Acknowledge: a backwards glance by Anneke Silver

Umbrella Studio contemporary arts 2 March - 8 April 2018

Acknowledge: a backwards glance by Anneke Silver Published by Umbrella Studio contemporary arts, 2018 ISBN: 978-0-6480743-1-1 Umbrella Studio contemporary arts 482 Flinders Street, Townsville, Queensland 4810 Telephone: 07 4772 7109 Email: office@umbrella.org.au Website: www.umbrella.org.au Images and text copyright their respected authors.

All rights reserved.

Queries regarding the reproduction of any material contained in this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

Umbrella Studio personnel: Dr Jonathan McBurnie Alan Marlowe Angela Little Linda Yeo

Director Business Manager Gallery & Media Coordinator Special Events Coordinator

Written by: Anneke Silver Proofreaders: Jonathan McBurnie and Lynn Scott-Cumming Book Design by Angela Little From the Author: I ‘d like to express my sincere thanks to all those that have contributed to this exhibition and this publication: Jonathan McBurnie for writing the forword and successfully applying for the Community Heritage Grant , that made this publication possible—and the Townsville City Council for making this Grant available; Russel Butler, Aboriginal elder for advising on protocols and for supplying the Aboriginal names for features in the painting Hidden City; Angela Little for being a wizard with InDesign and a delight to work with; Lynn ScottCumming who patiently and beautifully, edited this publication at a minute’s notice. And many others who gave intellectual stimulus to the subject of this exhibition and those who helped load and unload all the paintings!

ACKNOWLEDGE: a backwards glance Anneke Silver

Umbrella Studio contemporary arts Townsville, North Queensland 2018

FOREWORD Anybody that knows anything about art in Townsville will know the work of Anneke Silver through her long association with Umbrella, her many years as a lecturer and educator, and of course her tireless studio practice. Townsville has been Silver’s home since 1961, and thankfully for us, she shows no signs of giving herself a break.

Acknowledge is a sequel of sorts, an extension to Silver’s 2016 exhibition, RIVERS: un-cut, which was exhibited at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery. Researching the many geographies of this exhibition — and intending to celebrate the special qualities that the landscapes carry through thousands of years of Indigenous ownership — Silver increasingly came across aspects of the grizzly colonial legacy that Indigenous Australians were subject to, and felt the need to acknowledge this past in a meaningful way. Such a gesture is full of challenges, with two centuries of complex racial relations to navigate. Rather than adopting the stance of Euro-apologist, or turning to tin-eared visual references, Silver’s new body of work finds its voice through, as its title suggests, an even-handed acknowledgement of our legacy of a shared love of Country, as well as the darker aspects of our shared histories.

The irony of this is that many of these places are profoundly beautiful, and as such have now been redefined in the post-colonial age as sites of recreation; creeks, gullies and waterholes for picnics, swimming, camping and the observation of wildlife. It makes sense that these were favored and often sacred spaces long before colonization; these sites were sources of food, shelter and water. Haunting genocidal acts are only suggested through occasional use of text, but of course we cannot help but hear ghostly echoes.

These paintings are compelling and complicated, and make a strong argument for the reconsideration of landscape as an idiom capable of surprising social poignancy in a world that often views it as merely observational. I know that it has been a very important process for Silver to consult closely with Indigenous elders in making sure each name is correct and that no cultural sensitivities are inadvertently trampled as happens so often.

Thank you also to the Townsville City Council, who contributed toward this publication.

This is an important body of work with historic, as well as artistic value to our community.

It is also a sincere step toward meaningful reconciliation with our nation’s First Peoples.

Jonathan McBurnie Director, Umbrella Studio contemporary arts

ACKNOWLEDGE: a backwards glance The response to a work in my last exhibition, RIVERS: un-cut, started this body of work.

A large triptych titled viewpoints/point of view of aerial landscapes alluded to three stages in the history of Australia. It included panels with the names of the Aboriginal language groups that were present in the areas depicted. Indigenous viewer response was positive; – it meant recognition. Aboriginal artists themselves have made similar statements, but the difference was that mine came from a non-Indigenous artist.

