area. And when you look at the linear, the way the trees are growing, you can also see a lot of that relationship being, sort of rainforest mob - we all had these, you know, straight lines. And I can sort of probably see, in some ways, where a lot of the lines came from now, being here and looking at the rainforest. And... my work just really deals with how I feel in country, my spirit and soul, and my connection to country, and how important it is. I often believe that a lot of people forget that there were traditional people in this country, there was a history beyond, you know, settlement. That there was so much importance and magic and significance that happened in these places. Particularly... you know, some of my country takes in Noosa. You go there now and it's a soulless, spiritless place. It's been stripped bare. I would like to remind people that, you know they... They killed our people, they took our land, and now this. You look at what they've done and it's a soulless, spiritless place. As I've gotten older and becoming a mother, I've become... probably more interested and found... You know, pushed more of that sort of storytelling, and identity line within my work, because I feel that I want my kids... Even if I... If I shuffle off this mortal coil, they'll know who their mum is. More than, you know... not just from memories, from what they've said - they'll be able to look at my work and know who I am, know stories about me. Sort of know that internal me. I feel like I want to stay here. It's that place you feel comfortable, when they say home is where you put your hat kind of thing. But it's always 'Home is where your heart is.' And, you know, this is where my heart is. I often call, you know, my country 'my heartland', because that's like the blood running through my veins. Like the rivers and the water systems - it's all part of what makes country and me.
RICHARD BELL: Well, it IS a long way... you know, from Charleville to New York. I was born in Charleville Base Hospital. It was built by the Americans during World War II. Um... After I left the hospital, my mother took me to our home, which was, at that time, a tent, 'cause we was waiting for the white people in town to throw away enough tin, so we could make some tin shacks. There were other people ahead of us in the queue, so... Well, I spent the first two years of my life living in a tent. I took up art-making in... 1987. I started... you know, painting boomerangs... um... pretty pictures for tourists and that sort of thing. Then I headed down the track of making fine art. I make art... you know, about the issues... that matter in my life. Like... It's contemporary art that I'm making. It's art of... now, you know. I want to make... comments on certain issues. I want to... state... um... my case, from an Aboriginal perspective, for people to look at in the future. Like... um... It's now a permanent record, these works. That means that people looking at these, they're going to... recognise that there was something else going on in this period. Given the way that Aboriginal people were treated... while I was growing up... it's a miracle the way that they treat Aboriginal people right now. We've made our way... um... into the mainstream despite... what obstacles have been put in front of us.
TONY ALBERT: There's so many, I guess, untold stories that have happened within our communities, and I see it as one of my jobs as an artist is to retell those stories, and it makes sense to start with my own family. Those own stories that we were brought up with and told, which did shape who were are, did give us... that mindset that we have, and make us think about the current situation that we're in. Cardwell was home to both my mum and my dad. Um... My mum is non-Indigenous and my father is Aboriginal. This street was named after my grandfather Edward Albert, who served in World War II, where he travelled to Germany enlisted as a British ally. And he was held captive in Germany as a prisoner of war. The significant repercussions of that story, and then having the street named after my grandfather, is that on returning back to Australia, service men and women were given land as settlement for their work. Not only did the Aboriginal people not receive any of that land, they were still getting their land taken off them. So... I think that was a real... from what I hear from my family, quite a disheartening story for my grandfather. He finally felt, I guess, an equal to the other Australian people, and he thought he had served his country and earned some respect, but when returning to this country, things were exactly the same as when he had left. I always look at the way in which my community works, um... with a... maybe a great sense of pride at the way in which we share and look after each other, and look after all the people that are sharing and caring for this land. Um... you know, I have always liked to listen to stories about where I'm from and... you know, things that are very contemporary. Stories about just growing up and family dynamics, and... um... what happened in town, to stories related to... um... you know, our family through the old people and the way in which this land was created and the people were created. And how our objects and things we use in day-to-day life, came about being so. It all really excites me. I think the stories that are happening now are equally as valid and are going to become important stories for our next generation of people too. The work I do, that's reflective of my life living and working in Brisbane, with its social and political connotations. It's important to come back to places like this that sort of ground me - I think is good terminology. Quite often I come back to country just with a small sketch pad and a pen, and draw different formations or different objects that we use in this area. Um... So... You know, whilst it doesn't directly impact on the style or the kind of work I'm doing, you know, I think being able to come here and reflect on certain things does have an impact. If it's not visually in my work, inside my head, I know the impact that it has, and the way it... um... you know, makes me think about different things, and that's really important.
