Fiona Foley
Fiona Foley’s large-scale text-based sculpture DISPERSED is a monument to the Aboriginal people who were driven off their land, and often killed, on the Queensland colonial frontier in the nineteenth century. The forced displacement of Aboriginal people from their land was often carried out by a special Native Police force, which was formed to suppress Aboriginal resistance to colonisation.
The letters of the sculpture are made from metal and charred wood, while the ‘D’ features .303 bullet casings similar to those in the rifles used during police raids. Because many people at the time opposed such violence as morally wrong and illegal, the authorities used specific words to disguise the actions of the police. The word ‘dispersed’ was used to refer to the killing of Aboriginal people. Foley uses this word to draw attention to a dark and largely forgotten chapter in Australia’s history.
Fiona Foley was born in Maryborough, Queensland, and is a descendent of the Badtjala people, whose ancestral homeland is the island of K’gari (Fraser Island) in south-east Queensland.
Fiona Foley was born in Maryborough, Queensland, and is a descendent of the Badtjala people, whose ancestral homeland is the island of K’gari (Fraser Island) in south-east Queensland.
Fiona Foley addresses gender, race and history in her art, and challenges the way many Australians have traditionally defined Aboriginality. She often uses her own heritage as a starting point to explore aspects of Australian history that have been forgotten or hidden from view. Foley’s investigations of historical events, museum collections and largely archives bring to light confronting aspects of Australian history, drawing attention to the way colonisation has affected, and continues to affect, Aboriginal Australians.
http://learning.qagoma.qld.gov.au/?p=2200
Fiona Foley is a leading contemporary Australian artist as well as a curator and lecturer. This exhibition presented a survey of Foley’s art from 1994 to 2009 and included key works across photography, sculpture and installation, printmaking and video. Descended from the Badtjala people of Thoorgine or K’gari (Fraser Island) and based in Brisbane, Foley explores a range of concerns through her practice including colonial race relations, sexuality and the experiences of Queensland’s Aboriginal populations at the turn of the twentieth century. Through her art Foley mines forgotten or hidden histories, bringing them to light as a means to assess our present in relation to the past.
https://www.mca.com.au/collection/exhibition/511-forbidden-fiona-foley/
What I have learnt:
Her use of words, or a key word in her work is so important
Comes from the culture she is trying to protect
She is directly responding to something that happened in the past and was tried to be hidden
Her response is clearly seen in her choice of word as well as the material she chose to use
