1

jason wing

Matt Poll

Commissioning Editor

page 1 of internal pages(not the front cover)

MAY 20

2 3

Duty Free

4 5

An Australian Government Initiative

6 7

pp. 2–3 Duty Free, 2013 (detail)timber, glass and model ship, dimensions variable. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

pp. 4–5 An Australian Government Initiative, 2010digital photograph on metallic fuji flex paper, 150 x 100 cm, edition of three

p. 6 Duty Free, 2013timber, glass and model ship, dimensions variable. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

pp. 8–9 The Native Institute, 2013, installation view, Blacktown Arts Centre. Photo: Silversalt

p. 10 Self Portrait, 2009cement, bamboo and acrylic paint, 120 x 20 cm overall

p. 11 Take Away, 2009plastic and LED lights, 15 x 30 cm

p. 12 Going Going Gone, 2011found sticker, 15 x 60 cm. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 13 Fleased, 2011found sticker, 2 x 10 cm. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

Duty Free

8 9

The Native Institute

10 11

Self Portrait Take Away

12 13

Going Going Gone Fleased

14 15

Blood, Sweat and Tears

16 17

Migration

18 19

Sign of the Times

20 21

pp. 14–15 Blood, Sweat and Tears, 2010mixture of spices, chain, coffee, sugar, glass, cork and salt, site specific installation, installation view, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney

pp. 16–17 Migration, 2009spray paint, site specific installation. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

pp. 18–19 Sign of the Times, 2009mixed media, dimensions variable. Photo: Silversalt

p. 20 Broken Bones, Broken Homes, 2011brick, spray paint, nuts and bolts, dimensions variable. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

22 23

Great Wall

24 25

Great Wall

26 27

Study for Black Boy Growth Chart

28 29

No Rights

30 31

pp. 22–25 Great Wall 1–7, 2012seven digital prints on paper, each 59 x 84 cm, edition of five

p. 26 Study for Blackboy, c1985, found photograph, 15 x 10 cm

p. 27 Growth Chart, 2013pencil, site specific installation. Photo: Shay Tobin

pp. 28–29 No Rights, 2012installation view, digital print on metal plate, each 70 x 35 cm, edition of three. Photo: Nima Nabili Rad

p. 31 Duty Free, 2013timber, glass and model ship. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

Duty Free

33

Captain James Crook

34 35

Fossil Fuels

36 37

pp. 32–33 Captain James Crook, 2013bronze, 60 x 30 x 30 cm, edition of three. Collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Photo: Garrie Maguire

pp. 34–36 Fossil Fuels, 2013found Royal Australian Navy pendant lamp and cast resin, dimensions variable. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 38 Double Crossing, 2013found street signs, 130 x 130 cm, installation view. Photo: Silversalt

38 39

Double Crossing

40 41

Longing for December 28th

42 43

pp. 40–41 Longing for December 28th, 2013cheesecloth, powder coated aluminium, spray paint and projected image, dimensions variable. Photo: Silversalt

p. 42 None Left, 2012digital print on metal plate, each 70 x 35 cm, edition of three, installation view in Redfern, Sydney. Photo: Nima Nabili Rad

p. 44 Walk All Over Me, 2011digital print on paper, 400 x 20 cm overall. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

None Left

44 45

An Australian Government Initiative

46 47

People of Substance

48 49

Blacktown Dreaming Rainbow Dreaming

50 51

Elders

52 53

pp. 46–48People of Substance, 2011installation view, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 48 Blacktown Dreaming, 2009 (detail)acrylic paint, MDF, perspex, hypodermic needles, pillow and spray paint cans, dimensions variable. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 49 Rainbow Dreaming, 2009hypodermic syringes, perspex and food colouring, 20 x 15 cm. Photo courtesy of Campbeltown Arts Centre

pp. 50–51 Elders, 2011pigment and PVA, site specific installation. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 53 Installing work for Survey at Carriageworks, Sydney and detail of mural created during OzAsia Festival, Adelaide, both 2010

Survey / Ozand

54 55

Parramatta River Dreaming

56 57

SlaveryRedrum

58 59

Xucun Village

60 61

FIX DEEP ETCH

Taihung Mountain

62 63

p. 54 None Left, 2012 (detail)digital print on metal plate, each 70 x 35 cm, edition of three. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 55 Parramatta River Dreaming, 2010spray paint on aluminium, 147 x 230 cm. Collection: Artbank

p. 56 Redrum, 2011red wine, site specific installation, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre. Photo: Silversalt

p. 57 Slavery, 2011tobacco and PVA glue, 20 x 50 cm, installation view, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre. Photo: Silversalt

pp. 58–60 Xucun Village, 2014brick and gold leaf, 300 x 300 cm. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 61 Taihung Mountain, 2014found Chinese scroll, 180 x 56 cm. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 63 White Bread, 2011white bread, 12 x 12 cm

p. 64 Double Crossing, 2013found railway crossing. Photo: Silversalt

pp. 66–67 In Between Two Worlds, 2011installation view, Kimber Lane, Haymarket. Courtesy of City of Sydney

p. 68 Captain James Crook, 2013lithograph and screenprint on BFK Rives 280 gsm, image size 33 x 29.5 cm, paper size 60 x 50.5 cm, edition of 20. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

fix d/e and add shadowWhite Bread

64 65

The Native Institute

66 67

Between Two Worlds

69

Contents

Selected works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Introduction Matt Poll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Essentially Wing Garry Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Interview with Jason Wing Matt Poll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Captain James Crook

70 71

Introduction

Matt Poll

Over the past several years Jason Wing has produced an uncompromising

and sophisticated body of work that has challenged dominant perceptions

of contemporary Aboriginal art. Through exhibiting in Australia and

internationally in solo and group exhibitions, Wing’s installation-based

practice explores personal and national histories and how these narratives are

being represented in Australian art history.

