Keeping Hope Alive
From the WIP series Colonial Views. Paint, earth & ink on handmade kozo paper
It’s hard to sit in uncomfortable places. The ones which hold memories of people or events you’d rather forget or wish you never knew about. Yet the world is full of such places. Many have become places of remembrance eg Hiroshima or Auschwitz. Places where humanity was tested and failed and rose again.
Australia is full of such places, but they are hidden in plain sight. Nowhere more so than in Tasmania, the first penal colony called VDL - Van Diemen’s Land. Here in Oatlands the Commissariat house behind the artist residency where I am staying was a place of planning and provisioning, where battle strategies were laid out and men were provisioned with muskets and ammunition to fight the Tasmania Blood War.
During my first week in the residency I visited the military buildings in the town, from the Commissariat to the Supreme Court and Gaol. I felt burdened by the weight of historical brutality; reading about the crimes committed by convicts and settlers and the fierce resistance by the Tasmanian Aborigines defending their country.
Transcribing these feelings onto paper meant that the first marks I made were very dark and bloody, responding to the stains on the flagstones in the Supreme Court. After two days of painting malevolent black shapes splashed with sanguine ink, I knew I had to find a way through to the other side of despair.
A midweek trip to Hobart helped restore my hope. Listening to Dr Bob Brown speak about the brave people who are putting themselves on the line to defend the wildlife and native forests of Takayna / Tarkine, I felt my spirits lift. Its war of another kind, happening right now in the native forests in a race to protect nature and all the other-than-human species which live in it.
Dr Bob Brown is fierce in his passionate vision for the future of Takayna. He fuels his hope with the small but growing wins in these environmental battles. Hundreds of people crowded into the Long Gallery in Salamanca Arts Centre at the Art for Takayna exhibition to hear him talk, to buy art and to keep their hope alive, me included. I felt buoyed up with courage to keep hope alive and spread the message of optimism despite all the challenges we face.
My last stop in Hobart before taking the night bus back to Oatlands, was a bookshop where the beautiful cover of a book grabbed my attention. Undersong: a Tasmanian Journey into Country by Hilary Burdon is fast becoming the perfect companion to my own journey in Oatlands. It is a gentle, lyrical narrative of storytelling which weaves in and around the landscape through the voices of women.
The next day when I woke up in my residency house in Oatlands, I rolled up the blind in the kitchen to look through the colonial windows panes at the Commissariat. I realised I was looking at the same view, but different. As the poet Emily Dickinson wrote “tell all the truth but tell it slant”. (poem 1263)
I am here in the present, gazing with 21st century consciousness at the past, reconciling the two views. It is said that the first step to healing is acknowledgement. The next step is taking action. As Dr Bob Brown said this week, “Don’t just get angry, get active”. It’s a rallying cry.
Dr Bob Brown talking to supporters at the Art for Takayna exhibition, Hobart.
Wearing my T-shirt with pride
