The Hard Light of Day
Page 26
ROADMAKERS
1996
105CMX155CM
PRIVATE COLLECTION, MELBOURNE
I made a preliminary drawing of the missionaries and blackfellas working side by side on Arltunga road. But when Arranye saw the drawing, he immediately corrected me. ‘Who this whitefella holding the rock?’ he asked. I said, ‘That’s one of the Catholic Brothers.’
‘No, no, my boy. Mission mob only together with us mob till they drop us off. We do that shovel and barrow job. Hard work, that one. Proper hard work. No one do it like that today!’
I used Courbet’s Stonebreakers (1849) as an idea upon which to base my painting of the Arrernte working on the road. The central figures, David Johnson and Paul Hayes, were swivelled ninety degrees from Courbet’s profile pose. Other poses I lifted from the Australian late nineteenth-century realist Tom Roberts’s seminal work Shearing the Rams (1894), in homage to both Courbet and the dignity of labour. Arranye was particularly pleased with the revised work.
‘Now you do it, just like I tell you, my boy.’
RIVERSIDE BOTTLESHOP
1997
130CMX206CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
This alludes to the intimidating aggression around the bottle shop driveway. Tension built around midday opening, when the crowds would wait under the rivergums (pictured to the right). Almost on a daily basis, the police cruised the area to prevent the scuffles was in the car, at the traffic lights, and brawling drunks clambered over the bonnet. It was not uncommon to see drinkers asleep on the footpath or in the middle of the road. Now there are paid Shane Ride Security personnel, conspicuously posted.
The pugilist is David centre, and Patrick junior looking down at Xavier Neil stretched out on the road.
DAWN SERVICE
1998
140CMX290CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Given the re-invigorated religious fervour of Santa Teresa, I wasn’t surprised to see the construction of a modest grotto on the low rise, mid-point of camp. Myra Hayes’s preferred location was on the higher western ridge. Arranye insisted on its centrality. He had the final say, which was respected posthumously. The young men built it and the women embellished it with candles, rosaries and sacred photos.
A few weeks after the old man’s funeral, I dropped Xavier and Lilla at camp and was touched to see them wander over to the grotto and light two candles and pray before retiring. Eventually, this space was enclosed with a bough shelter constructed by the Hayes men and consecrated by Father Pat Mullins. Months later, it was incinerated during a drunken tiff. It has not been used since.
Young Patrick Hayes expounds on Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Myra, Lawrence, Kaston and Norleen Hayes stand near the Cross.
NEW WORLD CAR PARK
1999
140CMX90CM
COLLECTION OF LISA ABOUD AND SEAN HOGBEN, BRISBANE
New World Car Park is another urban theme. I wanted to feature the mural on the west wall of the Coles building. There was something surreal about Aboriginal people sitting before it, the large-scale depictions of Aborigines at their backs. Joseph Hayes junior lies on the trunk of a car and seems to respond to the signal from the cowboy in the mural, as other family members lounge around the vehicles. Harold Hayes is sitting on the fence railing and pointing in the opposite direction to the cowboy. Derek Hayes handles the stroller.
The mural was painted by Bob and Kay Kessing and documents the settling of Central Australia. The corner we see has in it the arrival of a truck, a soldier asking directions from the black cowboy, and the Flying Doctors’ aircraft buzzing over watercolourist Albert Namatjira. He appears to be painting the landscape behind the truck, which suggests he has internalised the landscape now separated from his direct vision: a neat irony.
THIS IS NOT A BULL
2003
126CMX170CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
The title of this caprice might invoke Magritte’s This Is not a Pipe (1929) but it references Mark Tansey’s Innocent Eye Test (1981), which in turn refers to Paulus Potter’s Young Bull (1647). These works share the display of realist work in a gallery with spectators present. And Plato’s notion of grades of mimesis and the artifice of painting are here given with Patrick Hayes, Kaston Hayes (turning from the magnificent Brahman bull’s testes), Bobby Hayes and Peter Clavey Johnson puzzling over my bull. A Top End kangaroo is on show as well as Gordon Bennett’s Inland Sea (1993).