Admiration for Indigenous culture is not a recent thing for me. Looking back at my art practice there is a very clear line of connections —like beacons lighting up a shipping channel— leading up to this point. There are other lines of pursuit in my work over the years but this line blinks right back to my childhood. The first conscious decade of my life was spent during World War II in Holland, during the German invasion.

Even at that early age, it was perfectly clear to me that urbanised society, cut off from nature, was doomed.

In the last year of the war, the city of The Hague had no food, no fuel, no electricity and no water. It was one of the coldest winters in history. People were dying in the street, ordinary citizens starving. In an effort to find food, people trekked to the natural world outside the city. It was the ultimate; no bricks and pavements, no goods. Treasures were exchanged for a few sugar beets or a crate of edible tulip bulbs. The ruling value system was completely inverted. In my seven year old mind, nature and warmth became the new desirables. After the war, when books about non-Western cultures became available, I took a passionate interest in those that lived close to nature and who survived by hunting and gathering. Not surprising then that after high school, I took dual subjects in Art as well as Cultural Anthropology, in Amsterdam.

Make a quick jump and to my first years in Australia. My husband Eddy and I were camping in a dry river bed in Mount Isa. Whilst I was sleeping on the warm ground, the earth seemed to be pulsing with a heartbeat; the stars were so bright and the universe so large that I felt I had to cling to the earth —like an animal clinging to its mother’s fur— lest I was thrown into space. I have loved the northern landscape ever since, have felt a profound connection with it and soon identified Australian Aboriginal people as those who knew and understood this land. Specialised knowledge of every species and every landmark, intertwined with kinship patterns and responsibilities, gives meaning to every landmark— and spiritual connections to the Creator Ancestors. This knowledge demanded the highest respect. It ensured the meaning and the survival of the people and the ecology.

We moved to Townsville in 1961 to build our boat, and sail around the world. In the process we discovered a delightful community, full of exciting, switched-on people; young academics with the recently commenced James Cook University College, and artists from all over. The place seemed to be buzzing and the Townsville art scene was inclusive and collegial, which continues to this very day. In the early years Townsville Art Society president Prof. Ron Kenny and such members as Barbara Douglas, Paddy Marlton and Anne Willis contributed to this. I expanded on Paddy’s children’s art classes after she left and introduced many a Townsville child to the delights of art. We’d built our boat, but who wants to sail around the world if the best islands are right in front of the coast here. Add a couple of lovely sons and Townsville was home forever. Did you have to be in the big city to be a good artist? I felt compelled to prove the contrary—quality of work is what matters. I have continued to live by this belief.

An abundance of new visual imagery came from a trip to Papua New Guinea —and a wish to depict the colours of the masks and flowers as well as the rhythms of distant drums. It reconnected me readily with one of my main Influences in Amsterdam: the CoBrA movement. Paintings by Karel Appel, Lucebert and Corneille were all over the private galleries in Amsterdam; a wild post-war release of tension, and joy de vivre in calligraphic marks, that suited my own appetite for life in the new tropical environment.

I depicted our buzzing coastal cities from higher vantage points with large expanses of blue nudging calligraphic, colourful lines and forms that here and there picked up realistic contours, but which were otherwise purely expressive of movement and energy.

Another strong influence –coming from my art school—was the design aesthetic of 'form follows function’. It had its origin in the De Stijl movement and the geometric spirituality of the artist Mondrian whom I admired hugely. Many a high school lunch time was spent in the Gemeente Museum in The Hague, which owns a significant collection of his work. I admired his transition from expressive colour to the sublimated spirituality of his geometric works, searching for an essence behind appearance.

Well settled in an old Queenslander in Hyde Park and running my studio there, I enrolled in more Anthropology subjects, Material culture, and Archaeology at JCU. I learned about Aboriginal culture from readings and field trips, though not about what actually happened to Aboriginal people.

The art scene in Townville expanded with the opening of the Martin Gallery in 1972 and the art school in 1976, where I became a full time staff member—working with such original thinkers as Bob Preston, James Brown, Ron McBurnie and Jim Cox.

It was a wonderful era of more than three decades of vibrant art practice

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(1) Koki Moresby, Mixed media on masonite, 1972, 100 x 200cm (2) Beyond the shipping lanes, Mixed media on masonite, 1975, 65 x 65cm (3) Industrial estate, Mixed media on canvas, 1974, 120 x 120cm.