Working outside of prescribed non-Indigenous audiences’ expectations of

what Aboriginal art should look like Wing has created a nuanced body of work

that interrogates the common representations of Aboriginal people such as

those seen in the mainstream media. His work offers a new perspective on the

social and historical place of cultural hybridism in Australian art.

Many Contemporary Aboriginal artists produce work that operates

through complex social arrangements that are anchored by a need to

acknowledge the historical and modern situations of Indigenous culture.

Referencing Wing’s photographic series An Australian Government Initiative

in her book The Flash of Recognition Jane Lydon describes Wing’s ‘deceptively

simple’ counter narrative of the media representation of Indigenous

masculinity as ‘dangerous’ and the subsequent need for an ‘intervention’ into

remote communities.1 Wing simply challenges the non-Indigenous audience

to consider ‘how would it it feel if it were happening to us?’ thus deflecting an

accusatory ‘them’ into an inclusive ‘us’.

In An Australian Government Initiative and other recent works such as

those included in exhibitions curated by noted Aboriginal curator Djon

Longing for December 28th

72 73

viewers out of comfortable perceptions and stereotypes of preconceived

cultural and historical circumstances.

Wing has created a framework for representing his own individuality,

while at the same time respecting a multiplicity of cultural perspectives.

Ultimately, his work is a contemporary art that is critically engaged with

a cultural grounding that it is too often relegated to political slogans and

standpoints. It presents a new method of representing narratives that

challenge complacent definitions of identity or culture, and is conceptually

translatable to the struggles of a diverse range of marginalised voices in

Australian contemporary art.

1. Jane Lydon, The Flash of Recognition, (Sydney: New South Publishing, 2012)

2. Cold eels and distant thoughts, Monash University Museum of Art, 30 March to 3 June 2012

3. People We Know Places We’ve Been, GOULBURN ART CLASS 2-0-1-1, curated by Djon Mundine OAM, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, 3 November to 3 December 2011 and The Rocks Discovery Museum, 5 July – 13 September 2013

4. Bungaree: The First Australian, Mosman Art Gallery, 1 September to 25 November 2012

5. James Clifford, ‘On Ethnographic Surrealism’, Comparative studies in Society and History, Vol 23, No. 4 (Oct 1981), pp. 593

Mundine – Cold Eels and Distant Thoughts,2 People We Know – Places We’ve

Been: Goulburn Art Class 2-0-1-13 and Bungaree: The First Australian4 –

Wing has produced works that show a consistent artistic maturity and

a sophistication that signals an exciting new chapter in contemporary

Aboriginal art.

In many ways, Wing’s work operates in a framework similar to that of an

‘ethnographic surrealism’, a term coined by James Clifford to describe the

interrelationship of both ethnographic representation of ‘exotic’ cultures and

the modernist art known as surrealism. Wing presents a modern example of

this idea that also refers back to the categorical shift of Indigenous cultural

representation from Museum artefact to fine art in Australian museums

and art galleries. As Clifford notes ‘to discuss these activities together

(ethnography and surrealism) – at times, indeed, to permit them to merge –

is to question a number of common distinctions and unities.’5

Wing’s choice of re-purposed and found materials that are then intimately

woven with personal significance interrupts dominant ethnographic

definition of Indigenous culture . Common everyday items – bread clips,

beer bottles, hypodermic syringes and road signs – are repurposed and

reintegrated into conceptually rigorous works that lead viewers down

unintended paths that allude to and then undermine hidden histories that

lurk beneath the surface of our everyday reality.

Without overtly or sentimentally alluding to the genocide, ecocide and

loss of cultural sovereignty that has led to the wholesale disenfranchisement

of Indigenous people, Wing’s work reinforces the urgency of addressing

complex, pervasive and misleading historical representations of the process

of colonisation of Australia that exist in the ordinary items of our daily

life. Wing’s work also indirectly addresses the contemporary issue of the

corporatisation and commodification of Indigenous culture and its tangible

cultural heritage as well as Australia’s perceived abundance of natural

resources – free for anyone to take.

By producing work that often intersects with personal and public spaces,

and by interrogating the common perceptions of natural and organic

materials that he assembles and reframes in his installations, Wing coerces

p. 70 Longing for December 28th, 2013 (detail)cheesecloth, powder coated aluminium, spray paint and projected image, dimensions variable. Photo: Silversalt

p. 74 Used By and Best Before, 2012perspex and copper, each 40 x 40 cm, edition of three. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 75 Augustus Earle (1793–1838), Portrait of Bungaree, a native of New South Wales, with Fort Macquarie, Sydney Harbour, in background, c1826, oil on canvas, 68.5 x 50.5 cm, reproduced with permission of the National Library of Australia, digitally edited for publication

74 75

please colour match the top breastplate to the bottom one

deep etch pics

Used By / Best Before

76 77

Essentially wingGarry Jones

Perhaps it is no surprise … that artists have, in recent years, best

reflected the plurality and fluidity of contemporary Australian

identities … figures who are not easily categorised racially and

culturally, reconfigure Australia’s ‘cultural script’. They invite us to

conceptually overhaul the spaces within and between which Australia

can be imagined in its present and its past, and so further liberate

imaginings of Australia from the … ‘White national space’.1

Terms such as ‘renewal’, ‘recycling’ and ‘rebirth’ are frequently used in

descriptions of the early graffiti-art practice of Jason Wing. They suggest

environmental and spiritual motivations underpinning his development

as an artist, as much as his capacity for appropriating, reassembling and

repurposing the material world around him. His ‘poly-cultural’ heritage

– Aboriginal, Chinese and Scottish – has enabled him to bring together

Aboriginal ‘rock art’ influences, Chinese paper-cut practice and graffiti

culture in a refreshingly hybrid art practice that, in its materiality, resonates

with our urban environment while provoking a more politically attuned

awareness of broader community concerns. More recently, Wing’s practice

has matured through a sharpening of his focus on the ‘unsettled’ business

of ‘settled’ Australia. In the spirit of ‘renewal’ and ‘rebirth’ it seems

appropriate that this essay should mark this transition in Wing’s work with an

acknowledgment of its ‘beginning’:

In April 1770 Captain Cook sailed into Camay (Botany Bay), home

of the Eora people in what is now known as Sydney, Australia and

declared that the country was terra nullius – a land belonging to no

one. He then promptly took ‘possession’ of the country on behalf of

the Crown. Australian politicians state that Australia was peacefully

colonised. This is a politically correct way of stating a truth. Australia

was stolen from the Aboriginal people by lethal force …2

And, it might be said, the ‘rest is history’. But whose history, and what is

‘history’ anyway? Does it really mean anything in the present? In 2012 Wing

78 79

won the prestigious Parliament of New South Wales Aboriginal Art Prize

with his strident anti-colonial assemblage Australia was Stolen by Armed

Robbery (2012). The work – an appropriated fibreglass bust of Captain James

Cook wearing a black balaclava – was a surprisingly daring selection by the

independent judging panel working on behalf of the parliament. Was its

selection a sign that an Australian state government (the ‘First State’ no less)

might be prepared to reflect on its own legitimacy as a sovereign power? Such

a question, however, became irrelevant when it soon came to light that all

was not well in the House. Against the tradition of the prize, the exhibition

catalogue – prepared well in advance and released immediately following

the formal announcement of the winner – was printed without an image of

Wing’s work on its cover or within its pages. Despite the support of the NSW

Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Victor Dominello for the selection of Wing’s

work as winner, the silence following the prize announcement was deafening.

There was no detailed press coverage and no critical response to the work and

what it might represent as the winner of an acquisitive, government art prize

or as an expression of contemporary Aboriginal politics and identity.

The latter is worth exploring because Australia was Stolen by Armed

Robbery marks Wing’s emergence as an insightful interpreter of contemporary

Australian culture and politics, his work provoking viewers to think about

and feel the colonial resonances of the past in the present. While Captain

James Cook is celebrated as the founding father and symbol of the birth

of the modern Australian nation, for Indigenous Australians he signifies

invasion, colonisation, dispossession and displacement – the embodiment of

terra nullius. It could be argued that by blaming terra nullius and Aboriginal

dispossession on Cook the many moral and legal difficulties underpinning the

subsequent invasion and acquisition of the continent initiated by Britain’s First

Fleet are conveniently forgotten. However, the reality is that Cook symbolises

a shared foundational history of post-colonial Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal

Australia. In this regard, he represents a significant means into ongoing

dialogue about Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal histories about the colonial past

and what it means in the present.3 Despite its brashness, Australia was Stolen

by Armed Robbery invites dialogue, questioning the apparent amnesia at play in

which questions of Aboriginal sovereignty – Australia’s ‘unfinished business’ –

are conveniently forgotten by being relegated to a time gone by.

With Australia was Stolen by Armed Robbery it is possible to think of Wing

as a post-colonial artist, a relentless anti-colonial provocateur, hell bent on

inverting the colonial binary that has kept Aboriginal people dispossessed

and impoverished in the ‘lucky country’. While Australia’s colonial history

is certainly in Wing’s sights, he nevertheless demonstrates a highly flexible

capacity to operate in multiple zones of production, demonstrating what

Margo Neale refers to as the ‘highly mobile space of fluid identities’,4 where

Indigenous artists’ work persistently disrupts mainstream concepts of

indigeneity and authenticity. Artists Gordon Bennett and Tracey Moffatt are

early pioneers of this approach, engaging with international developments

in postmodernism, particularly appropriation, and the emergence of

postcolonial theory, and adapting this to an Australian context, while publicly

declaring subjectivities beyond ‘Aboriginal art’.5

Used By and Best Before (2012), made in the same year as Australia was

Stolen by Armed Robbery, is testament to Wing’s imaginative dexterity in

rendering the ordinary and apparently inane as culturally complex and

politically potent. The work was made for the 2012 exhibition Bungaree: The

First Australian.6 Wing was invited by the exhibition’s curator Djon Mundine

to produce a new work that critically reinterpreted the story of the Aboriginal

man Bungaree, a misunderstood and misrepresented historical figure known

in early colonial Sydney as the ‘Chief of the Broken Bay Aborigines’.

For Used By and Best Before Wing took an apparently inconsequential

piece of urban refuse – a discarded plastic bread clip – and converted it into a

powerful symbol of the unreconciled colonial past in the present. Wing saw

in the discarded bread clip a metaphor for the incommensurability between

European and Indigenous readings of Bungaree the man, his connection

to country, the significance of colonial invasion, and the subsequent

destruction of Bungaree and of Indigenous society and country more broadly.

Wing scaled up the bread clip and reproduced it in copper. Two clips were

produced, one inscribed with the text ‘USED BY’ and the other with ‘BEST

BEFORE’, the forms reminiscent of the metal breastplates that colonists

80 81

made for Aboriginal leaders to encourage their cooperation and amenability

– designating them ‘kings’ or ‘queens’ or, just as often, the ‘last of their tribe’.

Bungaree himself is famously depicted wearing a breastplate given to him

by Governor Macquarie in 1815 and inscribed with ‘Chief of the Broken Bay

Tribe’ in Augustus Earle’s c1826 painting Bungaree, a native of New South

Wales. The inscriptions on Wing’s work – ‘used by’ and ‘best before’ – are a

bitterly ironic reference to the colonial assumption that Aboriginal people

were expendable and that Aboriginal society was on the verge of extinction.