RECONCILIATION WALK OVER THE TODD RIVER
2003
118CMX293CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
This is a reconstruction of the Reconciliation Walk over the Todd River in Alice Springs. It struck me how in this town, with its locus of black political power, the walk was so little represented by its Indigenous faction. I deployed classic poses in the confrontation between Xavier Neil and myself as we make up the cast, mostly affiliated with the Aboriginal industry, with some alluding to Raphael Sanzio’s School of Athens (1509). The central, mirrored poses of Xavier and myself were inspired meet. Other friends and family by Martha Mayer Erlebacher’s The Path (1999). Bill Davis holds a placard sporting the Aboriginal flag and the question, in Arrernte, ‘Can we walk together?’
FIRE PAINTS THE COUNTRY BLACK
2003
86CMX139CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
During 2001 and 2002 the Western Desert regions were subject to vast fires. Some had such massive fronts that it was futile to fight them. The loss of species, plant and animal, perhaps extinctions, has yet to be estimated. Around Alice Springs, spot fires erupted, some deliberately torched. At this time, I’d plonk my younger daughter, Anjou, in her car seat and take her for an afternoon cruise along nearby tracks. The rolling momentum had her nodding off in minutes. Once, when passing an incinerated patch, she remarked, ‘Fire paints the country black, Dad’. Though I’d long wanted to paint her as one of Velasquez’s dark-eyed child beauties, this exclamation from my three-year-old moved me on from his tragic babes. She clutches her Snoopy Dog toy like a shield and clenches her fist, anxious in these surrounds. Kaston Hayes and Marla, our Jack Russell, accompany her.
FALLEN MAN
2005
91CMX139CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
I used Bellini’s Drunkenness of Noah (1516) for this image of Noelly Johnson being cared for by his sisters and Sylvester Hayes. The cup is a direct lift. Alcohol consumption per capita in Alice Springs is unrivalled anywhere in Australia. Eighty licensed liquor outlets cater for the town’s 27,500 people. Popular media ignore the proportionally larger contribution of whitefellas to this statistic, concentrating on the conspicuous party groups in the riverbed and parks, carousing argumentatively through the town’s central mall and sleeping where they fall.
XAVIER’S CAMP ON TEPPA HILL
2005
95CMX169CM
COLLECTION OF ROSEMARY WHITE, NEW SOUTH WALES
Xavier Neil quit Whitegate in the early 1990s and resided mostly on Teppa Hill, north-east of Alice’s CBD. He’d shift camp depending on the time of year. In winter he camped on the eastern flank to take advantage of the sun and for protection from the prevailing cold winds. During summer he mostly camped where this painting is situated, overlooking the town’s industrial estate and rail terminal. The advent of the Stratco hardware warehouse provided an ironic contrast to Xavier’s hillside living quarters.
HOUSE ON THE HILL
2005–2006
125CMX220CM
COLLECTION OF ANNA PAPPAS, MELBOURNE
The pictorial possibilities of this tin shed appealed, exposed as it is with open ground lapping its flanks, and vistas of plain receding to distant Emily Gap behind the lone bloodwood. The shed had long been abandoned when I adopted it for a domestic scene. I Rice to help p
eople the place up, putting Anjou on Michael’s lap while Gerard fondled ‘Whitey’ and pup.
KING OF THE CASTLE
2006
100CMX184CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
This work attempts to convey some of the nonchalant feel of the Sundays spent with the kids looking for bush tucker. A string of kids would lead our morning strolls, excitedly scanning the ground for any semblance of life be it vegetative or animal. The awele-awele/bush tomatoes grow in small clusters on prickly, blue-green plants that keep close to the ground. Bush banana was prominent and, in season, the nectar of the corkwood blooms is much cherished, plucked and licked like an ice cream. The ‘King’ is Kaston Hayes.
