Broken Hill City Art Gallery is hosting Looking Through Windows: tablelands, the coast to outback NSW curated by Dr Lorina Barker.
Looking Through Windows is an oral history, artistic and multimedia project exploring the removal, dispossession, and ‘protection’ of Aboriginal people in NSW and parts of QLD and SA.
The extensive project engages community members from New England region, the northwest and north coast of NSW, and the Flinders Ranges in SA.
Project leader, Dr Barker, from the University of New England, says, “I was yarning with Nan about what it meant to be taken from Country and I wrote a poem about it. With her endorsement, I read that poem at the Yaama Cultural Festival held in Bourke in 2006 and it took off from there.”
Yarning creates a safe, creative and cultural space for sharing and passing on knowledge at Elders and OnCountry Gatherings. Fostering a practice where Aboriginal people manage their own stories, images, voices, and artworks by taking control of how their stories are recorded and represented.
“The exhibition has come full circle using different artistic mediums, including oral history, filmmaking, photography, music, performance, as a way of expressing our history, culture and knowledge,” Dr Barker said.
The project began as a series of OnCountry Gatherings with multi-media workshops in 2017 and 2018, funded by the Australian Government through the Indigenous Language and Arts (ILA) program. It is also funded by Create NSW and is a significant outcome for two major Australian Research Indigenous Discovery projects.
The project can be experienced at the City Art Gallery at 404-408 Argent St until Sunday April 28.
PICTURE: Looking Through Windows Curator, Dr Lorina Barker. SUPPLIED
