This is sort of like an extension of a work I made called Weak in Colour, but strong in blood, that refers to the scientific testing of Aboriginal people. Particularly by, Norman Tindale, who did a lot of ethnographic studies in Australia and took a lot of blood samples, photographs, skin samples, saliva, hair.
And so this work in particular, looks at the pinching of skin and taking what was not theirs to take I guess, like in terms of body parts. I call them, for my ancestors, their remains now because they passed on. So there's still collections around of body samples. So this is about how that process was painful for Aboriginal people and especially my family. Those tests were done under duress and without their permission.
So I've used blown glass, because I trained as a glassblower, blowing glass to, pinch and drag and I guess disfigure the bush bananas that I make.
In order for us as Australians and Aboriginal people to move forward, we need to talk about past histories of the treatment of Aboriginal people. So part of my work is about that, giving voices to those who didn't have one in the past.
It's interesting because the bush food that I make in glass often are referred to body parts and organs. Sometimes look like uteruses or women think that, they react more to this work. I think a lot of my work demands that kind of attention. It's not to make people afraid of the work, but it's like this is exactly what happened. Visually, this is what happened, and hopefully that story will stay with you because I think there's still a lot of racism in Australia, and being an artist is a really great way to tell those stories, because people are always going to have a visual memory of it.
