BLAK DOUGLAS - INTERVIEW

What attracted you to the world of Art?

Meeting Kevin Butler, a Wollongong based Aboriginal artist in 1997. We were working on a contract at the Australian Museum. I was the exhibition officer for the Indigenous exhibition, so I did a lot of the graphics and the design layout. Butler was on and artist Residency, held up in a basement, painting a series of boards to be in the exhibition. I thought it was the best thing I had ever seen, for an artist residency to be paid – this started me to think of painting. It began as a hobby, spending evenings tinkering away at painting, this led to my first exhibition in 1998.

Describe your work?

“Self–practiced in painting with a style influenced by the study of Graphic Design & devoutly politicised per social justice. My works are culturally & politically charged with a sense of irony & hint of sarcasm.”

He has an individual stylized technique, using synthetic polymer paints with the use of bold outlines in black. His trademark cracking, paint technique represents antiquity of culture.

Douglas often uses flat- bottomed clouds as a symbol in his work, representing what he calls the ‘false ceiling of government’.

Do you have a set method / routine of working?

“I work 9 to 5 leading up to an exhibition. I don’t like painting at night, but that will change as demand for my work increases.

I am currently equipping a studio in a garage of a house I just bought, my first house. I will equip the studio with appropriate lighting, obviously it has improved since I started painting. So that will enable me to paint all hours.”

A Word Is Enough To The Wise

H150 x W200cm.

Synthetic polymer on canvas

Blak Douglas

‘Little Joe’ is a 1930’s cast iron money box based on the racist deep south attitudes of the era. The mechanism sees a coin placed in the hand and he ‘feeds’ himself. Upon the distant hillside is a stylise Hollywood sign further indicating the side-show attraction that has become what we know as a… ‘welcome to country’. (applause).

- Blak Douglas (excerpt from web site)

Name your greatest achievement, exhibitions?

“In hindsight, voyeuristically the greatest achievement was studying the art curriculum – you need to validate achievement in the commercial sector. However at the end of the day winning the Kilgour Prize and the Archibald Prize and solo exhibitions over a twenty year period, is a majorly gain and yet also of course building your status. But I would rather qualify the values of young people fertilising their understanding of my art in the curriculum and I always pay homage to Julia Gillard for that – implementing the necessity to study Aboriginals in history in the curriculum. So again at the end of the day it’s not in a public platform and accolades of winning the biggest art prize on the continent, but to have a young person tap you on the shoulder in the street and say ‘I studied you for my HSC’ – that for me is the greatest part of the achievement.”

What do you hope viewers of your art works will feel and take with them?

‘Yes, a constant reminder – first of all, this not the Australia that the Australian people think it is, it is a reminder of successive Commonwealth Governments, and it doesn’t matter which party is in power, it is still the fact that we are suppressed as First Nation people, as suppressed as women, and we are suppressed as a disenfranchised people.

There has been certain injustices of the past and nothing will change until the Union Jack is dropped from the National flag and the grossly outnumbered population of First Nation people incarcerated are released. And the Nation as a whole has the understanding of why those people are incarcerated statistically. So there are too many things to be grappled with by the existent Government, that is why they don’t take the initiative to attempt to make the holistic change. So my art reminds people you don’t deserve to stand proud as an “Australian”. The contrast of migrants partaking in Citizenship ceremony is nothing short than salt in the wounds to our Elders and the survivors of genocide.”

Future aspirations with your art?

“To be honest having said what I did above, I am on a fence about going hard – the interesting thing about winning the Archibald is that I have achieved a celebration of a portrait and portraits are not my regular thing, the irony lies in the fact while I have had five successive finalists in the prize before winning it, that the institution are not tripping over themselves to acquire a certified Blak Douglas artwork. And that’s because of the conservative government of the institutions of this continent. So I am on a fence of going harder because I have nothing to lose.

I actually did enter the Archibald this year, to try and challenge myself with the use of cryptical imagery, to create a more of a puzzle to get people to try and look deeper and so not to deliver them a Liverpool Kiss if you will, but to paint imagery that is appealing and appeasing, which I have always tried to do with my tempera style landscapes. To create that Australian landscape that I am familiar with and makes the heart warm, then there is nothing juxtaposed within that which is fucking much and through that imagery that challenges people and reminds them of what I have coined – parody, irony and truth – that’s what my art is.

Though I am kind of torn right now as where to go with that and the first occasion of experimentation of cryptic nature is the first cab off the rank this year with my solo exhibition at Manly Museum in April, is where I am actually hand painting that cryptic kind of version”. Blak Douglas © 2023.

Forthcoming exhibitions:

Blak Douglas: Inverted Commoners -Gayamay (Manly Cove)

21 Apr – 30 Jul 2023 at Manly Art Gallery and Museum

Visual and performing Dhungatti artist, Blak Douglas examines Gayamay (Manly Cove) as a site of First Contact, and creates new work exploring ideas around place and displacement, and dissecting the narrative of Manly Cove from an Indigenous perspective. For this solo project, the artist will show film, paintings and sculpture to find connections to place as a platform for discussion and debate.

First contact accounts of Manly Cove in the northern part of Sydney Harbour describe Aboriginal men carrying shields and spears with ochre marks on their bodies, and of the women and children fishing from bark canoes and protected by the men on shore.

In 1994, an artwork commissioned by then Manly Council and unveiled on a plaque by Lowjita O'Donoghue CBE AM, Chairperson, The Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission, acknowledged that the Cannalgal and Kayimai clans were the custodians of this area long before it came to be known as Manly, and that the area’s sacred sites were bequeathed to them by the creator, Baiame.

The MAG&M Art Wall facing Manly Cove will be transformed by the artist to create a 24/7 public art piece further embedding the project in this place.

This exhibition is supported by the Aboriginal Heritage Office and Colormaker Industries.

Image detail: Blak Douglas, Otherwise Pronounced STOLEN, 2023, synthetic polymer paints on canvas, 48 x 165cm