Wing grew up in Cabramatta in south-western Sydney in the 1980s,

emerging on the contemporary art scene in Blacktown in western Sydney

in 2006. After completing double degrees in visual arts and graphic design in

2002, he cut his teeth as an adman, working for a couple of years in a high-

end advertising agency in Sydney where he was a talented manipulator of

digital signs and symbols. It was while working in advertising, however, that

he experienced something of a moral crisis, coming to the realisation that the

industry was not suited to his nature. He left his job and began work as an art

therapist with children with disabilities – a role that profoundly resonated

with his concerns for community, the environment and social justice. It was

as an art therapist that he came to see the potential of art as a vehicle for

community awareness and positive social change.

Registration (2009) is an important early work of Wing’s as it signals

his adeptness in turning the ordinary and everyday into powerful signifiers

of broader societal concerns. For this work Wing appropriated the

monochromatic colour scale – the graphic designer’s tool-of-trade – to

comment on the prejudice and discrimination he experienced when asserting

his Aboriginal heritage. In this work vibrant full-tone blocks of black,

yellow and red – the colours of the Aboriginal flag – are stacked vertically,

forming a column under which is printed ‘100%’. Moving from left to right

in descending increments of ten per cent, each colour fades until a uniform

column of white is achieved, mirroring both the colour value and numeric

value of ‘0%’. Adjacent to this scale is a larger square, rendered from black to

white in twenty-five per cent tonal shifts with the industry standard symbol ‘K’

(signifying the colour black) progressing from 100K down to 0K.

100K 75K

25K 0K

60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%100% 90% 80% 70%

Registration

82 83

As Wing has asked: ‘Does a person’s cultural validity depend on how

black/white [they] are?’ Registration draws our attention to the enduring

prevalence of racialised concepts of ‘purity’ versus ‘impurity’ determined

according to phenotype and equated with biological/cultural ‘authenticity’

or ‘inauthenticity’. The white square in Wing’s grey scale with the numeric

value ‘0K’, equates whiteness with being ‘okay’ – denoting racial normality.

Registration highlights the underlying Eurocentrism at play where whiteness

stands as the unquestioned norm from which all other colours are valued and

judged as lacking to some degree. Such binary categories were themselves

instituted in Australia’s history by colonial administrators who drew on the

racist theories of the time to justify their efforts to control Indigenous and

other non-white populations. After Federation in 1901 these theories were

articulated in the White Australia policy, which underpinned government

attempts to biologically assimilate Aboriginal people into white Australian

society by ‘breeding out’ Aboriginal colour.

After leaving advertising and taking his first tentative steps towards an

art practice motivated by cultural self-expression rather than commercial

self-interest, Wing found immediate recognition for his work when he won

the 2006 Blacktown City Art Prize. It was at this time that he also came to

the further realisation of the complexity of his own cultural heritage and

identity and publicly declared his Aboriginal ancestry, which his family had

suppressed during the decades of the White Australia policy. Wing came to

appreciate the multiple ways in which his life had been disrupted by colonial

racism and has since come to resist all cultural essentialisms, drawing

instead on his multiple cultural affiliations to engage his audiences in social

and environmental politics that are both local and global.

A consideration of Wing’s poly-cultural ancestry and fluid public identity

raises the question of how identity relates to his current practice. It also

prompts reflection on ‘history’ in order to untangle and better understand

Wing’s practice in the present. ‘Chinese people’, like ‘Aboriginal people’,

are not socially or culturally homogeneous. In Australia at the turn of

the twentieth century, however, Chinese immigrants and dispossessed

Aboriginal communities might have had more in common with each other

Wing Dynasty

84 85

than either of them had with their British colonial oppressors. While

the Chinese and Aboriginal communities were epistemologically and

ontologically different, their similar cultural practices – such as attachment

to land, belief in ancestral spirits and importance of extended kinship

networks – might have been regarded as grounds for a degree of mutual

recognition and acceptance, which would have implicitly threatened the

colonial authority of the day.7

From 1897 colonial laws were enacted in Australia to segregate non-white

people, in particular Aboriginal and Asian populations. These laws were

motivated by the belief in European superiority and social Darwinist fears

of racial miscegenation, which manifested in a frenzied public discourse in

which the ‘Chinese question’ and the ‘Aboriginal problem’ were defining

catchphrases. Subsequently, the White Australia policy became the principal

tool for addressing what was perceived as the new nation’s race ‘burden’.

Under the White Australia policy laws forbade Asian-Aboriginal marriage or

cohabitation, resulting in shattered families and stolen children. AO Neville,

a public servant and notorious architect of Aboriginal biological assimilation,

cautioned against the ‘unsuitability of Aboriginal-Asian marriages’ as late as

1947.8 But despite great efforts to separate and isolate the cultures, policies

were not evenly enforced on the ground and attempts to disrupt relationships

were often met with fierce resistance – to arrest, to racial categorisation and to

state intervention. These were the common threads of an emerging contempt

for government that criss-crossed the cultural landscape.9

An individual’s decision to deny or celebrate a part of their identity, or

to privilege one part over another, is highly complex and personal. At the

time of the White Australia policy, the identities that Aboriginal and Asian

people assumed had enormous and sometimes tragic ramifications. Until

the abolition of the policy in the early 1970s and its replacement with self-

determination, many Aboriginal communities lived in constant fear of

government intrusion in their lives and of threats to their personal dignity,

family unity and freedom and opportunity within the state. Consequently,

they often concealed their Aboriginality to secure basic rights and dignities

and to protect their children from removal.10

In 2013 Wing participated in The Native Institute Exhibition initiated

by Blacktown Arts Centre. Led by artist Brook Andrew, the project involved

six contemporary Indigenous artists responding to the significance of the

historic Black Town Native Institute, which operated between 1823 and 1829

with the sole purpose of separating Aboriginal children from their families

and educating them in European and Christian ways. The institute is one of

the earliest examples of organised Aboriginal child removal in the name of

assimilation in colonial Australia.

