My creative practice takes place on the lands of the Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri Woiwurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present, their ancestors and families, acknowledging their deep and ongoing spiritual connection to Country. I extend my respects to Wathaurong Waddawurrung peoples, whose lands I was birthed and raised upon that have deeply shaped me and my experiences.

I acknowledge Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri custodianship of the lands, waterways and skies that I continue to live, work and benefit from, recognising that sovereignty was never ceded. I come with an intention to deepen my understanding of ancestral pathways as a diasporic being, while sharing, learning and creating on unceded lands (Melbourne, Australia).

I extend this acknowledgement and pay my respects to peer African and Indigenous peoples across the globe viewing this website.

The Fairest Cape? An account of a Coloured

Firstdraft Gallery, Gadigal Country - Sydney
,
6 - 29 Mar 2019

'In Johannesburg 2016, I visited a building (now a pending demolition site) once known as Auden House in the bustling city district of Braamfontein. Spilling out of a cupboard of broken light fittings and print paraphernalia were piles of framed publication covers published by the South African Institute of Race Relations dating from 1944 - 96, presenting loaded titles of texts, pamphlets and lectures ranging from 'The Church and Race Relations, Civil Rights and Present Wrongs, Democracy in Multi-Racial Societies, Vanishing Lands and Migrant Labour' and 'Ras, Beskawing en Vooroodeel.'

'Coloured' communities in southern Africa have long been constructed as fundamentally “different” to their Black brothers and sisters, where white colonial regime meticulously positioned ‘Coloured’ people to aspire to be like them, but never actually be in their position.

I returned to South Africa to search for meaning in one archive I had literally stumbled upon, and to discover another archive I know exists but was deliberately kept away from us.

Our rich diversity of many enslaved groups (some may say “mixed race”), alongside the contributing mechanics of colonisation, is central to understanding why psychologically many ‘Coloured’ people simultaneously acknowledge and negate their Indigenous KhoiKhoi and San lineages.

What I came across was again a case of majority ‘white’ anthropologic and ethnographic researchers writing and speaking about Black and Brown communities without community involvement or their voices in positions of control.

This exhibition is a selection of works produced while on two research residencies in South Africa, beginning in Johannesburg, and concluding in Cape Town.'

This project was assisted by The Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship, administered by the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA).

Photo's by Zan Wimberley.

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