DRUM ATWEME
2006
110CMX140CM
COLLECTION OF RITA AND LIONEL LUBITZ, MELBOURNE
Kaston Hayes seems oblivious to the drumming by the town’s most celebrated drumming outfit, Drum Atweme. The ensemble has been the success story of another Tangentyere-funded initiative mastered by the indefatigable Peter Lowson. They’ve opened conferences and played at the Adelaide Arts Festivals.
KERRE: BIG MEAT MORNING
2006
113CMX167CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Undoolya Station’s whitefella Hayes occasionally slaughtered a few ‘killers’ to keep on side with Patrick Hayes at Whitegate. I went out to collect my trailer one morning. I’d left it for wood collection. There were steer heads lying on the dust, and the skins and offal dumped in my trailer the previous evening. Adrian Hayes junior is centrally placed. Michael Hayes and Gerard Rice are at the tables.
CONFRONTATION
2006
120CMX176CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Raffi reported over Easter in 2006 how he’d been bailed up by a taunting ring of young Indigenous youths on the track that runs over the hill near my home in Alice Springs. Any proposed scuffling was abandoned when, fortunately, one of the lads recognised him. He passed on unscathed but shaken by the event.
Such incidents are indicative of the tensions between the races that percolate on a daily basis. Johnathan, Patrick and Daryl Loo-Hayes surround Raffi by the Colorbond fence line that surrounds the town estate, separating it from the vast eternity of the bush.
THE CALLING OF DALLAS GOREY
2006
108CMX180CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
This alludes to the moment when a youth is called by an initiated man to go to business/initiation camp in the bush. I asked Lorraine Gorey if she’d be interested to comply together with her son, Dallas. I’d originally thought to locate the composition in the bush but the lounge room table of Catholic paraphernalia was too good to pass. The table of icons to the Virgin Mary is authentically note-perfect. However, I tarted up the wall with a pattern motif and added the Caravaggio quotation, Calling of St Matthew (1599), to enhance the iconography and the rhythms provided by Gerard Rice (right).
Caravaggio’s sombre interior depicts the arrival of Jesus and the calling of Matthew by Jesus to join his small band of followers. Gerard Rice, a senior man of cultural status, summons Dallas, the younger man, to come to the initiation camp. Lorraine is defending him, as is typical in a ceremonially mock display – preventing her son from being taken away. The painting concept displays two different or parallel ‘calling’ moments.
INTERVENTION
2007
100CMX80CM
COLLECTION OF SUSAN CHIRGWIN, ADELAIDE
The painting’s title is a reference to the Howard Government’s 2007 Emergency Intervention in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. But nothing short of divine intervention would be needed to reverse the consequences of Settler impact on Indigenous people, and something akin to the miracle birth would be required to imagine the ongoing viability of Aboriginal settlements and perhaps even Indigenous culture and identity in general. It is as though Caravaggio’s Nativity (1609) has appeared in the lives of Whitegate families (Jack, Norleen, Shirleen and Adrian Hayes), offering a chance of rebirth, of being born again.
JUSTICE PARABLE
2008
85CMX157CM
COLLECTION OF JOHN HUTTON, BRISBANE
A simple reworking of Breughel’s 1565 master work. I replaced the rural landscape of Renaissance Holland with present-day Alice Springs. The backdrop of a church and farmhouses has become a strip mall, a new model sedan idles at the traffic lights, and a vibrant orange-pink afternoon light, casting strong blue shadows, stands in place of the pale grey Dutch sky. While the action and poses of the figures remain the same, representatives of our legal system replace five of the six anonymous peasants. In ‘descending’ order, a stricken judge now leads the procession consisting of a barrister, followed by a solicitor, a lawyer, and a police officer. The last ‘peasant’ has been replaced with shirtless and shoeless Adrian Hayes, replete with his own law paint, standing close to but independent of the hapless professionals. He surveys the scene with a bemused grin, one hand scratching his head and the other open-palmed and gesturing towards the procession, not all that surprised that this dire slapstick would occur before him. The chain of legal professionals here are depictions of Simon Leadbeater, Henry Smith, Suzi Lyon, Iain Campbell and Mandy Webb.