(4) Come of age, City!, Mixed media on canvas, 1973-74, 90 x 90cm (5) Nelly Bay before, Mixed media on canvas, 1973, 120 x 120cm

starting at TAFE and continuing at JCU, until its drastic change of character. Our own practices grew and lots of successful graduates enriched Townsville as independent artists, curators, educators and gallerists...with Umbrella Studio in starting up 1986.

I showed my work at Painters’ Gallery and Gallery Gaia in Sydney, as well as at Ralph Martin and other galleries that had sprung up around the north: Chris Soulijeart in the Tablelands, Paul Tonnoir at Magnetic House and, later, Anne Carter at Flinders’ Gallery in Townsville. In the late seventies, we moved from the old Queenslander in Hyde Park to a riverbank property in the Upper Ross, where we designed and built our house and studio. This put me face to face with the pristine subject matter of the riverbank. It allowed me an intimate relationship with all its facets. Though wanting to express how nature as the ultimate spiritual reality resonated with me, I refrained from appropriating Aboriginal imagery, which would be the ultimate theft. A dilemma expressed so well in Position Doubtful, a book by Kim Mahood, “There was an iconography ... that perfectly expressed my experience of the country...I could not use it.” (p 213)

Bush Icon Mixed media on timber & 23 carat gold leaf 1986 20 x 25cm

Instead, I turned to my own European traditions of divinity and its artefacts, to find forms and modes of expression that speak of spiritual connections. Within those traditions, I was free to use whatever imagery there is to appropriate. I gravitated towards eastern European icons, adored since childhood— not because of an orthodox background, but from exhibits. I constructed one in timber, small, with hinging side panels and gilded it, gold representing the divine. Replacing biblical scenes with images drawn from the bush on the riverbank—keeping the gold background— I reduced the negative and positive spaces into shapes, and their interrelationships to a structural essence. I felt that I was following in the footsteps of Mondrian. And so my first Bush Icon was born!

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(1) The banishment, Mixed media on paper, 1988-89, 106.5 x 75cm (2) Goddess of Cape York, Mixed media on paper, 1987, 165 x 114.5cm (3) Gaia, Mixed media on paper, 1988-89, 106.5 x 75cm (4) Goddess of Boeotia, Mixed media on paper, 1993, 90 x 70cm (5) Cover of Dance Australia with Silver's costume designs for Moon of our own - by Cheryl Stock at Dance North, 1991

(6) Aquatic Venus, Fresco, 1994-95, 200 x 150cm (7) Cover of catalogue for Ancestral Meetings at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in 1989 (8) Isis Veiled, Mixed media on paper, 1988-89, 106.5 x 75cm (9) Earth Goddess, Mixed media on paper, 1988-92, 145 x 114cm

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(1) Dialogue, Oil on canvas, 1981-82, 90 x 90cm.

(2) The Shaman's chant, Oil on canvas, 1987, 120 x 120cm (3) Grey Place, Oil on canvas, 1982, 90 x 90cm.

(4) Totemic Landscape, Oil on canvas, 1987, 120 x 120cm (5) Cockatoos, Mixed media on canvas & gold leaf, 1990, 120 x 150cm (6) Writing from the tree spirit, Oil on canvas, 1989, 90 x 90cm

A Day between Nights Oil on canvas on board 1980 90 x 120cm

Proposal for a Bush Ikon with landscape saints Mixed media on timber/ paper & 23 carat gold leaf 1987 100 x 150cm

Settlement Oil on canvas in board 1980 90 x 120cm

That characteristic triptych format influenced the way I painted many a series of riverbank landscapes during the 1980s and 90s variously titled: Bush Icons, Totemic Landscapes, Iconic Landscapes and Shamanic Chants. Gold leaf was used in some but in most I made a subtle triple division of colour or tone, to refer to the spiritual intent.

Within these series, I explored the changes in colour and light at different times of the day and year; and in wet seasons and dry seasons. In others, I reduced the landscape to what looked like ancient script, inventing ciphers extracted from the landscape to denote an essence behind appearances, while still working within the sense of Mondrian’s quest, and staying within the paradigm of contemporary western painting.

