I would like to acknowledge the stolen lands of the Wangal People of the Darug Nation, on which I live and work and the lands of the Cabrogal People of the Darug Nation, where A Whisper Echoes Loudest is presented. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, and this is and always will be Aboriginal land.

The Australian colonial narrative is one that, despite first beginning over two centuries ago, continues to be intolerable to the broader Australian public today. The Australian colonial narrative did not cease at the turn of Federation, 1 January 1901, but continues to echo through contemporary Australian education, attitudes and actions.

A Whisper Echoes Loudest recognises the narratives of those who have always, and those who now call the continent so-called Australia home. The narratives presented are not exclusively from the point of invasion, but include ones that intersect, are tangential, and implicate the carefully constructed and upheld image of Australia. A Whisper Echoes Loudest is an attempt at an antithesis to the colonial perspective of Australia by inserting personal and familial stories of those often pushed to the peripheries within the gallery space. These stories are not isolated to historical events, but ones that stretch into and infiltrate the present.

The difficult narratives within the exhibition have previously been concealed from public view and concern, which has been aided by their cavernous absence in the Australian education curriculum. The artistic explorations are a means to not only disseminate the narratives, but through their material manifestation, act as both archival and evidential documents. Artists within the exhibition undertake a process of undoing and remaking, of breaking, tearing, fracturing colonial narratives apart and reassembling them, weaving not a new narrative, (possibly one to you), but one that sits alongside, combats and re-rights.

Despite the difficult, and sometimes violent narratives, a softness permeates through the works. This ties them to a site and place as well as fostering a sense of belonging. The artworks reject graphic and violent representations and instead employ soft and beautiful techniques, or what Carmen Glynn-Braun articulates as ‘gentle aesthetics’. Through this artistic process, the artists seek not to inflict harm on the viewer, but instead elicit a sense of empathy, and consequently understanding.

The artworks’ insertion into the gallery space means that the narratives they depict can no longer be refuted. The works reinsert these discarded narratives into the dominant discourse, one that has typically been inundated with western perspectives and ideology. The artworks subsequently act as archival repositories, as well as temporary memorials and monuments.

The Australian colonial project first encountered this continent at the point of invasion. Its historical and ongoing implications on Australian First Nations People was recently acknowledged in 2008 through the National Apology by former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. Kamilarori and Gamilaraay artist Dennis Golding and Southern Arrernte, Kaytetye and Anmatyerre artist Carmen Glynn-Braun insert personal and collective experiences of colonial violence into the gallery space. Whilst embodying resilience, these works also call for an empathetic reaction, one not previously or willingly granted.

Dennis Golding’s work Remnants [Shields] (2023) interrogates the colonial marker of ownership – the fence, whilst also straddling its ideations of home and protection. Remnants [Shields] is composed of multiple fence fragments moulded on those that enclosed his childhood terrace houses in “The Block”, Redfern. The fence fragments are arranged in formations that resemble traditional Aboriginal shields. This process of fragmenting and remaking acts not only as a reclamation of the land, but also the protection and safekeeping of culture.

Seal of approval (2023) by Carmen Glynn-Braun consists of four hanging single black sheets. Several marks have been made on the sheets using bleach, stripping the fabric of its deep pigment. This process reflects the implementation of various governmental assimilation policies, in which children were stolen from Aboriginal families between 1910 and 1980 to ‘breed out’ their Aboriginality. Rather than leave the bleach marks as is, Glynn-Braun has concealed them by applying various shades of makeup. In Seal of approval, Glynn-Braun draws attention specifically to the women who were taken from their families and sent to ‘white’ homes for indentured servitude.

The concept of a ‘white’ Australia is well within living memory and is one that has not only devastated First Nations communities, but also those fleeing conflict from other nations. The works of Sha Sarwari, Mehwish Iqbal, Nadia Refaei and Rosell Flatley challenge the perception of those who now call Australia home.

