BIRRUNGA WIRADYURI
Always Was Always Will Be (Aboriginal Land)

2020
acrylic on canvas
61 x 152cm

The red is for the blood spilled and spilling since colonisation in defense of our lands.

The two badhawal (boomerangs) are drawn from a Wiradyuri one that pre-dates colonisation, and has been used, owned by the artist.

The words are deliberately camouflaged in reference to our struggles with reclaiming our land with the colonial weighting on ‘tangible’ evidence being the key requirement to show constant connection to our lands since colonisation, after it has been deliberately/ systematically removed as one of the first acts of colonisation.

This leaves us with the intangibles with which to provide proof.

The intangibles carry less evidential weight even though our connections to Country and our relationships with Country are steeped in the ‘intangibles’ of place, ceremony, spirituality, ancestral and geographic belonging et al.

The words ‘Always Was Always Will BE’ are presented as underpinning intangibles, in English, then in Wiradyuri as well as Wiradyuri translated to English and again finally in English.

Aboriginal is positioned to the left and Land to the right.

Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land.