PROOF
SMH 05.11.07
Files reveal the silly, scary
spies' eye-view of Aboriginal
history
Joel Gibson
CITY WEEKLY 01.11.07
Proof positive
Josie Gagliano
EXPRESS ADVOCATE 30.05.07
Art Culture
Kate Moore
SMH 20.04.04
Beyond fashion to fine
portraiture
Robert McFarlane
SMH 02.04.04
Spotlight: Photography
Sunanda Creagh
SMH 26.03.04
Metro: The Week's Best
Alex Tibbitts, Editor
ART & AUSTRALIA Vol 41 #3
Juno Gemes
Sasha Grishin
SMH 01.01.04
Mixed media in frame
Anne Loxley
ART MONTHLY #166 12.03
Photographic Proof I
Catherine De Lorenzo
ART MONTHLY #166 12.03
Photographic Proof II
Jennifer Isaacs
MUSE #231 08.03
We are also what we have lost
David Wills
CANBERRA TIMES 23.08.03
Political images
Zoja Bojic
SMH 09.07.03
Charting the moves for justice
Angela Bennie
AAS 2003/2
Juno Gemes in conversation
WHERE THE SACRED FISH
COME IN
THE LANGUAGE OF
OYSTERS
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Reviews
Art
Monthly Australia #166 December 2003
Photographic Proof
Catherine De Lorenzo
Proof: Portraits from the Movement 1978-2003 shown at
the National Portrait Gallerys Commonwealth Place precinct (12 July
10 September 2003) was an unusual exhibition for a number of reasons. In bringing
together Juno Gemess documentation of the Land Rights movement in Australia
via the genre of portraiture, it threw new light on her work, radicalised the
exhibition space as one capable of addressing serious and central issues in Australian
culture, and galvanised a debate about changing national and social values over
the last thirty years. Thats no mean feat.
Gemes is one of several non-Indigenous photographers who, decades
ago, threw her lot in with Aboriginal communities and activists working for fundamental
change in Australian culture. Keen to work in partnership with Kooris to redress
injustices, Gemes was able to contribute her photographic skills to inform and
persuade fellow Australians about a renewed spirit for Aboriginal self-determination.
In forging a visual language that engaged with grassroots struggles, Gemes (and
a handful of contemporaries) worked within something of a precedent vacuum in
Australia, when contrasted with the strong and varied documentary and activist
traditions in the US, Russia and Germany in the twentieth century. Local traditions
of sullen ethnographic or aestheticised reportage were not up to the task of reflecting
the sea-change taking place within indigenous and some non-indigenous
peoples. In rejecting the enervation of handouts for the empowerment of land rights
struggles, compassion was offset by laughter, and creativity complemented by the
hard slog of working for personal, community and national change.
To capture this sustained work photographically so that those
not involved in the struggles might reflect on the issues, without at the same
time resorting to aesthetic hyperbole, is a challenge. Gemess images show
engagement with individuals and communities where the players are aware of the
urgency of the struggle and the power of photography to reveal some of the complexities
to a wider audience. The image of the indomitable Mum Shirl on the steps of Sydney
Town Hall framed by the eclectic Victoriana facade with various police officials
in the background, was taken, we are told, at the request of Mum Shirl who was
about to excoriate the police over the scandalous numbers of deaths in custody.
This was 1988, the year the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
handed down its Report. It was also the bi-centennial year which Aborigines masterfully
turned into a celebration of survival. The photograph of Gary Foley and others
at La Perouse preparing for the triumphal march into Sydneys CBD of Aborigines
from around Australia on 26 January that year, is typical of the Gemes archive
that gives witness to the unfolding of events. Here the eye travels from the confident
figure of Foley on the right, around the dramatic sweep of the We Will Survive
banner on the sloping grasses, down to the waters edge, the whole picture
dotted with people taking a breather before the action. These images are both
portraits and social portraits: they testify to individual effort, they also show
group action.
Some of these images have been used in the Koori and mainstream
presses; some have been shown in activist exhibitions such as After The Tent
Embassy (1982, curated by Wes Stacey and Narelle Perroux with commentary by
Marcia Langton). Many have never been publicly shown before. Although the most
recent material in the exhibition reveals an attempt to update the record and
explore a more conventional portrait genre, the exhibition as a whole serves as
a critique of portrait conventions by enlarging the term to incorporate a sense
of the social. NPG director Andrew Sayers challenged the photographer to see her
activist archive as constituting a social portrait. Remarkably, when launching
the exhibition, the Government-vilified community at the nearby Tent Embassy were
welcomed into the NPG to perform a cleansing smoking ceremony and welcome to country,
as well as didge, dances and song, before a rousing opening speech by Linda Burney,
MLA for Canterbury. Burney drew attention to the need to recognise the importance
of making visible, through photography, the ongoing struggles for self-determination,
the resolution of which will ultimately define who we are as a nation. This was
a transformative moment in the short history of the NPG annex brought about by
the inspired collaboration of the photographer, the director and the local Tent
Embassy community. Proof is a testament to one artists sustained
engagement with issues central to contemporary Australian culture. The handsome
catalogue and events associated with it will hopefully ensure that the people
and moments captured are acknowledged in our future histories.
Dr Catherine De Lorenzo is an art historian, senior lecturer and Director
of Postgraduate Students, in the Faculty of the Built Environment, University
of New South Wales.
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