Dhungatti artist and Archibald Prize winner Blak Douglas will return to Manly Art Gallery & Museum this April to present the confronting truth about Gayamay (Manly Cove).
INVERTED COMMONERS examines the themes of place and displacement and questions what a place really should be named, especially at Gayamay – the point of first contact between First Nations and the British.
The self-taught artist won the Archibald Prize in 2022 for his portrait of artist and friend Karla Dickens, becoming the second Aboriginal artist to win the prize in 101 years.
In his solo exhibition at MAG&M, Douglas has used painting, film and sculpture to explore the common ground between the displaced “commoners” transported to Australia and the Aboriginal communities who were displaced by their arrival.
Provocative landscapes overlaid with big black inverted commas call into question what a place really should be named.
“In this exhibition I’ve chosen to present a suite of canvases highlighting the superficiality of the rapid erasure and disrespect to the original occupants,” Douglas said.
“My studies of various snapshots of the cove and water ‘country’ are not named per se, but are only quoted by quotation marks/inverted commas.
“The inverted commas are suspended upon the landscape as a reminder: ‘but what is this place really named?’
“The commas are painted in the blackest pigment currently available, a specialised acrylic paint purposely sourced for this body of work. It infers a spiritual questioning of how much do we really understand about ourselves living on this Country?”
As part of the exhibition, the MAG&M Art Wall facing Gayamay will be transformed by the artist into a 24/7 public art piece.
INVERTED COMMONERS is on exhibition from 21 April to 30 July 2023 at Manly Art Gallery & Museum, supported by the Aboriginal Heritage Office and Colormaker Industries.
A special workshop on ‘Anatomy of a Cloud’ will be held on Sunday 30 June, for budding artists to explore the exhibition with the artist and create their own unique cloud painting. A meet the artist event will also be held on Saturday 8 July.
Featured image : Blak Douglas, ‘Inverted Commoners #1’, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 100 x 150cm
