Each time I look back I am peering through a new lens, through new windows to my past, while standing in the present. The memories that define us are like moons which circle us, each has a unique orbit, recurring in our minds and our lives, keeping the past alive in a metaphysical way.1
Contemporary Indigenous art has, in recent years, been invigorated by its examination of histories, traditions and practices through the lens of new information and current interpretations. Artist Judy Watson has a long-term interest in museum practices, as evidenced in her series of etchings, our skin/our hair/our bones in your collections (1997). While the Aboriginal objects she partly concealed with her etching process in these works were in overseas collections, the exhibition she co-curated with University of Queensland (UQ) Anthropology Museum director Diana Young, used material from local Queensland sources. The UQ Anthropology Museum collection was founded by amateur anthropologist Lindsey P. Winterbotham, who collected between the 1930s and 1960s, ‘… preserving from complete loss all the very interesting material that could be gathered concerning the culture—the old culture—of this ancient people…’.2 Winterbotham and his collectors made a practice of recording their notes directly onto the items collected.
Watson and Young make a feature of this practice—seen now as, at best disrespectful and at worst vandalism—in Written on the body. Yet the exhibition is presented in a seductively beautiful and playful display, intended to ‘rattle the bones of the museum’,3 juxtaposing cultural objects—stone axes, grinding stones, spears—with borrowed everyday items, old and new, sacred and profane. This process of audience involvement allowed the exhibition to relate love, loss, memory and family in
Artists unrecorded, Chert points from Lawn Hill. Photograph Carl Warner.
Artist unrecorded, Nut anvil from Cairns. Photograph Carl Warner.
