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  • Belonging Pamela Croft Warcon, The Sorry Wall (detail)
  • Belonging Pamela Croft Warcon, Mud Map Series

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Belonging

09/05/2008

Pamela Croft Warcon

BELONGING
Pamela Croft Warcon
9 May - 10 August 2008

Pamela Croft Warcon of the Uralarai People in South West Queensland works and resides near Keppel Sands near Rockhampton on the Capricorn Coast in Central Queensland. The artworks in this exhibition explore how visual art can be an alternative story site for reconciliation, a tool for healing, an educational experience and a political act.

These visual narratives are about informing, revealing and piecing together fragmentations outlining the shape of past, present, and future possibilities, personal and cultural experiences and the effects of colonisation. Incorporated is a 'land-centered' philosophy and 'both ways' methodology through the exploration of placement, identity and belonging; depicting stories and memories of the personal, the Indigenous, and the human condition as layers within the landscape, as archeological digs.

'Journeying through time to unravel connecting threads is ever-present in my work, allowing the viewer to see their own image reflected with disparate meanings producing cultural identities. I would like to stimulate thoughts of what it means to be Australian. For me it is about equality and respect for each other, and for all living flora and fauna and dormant land sites. As an Australian nation of peoples we must acknowledge, understand and accept the layers of history, of stories, of culture, of languages, of secrets, of beliefs and values that exist within this amazing land. The installation sites of cultural landscape maps reveal 'silenced' memories and hidden stories as contemporary social and historical texts. They are contemplations and reflections. The installation sites are 'in between' spaces of mutual influence and cultural intermingling; the space of self, of identity and landscape, a mutually supportive space for resolving antagonisms.'

Many Aboriginal narratives engage in an act of ritual remembering, where telling an alternative is an intervention in the white discourse of Australian history. There is a deliberate intent to provide subtle information, always leaving something unavailable which allows for a multitude of projections of memories and individual interpretation.

Exhibitions