We'll start with Gordon Rookie, who is part of the collective proper now.
You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take my camera.
I'm not looking for a fight.
Before I start, I want to qualify what I say.
I don't really represent any other black fellas, or any organisation, or any group.
I'm just an example of an Aboriginal person who's talking about my perception of the world that I live in.
And because I'm an Aboriginal person, my perception is an Aboriginal one.
I say that my art is on the interface where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures converge.
They come together like that.
And where those two cultures converge, there's a lot of issues and concerns that have to be addressed.
Issues like land rights, which is primary.
Deaths and custody, because there's a lot of police that's been killing our people once they get them in jail.
And there's alcoholism. There's domestic violence.
There's health concerns.
There's all these issues, which is a direct result of colonialism.
To us, colonialism is this demon that is still there on our land in our country.
And it is our land in our country because we've not seceded sovereignty.
We've not given up our land in our country.
And from the map that you've seen earlier, there was over 500 different lands in different countries.
So what happened when the invaders come?
There was all these little wars with the different countries, with the different nations.
So we didn't have the military might to form a united front to confront the British when they invaded our land and country.
So in a sense, that fight never really stopped.
The frontier is different. We were taking it to the streets and demanding our rights, demanding our land.
Whereas artists, like our guns, our weapons, our mediums.
I was talking to a brother just a while ago. It's like the video, the mediums that he used.
That is the frontier. This is where we're fighting for our rights as Aboriginal artists.
It's hard really because in Australia, I feel like I'm banging my head up against the wall because the institutions.
Australia is a racist country. It's very racist because racism is enshrined within all institutions, within their constitution.
Because they had the white Australia policy where they didn't allow anyone in the country that wasn't white.
The refugees that are fleeing their homelands are being put in concentration camps as they come there.
But it's quite funny in South Africa, when the white South Africans were fleeing from the local people who wanted their land back.
They just let these white South Africans into Australia without any trouble at all.
And the South Africans love Australia because they know how to treat their blacks.
They said that Australia had borrowed its apartheid system from the Queensland reserve system of separating our people.
Taking their people away from putting them in concentration camps.
But anyway, my art is just about addressing all concerns.
And one thing about my art is I hate feeling like a victim. I hate being like a poor fellow me.
When I do my art, the first thing I look at my art is how does that make me feel?
How does it make me feel as a black fellow?
If I feel weak, if I feel like I'm a poor fellow me or a victim, then I'll change it.
I like to make art that make my people feel strong, that make me feel strong.
So, you know, I try not to pull my punches. If I want to do a bullet with John Howard's name on that bullet,
when that's what happens, I will do it, you know.
I mean, some of my friends said, oh, goodie, you'd be incited for murder, you know.
Or you'd be, you know, getting in trouble.
I would, if I was in another country, but in Australia, it's like Aboriginal people in Australia,
we have reason to do what we do, you know, within our art.
Proper now, for me, yeah, proper now is this collective that's kind of like a movement that is starting to happen,
or is happening, I suppose, in defining who we are, in refining who we are.
See, I like to think art is an expression of who we are,
an expression of us as Aboriginal people, some expression of our culture.
And we, you know, represent that.
But the thing is, like, I felt sad, in a sense, when I came into this exhibition here,
because of what is shown, you know.
Like, all the work that is on show here is from remote area, it's traditional.
And people, well, it's no different, really.
This here is a mini-me to the institutions that is showing Aboriginal art back in Australia.
Now, when people from overseas come to these galleries in Australia, and they look at it,
they just see dots and barks, and then they think all Aboriginal people make art that way.
But in reality, no, only a small part of Australia, a small portion of Aboriginal artists actually make art that way.
But people think that's what Aboriginal people do.
And no doubt this institution here thinks that same too.
So I felt sad that I've seen all this sort of art from traditional-oriented Aboriginal people here.
And it's not represented of who we are as a people.
Like, instead of calling this art, what is it called? Museum or Aboriginal art or something?
Maybe it should be called Museum of Northern Territory Art, I think.
Because this is what I'm seeing here, and this is what I'm seeing also in institutions back home in Australia.
Now, we are 60%, right? 60% of artists in Australia. That's Aboriginal artists.
But in that 60%, how many of those Aboriginal artists are remote area artists?
How many of those artists are doing traditional-oriented work?
Well, the majority of artists in that 60% live in the cities, live in the east, live in the south.
We were the first people that was colonised.
We are the people that are working on that interface where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people come together.
I've actually got, as an Aboriginal artist, I've got more in common with the white-fellow artists
than I got with the traditional-oriented artists, see?
And they tend to put us alongside traditional-oriented artists.
But, you know, like our traditional brothers, we've got a word for, you know, Aboriginal art.
We call that art. There's a word. I'll write it down, if you've got a pen there.
It's called Ooga Booga. Ooga Booga.
And Ooga Booga is Aboriginal art for white men's spirituality.
It's the white men who want our Aboriginal spirituality.
And, proper now, I've been saying to those white-fellow artists who want Aboriginal art for the spirituality,
we are saying you cannot have our spirituality without our political reality.
Because those areas where all this, you know, dot painting and bark painting and things like that come from,
you know, there's social problems that are running around,
but there are no seal roads going to their communities.
There's alcoholism. There's domestic violence.
There's, in a lot of cases, no running water.
You know, like, as a country, you know, Australia has badly neglected Aboriginal people.
And, I mean, that's why I'm sad when I come here and see, you know, our art being portrayed internationally
and being portrayed, you know, in the major galleries and still, you know,
our people are living in those conditions.
I perceive that the representation, how it is now, is like a colonial representation,
where they only put forward a tradition-oriented work because it is non-threatening.
Because it doesn't cause them to look at our reality and what exactly happened.
And not only that, like, it's not about now.
What they want is our traditional people to make art about the dreaming of how they lived way back then.
And it's good, you know, because, you know, they're hunting guanas, they're doing ceremony.
They're encouraging our people, our traditional people, to do work like that, when yet, you know,
our people that's living on that land and that country should be making art about, you know, things that are happening now.
But we're positioned in such a way by the major institutions that is not real.
That is away from our reality of how it exactly is.
And that perception is on their terms rather than ours.
And I really feel disempowered simply because I haven't got the tools and the mechanism to put right that wrong.
It's straight away, now.
Thank you.
