marvellous thing about the State Library Of New South Wales is that you can see some wonderful and diverse exhibitions all within a few footsteps of each other.
As you enter the large galleries of colonial Australia as a permanent display, directly to your right is a carefully curated indigenous exhibition entitled the COUNTRY CRIES FOR TRUTH.
In 2021-2022 Dr Bronwyn Bancroft completed a series of new works as part of the inaugural NSW First Nations Creative Fellowship at the State Library Of New South Wales funded by Create NSW.
These works added to a decade long body of work by Dr Bancroft which explores her family, culture, history and Country. It includes pieces from Dr Bancroft’s family archives, scared belongings from the Bundjalung Country and a series of new mixed media artworks that echo photographs of Solferino and Lionsville from the Library’s J.A.Lindt collection.
Through her techniques of painting on to family photographs, stencilled river-stone art, and intentional sprinkles of colour on to colonial historical images, Dr Bancroft’s work highlights the attempted erasure of Country. At the same time, the works reclaim her ancestral lands through shadowing trees and watchful figures of the Mob.
This exhibition calls for the viewer to consider the devastation of colonialisation for Aboriginal people. In this endeavour Dr Bancroft was assisted by her daughter Ella Bancroft. It was sensitively curated by Cherokee Lord (Curator) Indigenous Engagement, State Library Of New South Wales.
This free exhibition at the State Library Of New South Wales runs until Sunday 1st June 2025.
Text and photos at Ben Apfelbaum