The show comprised a series of artists’ interventions under the title

Sites of Experimentation – an ironic reference to the original intention of the

institute as a colonial experiment with Aboriginal lives. Wing’s intervention

took the form of three poignant works – Double Crossing, Longing for December

28th and Growth Chart – that reference, respectively, the institution, the

children and the families.

In Double Crossing Wing’s fascination with industrial materials and

signage is evident in his reconfiguration of a railway-crossing sign, which

he reshaped into a perpendicular cross, replacing ‘railway’ with ‘crossing’

to generate a literal double-crossing. The work confronts the role of the

church in the establishment of the The Blacktown Native Institute and the

‘acquisition’ of Aboriginal children, the parents of whom (whose consent may

or may not have been sought) were assured that enrolment at the institute

was for their children’s material and spiritual benefit. The work also adeptly

responds to the alienated outer-urban quality of the site of the former

institute, situated at the intersection of busy arterial traffic routes in western

Sydney, a blur in the landscape only ever glimpsed in passing if glimpsed at

all, its meaning never considered and mostly evaded.

Longing for December 28th consists of a series of A-frame tent-like

structures covered with translucent cotton fabric delicately printed with

images or text, such as ‘all the desert weeps’. One structure is adorned with a

line drawing of the institute’s former main residence, while another has one

side covered with a prison calendar, a tally of days passed in anticipation of

a family reunion. This work captures a sense of the trauma of the families of

the institutionalised children, who were only permitted to see them once a

86 87

year. In response, Aboriginal camps were established outside the institution’s

perimeter, where families attempted to maintain ongoing visual contact with

their children or, in some cases, help them escape.

Growth Chart is based on a historic data table uncovered during research

for the project documenting the name, language group and age of each child

living at the institute. In a heart-wrenching translation Wing converts this tool

of institutional management and control into a homemade children’s height

chart. As Wing explains:

Suddenly a seemingly innocent act we all take part in during childhood

takes on a far more insidious tone. Missionaries used records such as

this one to measure, quantify and regulate the process of assimilation.

In doing so, these children were stripped of any rights to a normal

childhood. Constantly monitored, they became the measurement tools

for recording White Australia’s so-called ‘progress’.11

Skilled as a graphic designer, Wing works skilfully with signs and symbols,

mixing a street-art aesthetic with advertising nous. ‘Renewal’, ‘recycling’

and ‘rebirth’ apply as much to his appropriative strategy – bringing together

urban graffiti, Chinese paper-cutting and popular western culture – as they

do to any spiritual motivation for his work. While Wing openly appropriates

western and eastern popular culture, his employment of signs of Aboriginality

is more subtle, less concerned with representing ‘Aboriginal-ness’ by way of

recognisable ‘Aboriginal’ symbols or patterns than with examining colonial

history, race relations and identity politics. The references in Wing’s work to

Aboriginal ‘rock art’, while alluding to his Aboriginal heritage, also function

as a political ruse, scrambling preconceptions of what Aboriginal art is or

should be and demonstrating more of a challenge to pan-Aboriginalism12

than making a claim to ‘authentic’ cultural knowledge.

We might ask if Aboriginal art has entered a new phase – the ‘post-

Aboriginal’, whereby a new type of Australian art has emerged, ‘indelibly

informed by the Aboriginal art movement … and also very different Aboriginal

art that has morphed completely into contemporary art’.13 This may well

1. Penny Edwards & Shen Yuanfang, Lost in the Whitewash: Aboriginal-Asian Encounters in Australia, 1901–2001, Australian National University Humanities Research Centre Monograph Series No. 15, Australian National University, Canberra, 2003, pp. 9–12.

2. Jason Wing, unpublished artist’s statement, 2012 Parliament of New South Wales Aboriginal Art Prize, communicated by the artist in conversation with the author, 10 July 2013.

3. Maria Nugent, Captain Cook was Here, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, p. 124.

4. Margo Neale in Sylvia Kleinert & Margo Neale (eds), The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2000, p. 277.

5. Ian McLean (ed), How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art: Writings on Aboriginal Art, Power Publications, Sydney, 2011, p. 317.

6. Bungaree: The First Australian, Mosman Art Gallery, Mosman, 1 September to 25 November 2012, touring nationally between 8 February 2013 to 22 August 2015.

7. Edwards & Yuanfang, Lost in the Whitewash, p. 7.

8. Ibid., p. 17

9. ibid., p. 15.

10. ibid., p. 18.

11. Supplied to author at the time of writing by the artist.

12. See Paradies, Y. C. ‘Beyond Black and White: Essentialism, hybridity and Indigeneity’ in Journal of Sociology, December 2006 vol. 42 no. 4, pp. 355–367

13. McLean, How Aborigines Invented the Idea, p. 317.

14. See Gerardo Mosquera, ‘Beyond Anthropophagy: Art, Internationalization and Cultural Dynamics’, in Belting, Hans, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel, The global contemporary and the rise of new art worlds, Karlsruhe, Germany; ZKM/Center for Art and Media, Cambridge, MA; London, England; The MIT Press, 2013.

describe Wing’s practice as a versatile and dynamic contemporary artist

opposed to the cliché of the ‘authentic’ as constructed by the colonial

imagination. For Wing, difference, whether Indigenous or otherwise, is

established through active engagement with colonialism and its ongoing

manifestations in Australian society; his art is a form of action rather

than representation.14

p. 76 The Other Other, 2011installation view, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide. Photo: Grant Nowell

p. 81 Registration, 2009digital print on aluminum panel, 50 x 200 cm

p. 82 Wing Dynasty, 2012digital print on metallic paper, 84 x 119 cm, edition of five

Jason with his grandfathers, c2008. Photo: Jim Irving

pp. 88–89 A collection of social media comments reacting to the 2012 Parliament of NSW Aboriginal Art Prize awarded work Australia Was Stolen by Armed Robbery, 2012, sourced by the artist

88 89

/////////////

///////////////

///////////////

////////////////////////////////////////

//////////////////////////////////////

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

/////////////

///////////////////

////////////

////////////////////////////////

////////////

90 91

interview with jason wing

Matt Poll

Matt Poll: There was a surprising reaction to your work – Australia was Stolen

by Armed Robbery – after its selection as winner of the 2012 Parliament of

New South Wales Aboriginal Art Prize. It is not unusual for art prizes to be

challenged in Australia (witness the numerous legal challenges faced by the

Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney over the years)

but what are your thoughts about the way your work was challenged and

Parliament’s management of the issues raised?