In need of a more expanded range of cultural utterances that spoke of nature, I discovered the much earlier Mediterranean Goddess cults, where nature and the divine took the shape of a large bucolic female. In exhibitions, such as Ancestral Meetings (PTRG) and the exhibition accompanying my Master’s Thesis, Ancient Connections, I freely used imagery from those cults to say something deeply felt about the northern landscape.

I was using natural ochres but without stealing Aboriginal imagery. Only in a couple of works did I allude to such imagery in a wish to have the two vocabularies interact; for instance in Dancing with the Spirits and Memories of the Aegean.

Dancing with the spirits, Mixed media on canvas, 1990, 122 x 183cm

Memories of the Aegean Mixed media & gold leaf on timber 1990 50 x 60cm

After my husband passed away in 2003, my focus moved to travelling; countless tours with Flying Arts, Australian and international residencies. In France I made the initial connection with the owner of the Maison des artistes in Alayrac, France, through playing music with one of his friends and subsequently did a couple of residencies. Subsequently, Ron McBurnie, Euan McLeod and a number of others have also enjoyed this magnificent location. In Fiji, New South Wales, Holland and the Unite States, solo shows at various galleries revealed my responses to those different environments. Lasting friendships came from a residency in Hill End. A large number of sketchbooks, which resulted from those years, were shown in Umbrella in 2013.

Earlier, in the 1990s, the developing north’s lack of respect for the landscape, the ruthless clearing led me to my PhD work Seasons without Names. Irritated by comments that ‘we don’t have proper seasons’— the definition of ‘proper’ based on standards

Veils for a rain clad bride Mixed media on paper 1994-96 122 x 186cm (Wet Season)

Celebration of the Midyear moon Mixed media on paper 1994-96 122 x 186cm (Late Wet Season)

Memories of Winter triggered by a paperbark Mixed media on paper 1994-96 122 x 186cm (Early Dry Season)

Memories of a perfect day Mixed media on paper 1994-96 122 x 186cm (Dry Season)

Preparing for another life Mixed media on paper 1994-96 122 x 186cm (Late Dry Season)

Contents of the rainmakers pouch Mixed media on paper 1994-96 122 x 186cm (The Build Up)

from another part of the world— I sought to demonstrate that we do have seasons, ‘proper’ to north Queensland. It included detailed studies of Aboriginal seasonal cycles and cultural implications where this knowledge was still existent.

Returning my creative gaze back to the landscapes of the north and west, I realised again that despite the amazing places I had seen on my travels— some of more obvious beauty, the northern and outback landscapes of Australia were different.

Perhaps it is an imprint left by Aboriginal culture, still fresh and vibrant, that enspirits our landscape.

The textures, the many uninterrupted natural patterns, the logic of the landscape where ranges catch water and create undulating life giving streams – the Life giving Rainbow Serpent— are all writ large in this comparatively pristine landscape. This is what I wanted to express in my work. Best observed from an aerial viewpoint, it was presented in RIVERS un-cut (2016), which in turn gave rise to this show.

In tackling the landscape as a subject for this exhibition, I decided that I would be receptive, not to be distracted by all that I have learned about traditions of painting.

Not consciously anyway. I wanted to be told. The result was a group of paintings called Shared love of “Country” that celebrate the energies this landscape emits at certain times of year — a festival of colour and life, signifying the abundance the land could provide for the original inhabitants in those seasons.

I was now more aware of the destructive policies in relation to Indigenous culture. It seemed symptomatic of the whole colonising thrust to not only kill and displace the Indigenous peoples, but also wipe out all memory of the original landscape and the culture that shaped and conserved it, by replacing Aboriginal names for landmarks and condemning even the seasons as ‘not proper’.

I knew now that our history was not what we were led to believe. I was introduced to Bruce Breslin (author of Exterminate with Pride), by George Hirst. This was prompted by my painting in RIVERS: un-cut of Townsville, before it was settled. Conversations with him and reading Timothy Bottoms’ book Conspiracy of Silence on the advice of Judy Watson— a long time friend and founding member of Umbrella, that I gained an idea of just how bad our history really is; how dense and widespread the killings and poisonings were, right here in our own area. Just about every creek, every station and every waterfall has seen people ambushed and killed, evidence removed because it was officially against the law.