DEFINING THE CONTEST OF THE DRAINS
2008
96CMX174CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
This is a capricious ‘contrivance’ of an idea marking a point of agreement between two groups – bush and urban people – over land and water flow. Ronny Webb declares his ownership of country by scribing the sand before bemused town dwellers. The drain in which the assembly meets marks the boundary on the eastern estate of town (the same flats appear in Stone Slingers). To the left stretches the scrub that will encompass Whitegate and Undoolya stations and on towards the Simpson Desert. To the right and west is the built environment of the town. The composition was inspired by a Breughel work, Christ and the Adulteress (1565). The Breughel provided me with the symmetrical composition and an image condensed with Christian and local associations offering a way of depicting a bridging of the racial divide. Note the quiet contrasts of the pure bred Dalmatian and the camp dog, the clutched reference books and the stones. The woman caught in adultery is placed in a context of similar aberrations to the Breughel.
THE ENIGMA OF THE WHITEMAN
1996–2008
76CMX120CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
A double self-portrait with homage to both Courbet’s Wrestlers (1853) and John Anderson’s Wrestlers (1990). The red turf is near Little Well, its quartz-ridden surface known as ‘pieces of the moon’. Joseph Hayes junior documents the bizarre entanglement of the arerte/mad whitefella, nakedly wrestling his double. Also watching from left are Peter Clavey, David Johnson, Robbie Hayes, Dominic Gorey, Marcus Driffen, Michael Marshall, Patrick Hayes, Xavier Neil and Arranye. From Courbet I took the basic poses, angling them ninety degrees from the master’s forthright profiling; from the Anderson I gleaned his proposition of the ‘self ’ in dilemma.
OCTOBER 9TH, 2008: ‘BUT THESE ARE ONLY OUR KIDS ’TOY GUNS’
2008
100CMX144CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Someone had reported to police that a car containing a weapon had crossed Charles Creek into camp. After dark, according to the Kunoth family, about a dozen kicked in the doors in search of the weapon. The process terrified old people and children. The weapon was a small plastic toy. Later, the family made a formal protest to the police, ferocity had been promulgated by liberties granted under the Federal Government’s Emergency Intervention.
Goya’s 3rd of May, 1814 was running through my mind when I set up this confrontational tableau. Goya’s work shows the dramatic moment of execution by Napoleon’s troops of Spanish insurgents who had risen against the inva
sion of Madrid. In response to the intervention, journalist Guy Rundle wrote an essay in Coercive Reconciliation. He asserted that Australia is the only Western country of note to have invaded itself.
AGONY IN THE GARDEN: THE DIAGNOSIS OF DR GOLDENBERG
2009
126CMX170CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
This outcrop is situated close to home on one of my favoured walking tracks. Good friend Howard Goldenberg has been visiting northern communities for over a decade on a locum basis, ministering his medical expertise to those in need. He has regularly commented that he feels he is a mere ‘pus and blood’ doctor as the same people keep coming through the door with the same complaints, seemingly unconcerned with his advice. I consulted several fifteenth-century Agony in the Garden reproductions, chiefly Andreas Mantegna’s (the first memory, at the age of four, that I have of any high art). These outcrops around home have always made me think of Mantegna. With the Christ images in mind, I posed Noelly Johnson kneeling and imploring the attention of the doctor. Far from feeling offended by the negligence inferred by Howard’s gesture, Noelly later commented that the doctor was ‘listening to country’, a poignant insight, possibly, into our present priorities.