Film - 'Vernon Ah Kee: Investigating "Ideas of Barak"', National Gallery of Victoria

Vernon Ah Kee: My entry to Barak is through his artwork. I think of Barak as a drawer – his line is confident, there’s a quality to it, a sensibility which probably had a lot do with who he was and his position within his clan in the Coranderrk community.

He wanted to show ceremony, dancing, custom, the marks, he was showing action. They seem to me the equivalent of photography. These were scenes that he was making because he was there.

My involvement with the Barak project comes in three parts. The single channel video with some of my ideas about who I think he was and what I think he means to black fellas, particularly Aboriginal artists. For the second part of the project I invited a group of friends of mine – artists – just to basically have a conversation about Barak. Not just what we know of Barak and what we think he means to us and what we want him to mean to us but also getting an idea of just how unknown he is to us. The third part is a drawing and this is my idea of Barak. All portraiture is an idealised image of the subject and it’s the artist idea. So I thought I would do a drawing and drawings offer lots of opportunities for investigation and interpretation and so this is my idea.

The drawing started with my interest in Barak and wondering who he is and for me portraits provide an opportunity to find out more about that person – his physical build and his presence. Given the time he lived in it’s really fortunate there are so many images of him. That’s an indication of the calibre of his presence at Coranderrk but also but within Melbourne’s political landscape.

He seems always to be this physical, imposing and impressive presence so that was something that I could draw on. I wanted to really give the sense that he was a man of action and there was a physical presence to him and there was intensity to his thinking, there a purpose to his life and everything he did. I wanted to give a sense of that and for people to react to the drawing in that way.

It’s a big drawing – it’s 1.8 by 2.4 metres. It’s a primed acrylic canvas and I’m using compressed charcoal sticks and white conte crayon and that’s it. Charcoal for me is a medium I understand very well, I use all the time and I’m very familiar with it. My drawings are actually fairly loose - I used to draw small, very detailed drawings that were meticulous and a little pedantic. I started to draw big drawings because I didn’t want to be like that, I didn’t want to be this pedantic renderer. Drawing big affords me the opportunity to be really loose with the drawing style and still achieve a fine portrait, what people would consider to be good drawing.

Drawing on a large scale gives the opportunity to incorporate lots more detail into the face – the architecture of the face itself, the lines and the character and to draw out whatever information you can see there and to use your imagination and really see where it goes from there. When Barak starts to appear on the canvas you can start investigating his face more. The quality of the skin and the lines on his face and what his hair does and what colour his eyes were and what colour his skin was and what it felt like and the furrow in the brow and what kind of features do we want to exaggerate or find. Those are the decisions and there are hundreds and hundreds like that in every drawing. All the detail becomes much more intense and worked and rendered around the eyes because for me portraits are about the gaze.

It’s almost finished, there will be a bit more to do tomorrow but I’m pretty happy with the way it’s gone so far today.

I like to achieve an intensity that talks more about who we are as Aboriginal people today as a modern, complex and sophisticated people of emotion and hunger and persistence and anger and love and hate and all the things that all people are. Mostly Aboriginal people have a very narrow idea ascribed to them but we are just ordinary people.

I’m trying to show an idea of who I am and who I think my family is and who I think all families are through this idea of portrait but stripping away the exotic and the romantic and the primitive. Also the virtuous and the noble and all those kinds of trappings which are not necessary and do not accurately describe who we are as people.

I feel like it functions as a proper full room installation. It begins with the idea that we don’t know much about Barak and in a lot of cases we know nothing, particularly outside of Victoria. So that’s a perfect start, I think, and it’s a perfect entry into Barak - the idea of Barak as a man, as a politician, as a historical figure. I think that’s the beginning and people can ask their own questions from there.

Film - 'Jonathan Jones: Transitions', National Gallery of Victoria

Jonathan Jones: I started working with Aunty Joy, sitting down and talking to her and talking about his history, talking about who he was as a person and how best to represent him. Spending time out at Coranderrk, spending time out on his country and going to his grave and just hanging out in that area to get an idea for the country. A whole number of ideas popped up in relation to him but it was the process of somehow distilling them down to one artwork.

I started looking at a multiple series of works and that idea of the multiple was really to represent all those different ideas. He was an amazing father who was completely heart broken when he lost his son. He was an amazing leader, he was a really compassionate friend, he was an amazing political activist but he was also someone who knew all of his traditional knowledge. So he was all of these things rolled up in one man which is why he was such an amazing leader and a fantastic artist.

