Cinders & Sympathies

Willurai Kirkbright

Opening 06.07.16 6-8pm
Artist Talks 28.08.16 6-7pm

Step into a typical proud Aussi household, only this one is reclaimed, deconstructed and decolonised.

This exhibition takes the viewer to the bottom of the vegemite jar.......to the things that lurk in the Australian psyche and shape our preconceptions. It takes a good hard look at our interconnected histories and how we relate to them. The Artist questions white guilt as an act of distancing and becoming non accountable.

Cinders and Sympathies unveils truths about the war waged against Indigenous people in this the ‘lucky country’. It pays homage to the many human remains that are still yet to return home. It plays with themes of ‘reverse racism’, black rage and revenge fantasy. The heavy content dealt with in a playful but honest way.

Using photography, installation, performance, video and interactive art Kirkbright takes the colonial images that have in many ways forcibly defined her and flips them on their head. Dissolving and reshaping them. Questioning their ongoing effect on us all. Brazen works that examine representations of people of colour with in western culture. The impact this has on the artist’s personal image and that of her people. Works that challenge those representations. Works that challenge entitlement to and treatment of black bodies and landscapes. How history is packaged and taught, how ignorance is passed on through unchanging, untrue depictions. The resulting rigid perception of what an Aboriginal person is meant to be. The reinforced image of someone who belongs in the far away past not the present. Being pigeon holed and treated as a mythical spectacle contributes to oppression.

Kirkbright takes an unapologetic look at how this effects the way her work is received. Opening a crucial conversation about the catch 22 of Aboriginal identity being sellable as Artists but also problematic, damaging and limiting. The viewer is asked to question their personal relationship with history, heritage and current Aboriginal issues. As well as their own concept of Indigenous Art.

Identity and skin is a cultural commodity that comes with all the Cinders and Sympathies.