Jason Wing: The controversy surrounding the prize is twofold and

somewhat complex. After the work became the subject of an intellectual

property challenge [the image of the artwork was not included in the

official exhibition catalogue that was produced in association with art

prize], the NSW Parliament responded by putting up a wall of silence.

Shortly after winning the prize it came to my attention that not only

was the work not printed on the front cover of the exhibition catalogue

(which had always been the case in previous years) but also that my

artist statement was not published. To this day, I am still unclear as to

why this happened – the Parliament has never explained why. I’m not

sure if it was a simple oversight or a deliberate attempt to gloss over

my criticism of the Australian Government’s intervention policy [in the

Northern Territory] as outlined in my artist statement.

The situation was incredibly frustrating. The work – a bust of

Captain Cook wearing a balaclava – addresses an issue that I strongly

felt had been overlooked by the Australian Government and the

mainstream media. I wanted to articulate that while Aboriginal

people under the government’s intervention policy were being treated

like criminals, it could be argued that the first European invaders of

Australia were, in fact, criminals themselves, stealing the country from

its traditional owners.

You grew up and began your artistic career in western Sydney. Are there particular

themes or issues you see as coming from the experience of living in that region,

and how has this influenced your outlook on the wider Australian art world?

92 93

I was born in Cabramatta [in south-western Sydney] at a significant

time in Australian history – it was the late 1970s, the Vietnam War had

ended, the White Australia policy was abolished and immigrants were

flooding to western Sydney in search of a more prosperous future. My

weekends were spent between my Aboriginal and Chinese families.

As a young man my grandfather, who was a first generation Chinese

Australian, worked as a prawn peeler at his uncle’s restaurant in

Sydney’s Haymarket. It was here that he met my Scottish grandmother,

who was a waitress at the restaurant, and also grew to be an excellent

cook. Every Sunday he invited the whole family over and cooked a huge

Chinese banquet.

On my Aboriginal side my Mum and her family would take me to

Lake Gillawarna, just down the road from my grandparent’s house

in Georges Hall. This was the start of my education in nature and our

connectedness to it. I use to love riding my BMX down to the water

and sit quietly listening to the ducks and birds. I like to think this

upbringing typifies the experience of growing up in western Sydney.

It has profoundly shaped not only the person I am today, but also the

way in which I approach my art making.

Having said that, although I have many happy memories, times

were tough for the vast majority of people living in western Sydney.

Australia was (and arguably still is) a very racist country, and I

witnessed this firsthand on a regular basis. My grandparents were

often ridiculed, ostracised and abused as they walked down the street,

simply for being an interracial couple. My Aboriginal grandfather, for

fear of vilification and discrimination, spent most of his life claiming

M ori and Spanish heritage. He worked for the government as a tram

driver and had to lie about his identity in order to keep his job. For

many years he felt terrified of being an Aboriginal man in this country.

But it wasn’t just this insidious racism that made life tough. It

was also the constant institutionalised racism that immigrants and

Aboriginal people faced on a daily basis. So many people living in

western Sydney were already on the brink of poverty, suffering from

all sorts of social and economic dysfunction. That they also had to

manage living in a largely racist society could have only, I imagine,

made these obstacles all the more difficult to overcome.

There is something refreshing about spending time with my

friends and family out west – it’s real. I feel privileged to have grown

up in such an incredibly diverse and vibrant community. It has shaped

my understanding of the world and driven me to make art that speaks

to the challenges many people in this community have faced. Living

in western Sydney as an adult made me realise that injustice is a very

human experience. Although my work often responds to specific

issues, I always hope it resonates with the wider community. I hope it

speaks to the universal experience of human struggle.

Your 2011 solo exhibition at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre,

People of Substance, was a turning point in the development of your practice,

signalling a new direction in both medium and subject matter. How

important do you think it is for artists to challenge their practice and explore

new directions?1

I originally showed elements of People of Substance at Blacktown

Arts Centre in 2010, but prior to that I had been focused on street art

and less on conceptual work. For a long time I wanted to make work

that sat within the conceptual, social and political realm but was

nervous as to how it would be received. When I was invited to exhibit at

Hazelhurst I decided to take a leap into the unknown. The Sutherland

Shire was known for being Anglo-Celtic and conservative, and I wanted

to challenge the people who lived there. I decided the best way to do

this was to exhibit Blacktown Dreaming: a series of three beds, one

made from 4,000 hypodermic needles, and the other two from beer

bottles and empty cans of spray paint. To my surprise and delight I

received so much positive feedback after People of Substance that it

gave me the confidence to continue making similar work.

94 95

I think it’s paramount for any artist to take risks. Isn’t that the

nature of the artist? To delve where the rest of society is too scared to

go, to express the fragility of humanity? I don’t ever want to be limited

by expressing myself through one medium or subject matter, and I

think if you make that clear from the outset people are less shocked

when you do decide to colour outside the lines.

It also speaks volumes about my temperament. I get bored with

things very quickly, and always have a million different ideas floating

around in my head – I blame television and the internet. One minute

I’m fixated on native flowers, the next minute human rights abuses

in China. On a practical level, I always like to use the material I think

will best resolve the aesthetic and the conceptual, so in part I think

this is also what informs my exploration as an artist. Sometimes I am

forced to work with new materials so that I can best communicate the

ideas in my artwork.