A shared love of country series

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2 (1) It’s called Wurrgeng in Kakadu, Acrylic on canvas, 2017, 61 x 61cm (2) There are rock paintings in those hills, Acrylic on canvas, 2017, 61 x 61cm

A shared love of country series

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(1) Renaissance moment at Galbidira, Mixed media on canvas, 2017, 61 x 61cm (2) Carnarvon Gorge in flower, Mixed media on canvas, 2017, 61 x 61cm (3) Track to the beach on Burinanday, Mixed media on canvas, 2016-18, 61 x 61cm (4) Watershed, Mixed media on canvas, 2018, 61 x 61cm

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(5) Abundance at Yunbanun, Mixed media on canvas, 2017, 61 x 61cm (6) Kapok Season on Magnetic, Mixed media on canvas, 2017, 61 x 61cm (7) Forest Beach...,Mixed media on canvas, 2016-18, 61 x 61cm (8) It is raining somewhere, Mixed media on canvas, 2016-18, 61 x 61cm

The horrors recorded in Bottoms’ book shook my perception of history to its very foundation, causing distress down to a physical level. I deliberated on how to deal with the ‘acknowledge’ part of this exhibition. Did I want this exhibition to be about all the atrocities? Am I that sort of artist? Is it my role? Perhaps not, but I am not one to keep silent either. Some Aboriginal artists, such as Judy Watson have made this their life’s work. She recently created a massacre map of Australia, which made news in the New Yorker; Fiona Foley managed to place one in front of the Magistrate’s Court in Brisbane.

Also, Indigenous people speaking about those times tend to whisper, so I should not be one to shout about it.

Perhaps my role for this exhibition was to limit comment to my own encounters. When camping out I have felt intense connections with the land. Some sites breathe a profound welcome; or a beauty that I fail to express in words, but endeavour to in my artwork.

That is what I intended for this exhibition in the first place. Other places feel strange.

On a recent camping trip with Alison and Jeff McDonald, I found myself keeping a receptive mind while drawing the myriads of complex intertwining shapes of the dry sandstone bed of the Flinders River, North of Hughenden. It came to me that these patterns, in a range of ochres, were a metaphor for a culture and a people had that been around since time began. Pattern based on landscape is part of Aboriginal art practice; I extracted my own pattern in a different way to highlight the flow, in acknowledgment of that other tradition. In a second drawing, the patterns were even more complex; convergent and divergent at the same time. They seemed to tell me about what is happening at present.

In several other camping trips elsewhere, I had experienced a feeling of the past or heard direct information. The big question was how to tackle the contrast between the grandeur of the place and the brutal history. I decided to use text and keep it separate from the image, so that it could uncomfortably sit side by side as it does in reality.

There are many places in the world where memories persist when people have gone... places like Gallipoli, the killing fields of Cambodia, or Auschwitz. Skull Hole in Bladensburg National Park was something like that for me, full of strange sensations. I painted it three times: one for Linked Landscapes a solo show touring regional galleries 2005-7; another in the Q150 exhibition at Umbrella, titled: The Last of the Good Water, a subtle hint at an ‘ending’. In the present exhibition’s version, all vegetation is left out to make the scene more desolate, and the facts are spelled out in the text. Timothy Bottoms’ findings from private diaries and newspaper cuttings made it clear, beyond doubt, that the ‘dispersal’

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(1) Converging/Diverging, Mixed media on canvas, 2018, 100 x 152cm (2) 60,000 Years of Pattern, Mixed media on canvas, 2018, 100 x 152cm

was headed by Acting Sub-inspector Robert Wilfred Moran (1846–1911) and his troopers and a group of settlers headed by George Fraser, 14 men in all. The target was a large camp with hundreds of people at Skull Hole. (The tourist information sign reads: ‘There may have been a massacre’). To honour the memory of those who were killed in the battle to defend their country, I called this work Memorial. This may not be the place to repeat the raw descriptions presented in those publications, but the term ‘dispersed’ is a euphemism to avoid criminal charges—especially when ‘no arrests were made’ was added. Used in official reports it meant ‘all were killed’.

In contrast to Skull Hole, the site at Gundabooka National Park near Bourke, felt wonderful; a truly magical place, with lots of rock art in the large overhanging cliff face.