LAURIE NILSEN: I feel as an older artist now - I'm 56... And a part of that experimentation and the knowledge that I've learned from other people, I feel obligated to pass that on to whoever I can. You know, the younger people in my own community - there's a few artists coming through now, and I love nothing better than to sit and talk with them about art. I go into a lot of schools, and it's always special when you go out to Roma, and work with the students there, because a lot of the teachers sort of prick their ears and go, 'Oh! We didn't know we had such a high-profile artist come from here.' And that always makes your chest stick out a little bit and go, 'Oh! I didn't either.' (CHUCKLES) My education in Roma here wasn't that great. I left school in the second week of grade nine. I was only a tiny, little bloke and I wanted to be a jockey. When you're 16, you're a bit restless and ambitious and... So I headed off, which a lot of our people didn't do back then. You didn't leave your family, and especially to head to a big city. But that was my dream. I always knew I'd get too big to be a jockey. At the back of my mind I was always going to be an artist - somewhere, I'm not sure what, but... This is Mandandanji country, my country. This spot here was the last camp before we moved into a house. We came and went from the camp. Some of the families, they had to go away with work, and we'd come back and we'd set up here until another job. A lot of my... my boyhood was... up till 14, was growing up along this section of the creek, and it was always called the camping ground. Working the way I do, with the ProppaNOW group, that's using different materials. I've decided to... to blow these up, or enlarge them, so that people can see this quite ingenious little lock that happens when barbed wire is produced. Um... These look a bit pretty, but, I mean, it's still about a dangerous product. But what I'm trying to do is sort of move that... get people to look at the wire a little bit differently, as an art medium, rather than, yeah, something that's a horrific piece of wire that'll tear your skin. So the new show that I'm working on at the moment, it's, yeah... it's about entrapment, and that goes along with barbed wire too. I've always been pretty outspoken of... You know, barbed wire's not only meant to keep cattle in - it's meant to keep Aboriginal people out too, and other people out from... Um... Every time I go fishing or hunting out at Roma, or anywhere in the bush, you're running the gauntlet of angry farmers, you know. So not a lot has changed since I was a kid. They still got the deeds to the land and they still got the guns. It hasn't been that long - the journey - when you think about it. It's been 20 years, and I always feel like we're still doing our apprenticeships, and probably will till the day we die. We're always experimenting and doing new stuff. I still think we've got a way to go, but things are happening now for urban-based Aboriginal artists. It's good to see the opportunities we got now. People like Vern - Vern Ah Kee in our group, that represented Australia in the Biennale. Those things just didn't happen.
VERNON AH KEE: I have to say Venice. I mean, you know, Venice has to be the highlight of my career for sure. It's such a big thing to be in, and it was exciting being there for it. It was exciting knowing that I was going there and installing a work, and that... the numbers of people who were going to be seeing it was a lot more than anything else I've experienced before. When you go overseas as an Aboriginal person, you realise straight away that when you become an international traveller, your status is like everybody else. When you have a passport and you're in transit, and you have a destination and you arrive somewhere, you're treated differently. Because in Australia, Aboriginal people are only treated... um... you know, as someone belonging to the lowest rung. We're, you know, pushed to the edges, always. And that's our existence, and it's normal in Australia. It's just... That's a very normal existence and we... There's a willingness to accept that that's our lot in life - there's a willingness to kind of say, 'Well, you know, let's just make the best of it and let's move forward.' But that's moving forward from a false premise. My family's from North Queensland. I was born in Innisfail. When I was a child, there weren't too many people who could actually teach me to draw, but I was only ever obsessed with drawing in my childhood, and I became more obsessed with it right into my teens, and I really wanted to bend myself into that shape of being a drawer. Even now, I primarily describe myself as a drawer. It's what I... it's what I like doing, it's what I enjoy most. And it's what I'm best at. So it's what I am. My art is, um... derived primarily from my own life and my family's history... and my own experiences. The things that I say in my work are what I know is true, 'cause I've either seen it happen or I've experienced it myself. So if someone wants to come up to me and say, 'Oh look, I don't agree with that,' I'll just say, 'Well, what don't you agree with? That it didn't happen? 'Or that it's not true?' Because I know it happened - it happened to me. You know, a lot of our work and a lot of what we say is uncomfortable... um... you know, to people who aren't Aboriginal, and also to Aboriginal people. I mean, some of it is uncomfortable to us, but we just think things are better said than unsaid. One of the big things about our group is that we like laughing, we spend time with each other, and Gordie's somebody who was... His sense of humour anchors a lot of what we do. Him and Laurie.
GORDON HOOKEY: And it's like I've got this support network who are there to help, you know, in whatever way. I might be out of money, you know, I might not have... um... any petrol in my car, or... or I might need a little bit of sugar or flour, or something, or a feed. Like these other members would give me money, and, you know? And it's just like that.
JENNIFER HERD: You know, every one of them... I would consider a friend and... You know? Worth doing a journey with.
VERNON AH KEE: We're changing the idea of what Aboriginal art is and what the Aboriginal artist is. And I think that's something we wanted to do from the start, and it's something we gave ourselves permission to charge headlong into.
TONY ALBERT: We're creating a discussion and a dialogue. Then that's the most important thing - if we're making people think... or challenge their ideals, then that's a pretty amazing thing.
LAURIE NILSEN: I know we do make a change, and art's got the power to do that, especially good, strong works and political works, you know. You put them up on the wall and you'll create discussions.
RICHARD BELL: Yeah well... well, I could answer that with cliches, you know, like 'Think big, do small.' Um... I could sing you a song. Yeah.
# From little things big things grow
# From little things big things grow. #
And, you know... those two cliches are... true, you know, they're instructive in our case. You know... Um... and, yes, we CAN change the world. You know, like every single revolution on Earth was started by small groups of people.