Have you had any memorable or unexpected responses to your work?

I once met a young fair Aboriginal woman who approached me in tears

after seeing my work Registration (2009) at Blacktown Arts Centre.

She told me that she had always struggled to be accepted and to live

as a fair-skinned Aboriginal. Both of us were emotional – crying and

hugging. It was a turning point for me and it was in that moment that

I felt a profound sense of responsibility to my community. It was the

first time I realised that art really could change the world. Ultimately,

that is what motivates me.

Your recent work has transformed from a graphic aesthetic into a conceptual

and installation-based practice. Was this change progressive or a conscious

decision based on wanting to explore new subjects and forms?

It was progressive, but in truth it was probably more about my lacking

confidence as an emerging artist. I had always wanted to make the

Chroming

96 97

‘gutsy stuff’ but I was too scared, so for a long time I think I played it

safe. Also, for me, it was about experimenting and evolving. I don’t

ever want to get stuck doing the same thing. I guess I have these two

very distinct strands in my practice – my installation work and my

graphic stencil work. They look very different but they are both an

important part of who I am and what I am interested in as an artist.

You have recently undertaken several public art commissions. Is this an area

you would like to explore further? What kind of response do you hope your

public art will receive?

Yes, I definitely want to continue making public art. It’s not often

that an artist gets their work seen by so many people. Recently, I was

commissioned to create an artwork for the Prime Ministers office in

Sydney – the opportunity to reach someone so powerful and so directly

is exciting.

There is a distinct lack of a visual Aboriginal presence in the urban

landscape and I want to rectify that. I want people to be reminded

every day of their lives that they stand on Aboriginal land. That is how

my work The Serpent (2013), on the Canada Bay foreshore [in Sydney],

came about. It was the first time a public artwork by an Aboriginal

artist had been commissioned and installed on Sydney’s foreshore.

The rainbow serpent is so strongly associated with Aboriginal culture

that one momentary glance [at the work] can register meaning for

even the most rushed commuter.

You have extensive experience facilitating community arts projects and

working with incarcerated Aboriginal people. Do you think art can play a

role as a rehabilitative tool for individuals and communities who have

experienced disadvantage?

Absolutely, and it’s one of the things I love most about the visual

arts – nearly everyone can read and understand visual culture. I just

The Serpent

98 99

wish it were better funded. I think the most meaningful art-related

experiences of my career to date have been through community arts

projects. There is something so humbling and transformative about

seeing people discover the joy of art making. I have also taught art

therapy to children with physical and intellectual disabilities,

which was one of the most creative and inspiring jobs I have ever had.

I know firsthand that art is a great tool for building self-esteem

and self-empowerment.

Was tertiary arts education beneficial to your career as an artist?

Not really. Whether it was because I was too young, or not cut out

for the system, I found art school somewhat contrived. The things

I did enjoy were having access to great resources and teachers and,

of course, the social element. I think art school is good in terms of

building a community and network around you. I still cross paths with

a lot of my lecturers and friends from university.

Some of the best artists I know have been five-year-olds with

severe intellectual disabilities. Good art is about conviction, heart

and passion, not thesis papers and HECS debts. I don’t have a

problem with people pursuing tertiary education; I just dislike the

way the system is designed to make everyone think they need a tertiary

education in order to be a good artist.

Some curators have commented that Aboriginal art – particularly by south-

eastern Australian artists – is entering a ‘post-political’ phase where its

ability to raise awareness of social and political justice is declining and is

transforming instead into a more internationally focused aesthetic. Do

you think it is important to express Aboriginal social and political issues

in your work?

All of my experiences as an artist, and those of my Aboriginal peers,

have told me that art is one of the few vehicles that actually can

transform the way people think and view the world. We just need

society to value the arts more than making money. [Suggesting that

Aboriginal art is becoming ‘post-political’] infers that Australia has

moved beyond the impact of colonisation. This is absolutely not true,

and I witness Aboriginal people experiencing the negative impacts of

colonialism every day. I think such terms are incredibly problematic

and dangerous. I think it’s great if my work resonates with an

international audience, but I don’t think it negates the fact that it

is about very local issues. It can be both, can’t it? The day we enter

a post-political phase is the day I give up making art. If art loses the

ability to raise awareness of political and social issues, then to me it no

longer holds much value. It is exactly this transformative power, and

universally understood language, that I love so much about art.

1. Jason Wing, People of Substance, Hazlehurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, 25 June to 6 July 2011

p. 91 People of Substance, 2011installation view, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

p. 95 Chroming, 2011plastic and chrome, 30 x 20 x 10 cm, edition of five. Collection of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection. Photo: Tom Cogill

p. 96 The Serpent, 2013 Bay Run, Drummoyne, Sydney. Photo: Andrew Mamo

p. 100 Installing work for People of Substance at the Kluge-Ruhe Museum, Virginia, USA, 2012. Photo: Tom Cogill

100 101

Biography

Jason Wing is a Sydney-based artist who strongly identifies with his Chinese

and Aboriginal heritage. Wing began as a street artist and has since expanded

his practice to incorporate photo-media, installation and painting. Influenced

by his bi-cultural upbringing, Wing explores the ongoing challenges

impacting his wider community.

Calling into question our understanding of history and of our current

socio-political reality, Wing repurposes everyday objects and imagery,

creating works that are both visually confronting and deceptively simple.