A few years ago, Willie Gordon of the Guugu Yimithirr in Cape York had explained to me that rock art often indicates who lives there (hand prints or figures) and what sort of food there is around (kangaroos, possums). Gundabooka rock paintings had rows and rows of stick figures, a bit like you see on the back window of some cars: husband, wife, five children and cat, dog or fish. I imagined the people represented by the figures at the rock site, almost heard them talking and laughing and children playing in the creek.

When the ranger told me about the massacre it came as a devastating surprise.

The apparent emptiness of the landscape can be misleading as it was in the days of the killings.

The land was never empty. In Secret Waterfall, only the rainbow above the gorge reveals that water and people are present.

In recent years, I have worked with the artists of the Girringin community. They tell me that the rainforest was like a larder. It supplied everything. “All you had to do was gather it”. Their ancestors too were hunted and killed. The landscape seen from the air makes our history so clearly visible; the disregard for the original people and environment — the people ‘dispersed’, knowledge accumulated over eons lost. Rainforest drastically cleared; verdant creeks turned in to what are now referred to as ‘natural drains’. The series titled a Clash of Pattern comments on this.

Hidden City shows Townsville, seen from the top of Hervey’s Range. Until very recently the city was practically invisible. The Aboriginal names of features were inserted into the painting in collaboration with Russel Butler, an Aboriginal Elder. Most Australian landmarks were re-named.

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(1) Memorial, Mixed media on canvas, 2016-8, 100 x 152cm (2) Secret Waterfall, Mixed media on canvas, 2016-8, 100 x 152cm

Paradise Lost, Mixed media on canvas, 2018, 100 x 152cm

For thousands of years landmarks had names that resonated with the environment. The new names seem to express the wish for the land to be something else – nostalgia for England, Ireland or Scotland.

It seems like an unconscious drive to be something we are not. We have a long history; we should be proud of it, acknowledge it. Naming landmarks after those who ‘discovered’ them must stand as a lasting insult , especially when it is now clear that many of those ‘discoverers’ were complicit in the crimes committed. It would be like having landmarks in Europe named after Hitler or Himmler.

With this exhibition, I wanted to acknowledge that I am aware of the way Aboriginal people imbued the land we live on with meaning, something we can only guess at and feel by being mindful, by acknowledging a shared love for Country. I also want to acknowledge the atrocities committed, and that we can no longer be ignorant of those.

We cannot change the past, but we can commemorate. Why should we not commemorate what happened with Aboriginal people? As a nation we might find healing from such an action, find resolution by acknowledging the truth.

A clash of pattern series

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(1) Calligraphic creek on squared grid (near Innisfail), Mixed media on canvas, 2017, 61 x 61cm (2) The pattern of history (near Mackay), Mixed media on canvas, 2017, 61 x 61cm (3) Verdant creek to ‘natural drain’ (near Tully), Mixed media on canvas, 2017, 61 x 61cm (4) Drawn and quartered (towards Mena Creek), Mixed media on canvas, 2016, 61 x 61cm

Hidden City-Gurambilburu 3-4 in collaboration with Russel Butler, Mixed media on canvas, 2006-18, 50 x 3500cm

It would be wise to be respectful, and to take note of Aboriginal traditional knowledge and attitudes, which were far removed from our culture of environmental exploitation.

The Indigenous way of owning is to be responsible for, to care for. Respect in traditional Aboriginal culture was not based on how much stuff you owned, but how much knowledge you had, and how well you carried out the responsibilities flowing from that knowledge.

Modern society can well learn from this, before we completely destroy the planet with our rampant consumerism.

It might help us to appreciate this northern landscape for what it is and to be mindful of its special qualities.

Anneke Silver, 2018 Sources: Bottoms, T.; Conspiracy of Silence. Breslin, B.; Exterminate with Pride. Mahood, K.; Position Doubtful

Hidden City-Gurambilburu 1-2 in collaboration with Russel Butler, Mixed media on canvas, 2006-18, 50 x 3500cm

Flinders river (north of Hughenden), Charcoal and conte on paper, 2017, 56 x 76cm

Townsville City Council is proud to support the creation of the Acknowledge: a backwards glance publication under our Community Grants Program.

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Umbrella Studio acknowledges the financial support of: the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.