Sha Sarwari, an Afghani refugee now based in Logan, Queensland, interrogates Australian photographer Max Dupain’s infamous photograph Sunbaker (1937) in his work National Icon (2015). Upon first look, Sarwari assumed the man in the photograph had just been saved from drowning, not a man soaking up the sun on one of Australia’s many beaches. At a time under the Howard Federal Government (1996-2007), those fleeing conflict and persecution from foreign nations to Australia were denoted as ‘boat people’, and in the newspapers the term ‘asylum seeker’ felt synonymous with ‘terrorist’.

Ideas of belonging and migratory experiences are echoed in the intricate, illustrious works of Mehwish Iqbal. Her works Infiltration of a Foreign Entity (2022) and The Inferior Body (2022) traverse time and space, navigating her own migration from Pakistan to Australia. Iqbal adopts detailed and repetitive mark-making practices that allude to people and their unbreakable connection to the natural world. In doing so, Iqbal’s works weave personal and collective narratives and perspectives on the process of finding a place to call home in a new land and navigating placemaking in colonially steeped Australia.

٢٠١١-١٩٩٨ by Nadia Refaei, pieces together familial histories through personal photographs taken during her childhood in Syria. Now living in nipaluna (Hobart region), ٢٠١١-١٩٩٨ is a personal response to the ongoing Syrian conflict and an attempt to maintain connection to family and country. Created through the laborious and unpredictable process of papermaking, constructed to a similar size of a typical family photograph, the papers are carefully stitched together to form several threads. The threads pinned to the wall cascade gently downwards, a reference to both the creation and maintenance of an archive as well as the fragmentation of personal memory over time.

Rosell Flatley’s installation The Pedicab (2023) employs the traditional transportation device as a vehicle for storytelling and dialogue of migratory experiences. In particular, women from the Philippines migrating to Australia, leaving their families by necessity in search of more financially fruitful opportunities. Flatley’s alter ego ‘Ate Indai (ahh-thay In-dye)’ carries passengers on the traditional pedicab, and records their conversations that allude to personal and collective experiences of migration. Ate Indai’s steadfast presence and her iridescent pedicab, disrupts the otherwise comfortable obliviousness towards colonial attitudes to migratory people.

A Whisper Echoes Loudest carries intersecting and diverging narratives, to act as a reflective, meditative space for memorialisation and understanding. The artistic renditions of difficult narratives by Shivanjani Lal and Roberta Joy Rich adopt the role of temporary memorials. These ephemeral moments of reflection and remembering sit outside of ‘colonial’ formations of memorials and monuments.

Shivanjani Lal’s work Grief is a mirror (2023) speaks to histories of loss initiated by the British colonial project. Lal reflects on the experiences of those forcibly taken from India to Fiji as indentured labourers to work on sugar plantations in service of Australia. Along with friends and family, Lal hand-built Mala (prayer beads) composed of terracotta and turmeric. In the gallery space, the Mala are not fixed or draped around a particular figure but are suspended alone in honour of those who are no longer present. Here, Grief is a mirror adopts the role of a memorial and quiet monument to those who have slipped between the cracks of Australian colonial history.

Nascent gestures; an ode to displaced ancestors (from Nusantara to the Kaap) (2023), forms Roberta Joy Rich’s gesture to ancestors who maintained resilience whilst enduring colonial violence and silencing. The two-channel video work depicting a sunrise and sunset, is accompanied by an offering of silky incense, which permeates through the gallery space. The work is one manifestation of Rich’s embarkment on an archaeological dig through her South African heritage, collecting whispers and then piecing them together. The installation is one that honours the past and memory, while simultaneously a moment captured of continual learning.

In sharing these difficult personal and collective narratives using soft, gentle aesthetics, the exhibition seeks to foster a sense of empathy, understanding and community. A Whisper Echoes Loudest holds space whilst also refuting the dominant colonial discourse in an attempt to stir those from the comfort of their ignorance. Throughout the exhibition there is a process of breaking apart, of dismantling colonial records, structures and rules and piecing them back together, creating new objects, archives and memories.