Wing holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Sydney College of the Arts and

a Bachelor of Graphic Design. He has exhibited both nationally and

internationally. Significant solo exhibitions include: People of Substance,

Kluge-Ruhe Museum, Virginia, 2012, and Hazelhurst Regional Gallery &

Arts Centre, Gymea, 2011; Tree Change, Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, 2012;

and The Other Other, Tandanya, Adelaide, 2011. Selected group exhibitions

include: Wondermountain, Penrith Regional Gallery, Penrith, 2014; The Native

Institute, Blacktown Arts Centre, Blacktown, 2013; Making Change, National

Art Museum of China, Beijing, 2012; Cold Eels and Distant Thoughts, Monash

University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2012; Bungaree: The First Australian,

Mosman Art Gallery, Mosman, 2012; Look Closely Now, Lake Macquarie

City Art Gallery, 2012; and Made in China Australia; Salamanca Art Centre,

Hobart, 2012. In 2012 he won the NSW Parliament Indigenous Prize for his

provocative work Australia Was Stolen By Armed Robbery. Wing’s work is held

in private collections and within the public collections of the National Gallery

of Australia, Artbank, Blacktown Council and Kluge-Ruhe Museum.

102 103

This project was initiated by Blair French, Artspace Executive Director 2006–13 to address a serious lack of sophisticated in-print, critical discussion around the work of contemporary NSW Aboriginal artists. Put simply, the high quality and visibility of the practices of a range of contemporary NSW Aboriginal artists is not matched by a similar quality and visibility in related discourse. Just as Artspace throughout its history has sought to work with and intelligently locate the practices of Aboriginal artists within evolving local, regional and international frameworks for contemporary art generally, so have we consistently sought to advance and deepen practices in critical writing focused both upon works of art specifically and upon their broader significance as forces for cultural change and development. This is an area of particular organisational commitment and expertise that we seek to bring to the work of contemporary NSW Aboriginal artists.

These two publications, on the work of Frances Belle Parker and Jason Wing respectively, were also initiated to serve as a development opportunity for early career NSW Aboriginal arts writers to work in partnership with two established NSW Aboriginal arts professionals in the role of Commissioning Editors, Tess Allas and Matt Poll. In this regard the project directly addresses both the aim of supporting career pathways for Aboriginal arts workers as well as that of initiating new collaborations and key partnerships within the Aboriginal arts and cultural sector. We recognise both as being key contributions Artspace can make to building the NSW arts and cultural sector generally.

This project is supported by the NSW Government through Arts NSW.

Artist acknowledgments:

I would like to extend my warm thanks to Matt Poll, Gary Jones, Claire Armstrong and the staff at Artspace, in particular Blair French, Caraline Douglas, Ricardo Felipe, Michelle Newton and Alexie Glass-Kantor for realising this publication. Special thanks to Tess Allas, Liz Nowell, Architectural Graphics, Adam Hollingworth and Tony Albert who supported me throughout the entire process. Finally, I would like to thank my family, particularly my dad, mums, as well as my friends for their continued support. I would not be the person I am today without their guidance, generosity and belief in me.

– Jason Wing

Published by Artspace Visual Arts Centre Ltd, Sydney ISBN 9781920781538

© 2014 Artspace, the artist, collaborators, photographers and authors. This publication is copyright. Except in the context of research, study, criticism, or review, or as otherwise permitted by the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication:

Author: Wing, Jason, artist. Title: Jason Wing / Jason Wing, artist, Matt Poll commissioning editor, Garry Jones, writer. ISBN 9781920781538 (paperback) Subjects: Wing, Jason. Art—Australia—21st century. Other Authors/Contributors: Poll, Matt, editor. Jones, Garry, author. Artspace Visual Arts Centre, issuing body. 709.94

Commissioning Editor: Matt Poll Production Editor: Caraline Douglas Copyeditor: Claire Armstrong Designer: Ricardo Felipe Image Processing: Spitting Image Printer: Carbon8 Publisher: Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Ltd

Artspace Visual Arts Centre43–51 Cowper Wharf Road Woolloomooloo NSW 2011 Sydney Australia T: +61 2 9356 0555 F: +61 2 9368 1705 artspace@artspace.org.au www.artspace.org.au

Artspace is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

Artspace is assisted by the New South Wales Government through Arts NSW and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Artspace is a member of CAOs (Contemporary Art Organisations of Australia).

Residency Donors Rhonda McIver Peter Wilson and James Emmett

Studio DonorsAnonymous Peter Braithwaite Karilyn Brown Julie Garis Cynthia Jackson AM Kiong Lee Lisa Paulsen

Pillar DonorsCarol Austin Henry Ergas Sandra and Paul Ferman Barbara Hunter Leuver Design Pty Ltd Charmaine Moldrich Deborah Patterson Becky Sparks and James Roland Tony Stephens Ursula Sullivan and Joanna Strumpf

Government PartnersVisual Arts and Craft Strategy Arts NSW Australia Council for the Arts

Project PartnerArts NSW

Media PartnerTime Out

MATT POLL has worked in numerous museums and galleries in the greater Sydney region over the past decade, including Wollongong City Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art, Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative and the Macleay Museum. Matt is currently undertaking a master of philosophy by research in the faculty of arts and social sciences at Sydney University. His research project explores the modern South East Australian Indigenous communities response to Indigenous artefacts held in museum collections and how contemporary visual artists have interrogated and reinterpreted the historical legacies associated with museum collections of Indigenous artefacts.

GARRY JONES is an Indigenous printmaker, painter and sculptor and has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. Jones was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2003 and since 2007 has lectured in Creative Arts at the School of Visual Arts at the University of Wollongong. In 2000 he won the Australian Indigenous Heritage Art Award, Art of Place, in the works on paper category for a charcoal drawing titled Thirroul. Garry is currently pursuing a practice-led PhD in visual arts, at the Australian National University, focusing on the role of visual arts in urban Indigenous identity and community cultural development.

front cover Captain James Crook, 2013bronze, 60 x 30 x 30 cm, edition of three. Collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Photo: Garrie Maguire

inside front coverAn Australian Government Initiative, 2011paste-ups in Newtown, Sydney of digital photographs on metallic fuji flex paper

back coverDuty Free, 2013timber, glass and model ship. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

All images courtesy of the artist unless otherwise noted.