To choose these light boxes, these individual light boxes was in one way to perhaps represent all those difference facets of his life but in another way they started to represent the five different groups that make up the Kulin nation because he became a leader for the whole Kulin people. That idea of referencing those five groups within those five boxes came out of that.

The whole idea of making lines and working with line is something that I think is really dominant within the South East – New South Wales, Victoria - that idea of working with carved lines. People would traditionally either carve possum skins or carve shield or carve trees or carve rock engravings. Often those images would be linear because of the process of carving creates a linear design. Two or three of the designs are literally taken from his artworks, the possum skins designs. One work is quite a quintessential Victorian design that a lot of Koorie’s from Victoria area would identify very strongly with shield designs. The other one is a design that’s really special to me, it’s one of the first times I got to go overseas and I was in the British Museums archive and I found a club that came from just east of Bathurst which is where my family’s meant to come from. So it’s this amazing connection I got to have with this club and it’s got this amazing design which has really always stuck with me for a really long time. So that’s the other one that’s thrown in there into the mix as well.

The work also developed quite strongly with two architects, architects in Melbourne. I was really lucky to work with these guys really closely in the design and development of the work and also had a great crew of people manufacturing the objects as well. So they’re really slick and they’re really minimal. A lot of the idea of getting architects involved was also because I was interested in the building – the NGV. There’s this strange link, the whole project was meant to be this bizarre link between somehow making Barak intrinsically linked with the NGV which has some problems inherently imbedded within it. The same time as Barak was fighting for his country and for his culture this white institution was growing up and he wasn’t really collected and he wasn’t part of that mainstream dialogue that this institution stands for. So it was really a bit awkward to try and then somehow take him and replace him back into this institution which is what the whole conversation was about.

What interests me was a position in the building, one of the few positions in the building where you can stand and actually look out onto the river. For this project and Barak and looking at his country the river was such an important link. Also what’s great is at that point you’re actually looking through the Aboriginal gallery so you’re looking through this permanent dedicated space to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture to the river. So it’s this really important sight line. The other thing I was really connected with was it’s a transitional space. Barak and his work and what he did was all about transitioning people and all about moving us to different levels and shifting our perspectives and taking us to hopefully a better place. I spoke a lot to Aunty Joy about that and she was really interested in talking about that idea of moving forward and bringing histories together and that this was an opportunity to do that.

It’s been interesting, that link. The first work that I actually wanted to do was sitting down and – because the real link between the NGV and Coranderrk or Barak is actually the river. So the first project I proposed was to plant the whole river out with wattle and have this corridor of wattle because Barak predicted his own death, he said that he would die when the wattle bloomed. The idea was to create this memorial which would keep reminding us of this history and keep reminding us of him and his story and it wasn’t just a static artwork that sat like a bronze bust in a park. It was this idea of somehow creating something that was living and changing that people could connect with. I’m happy that people maybe see the shifts or changes in the artwork as something else; they don’t have to read it as what it was intended to be. As long as people are engaging with it and continuing investing in that history and that old man and what that man had to give all of us.

Film - 'Auntie Joy Murphy Wandin: The Felton Bequest Artists', National Gallery of Victoria

Joy Murphy-Wandin: My relationship to Barak or Beruk, which is his traditional name, is through my Grandfather – Grandfather Robert Wandin. It was his sister, Annie Barat, who gave birth to Barak. Barak, very sadly, leaves no surviving children. He was married three times but sadly no one survives him.

However removed I am from him I would like to think that this ongoing journey has been entrusted to me because I have been given the opportunity to tell his story so many times, particularly at the National Gallery of Victoria where his work is being held. The National Gallery of Victoria has an amazing installation, it was commissioned by the Felton Bequest. Three contemporary artists were chosen to depict Barak’s life in different ways.

Jonathan Jones was tireless in his endeavours to learn so much about Barak and his life and particularly wanting to honour him. Jonathan beautifully captured the lifestyle of Barak - the ups, the downs, many woes, not a great deal of happiness. He also captured the death of Barak and paying homage not only to Barak but to his father. In August every year a yellow light projects and that is the Muyan or the wattle when Barak and his father both passed.

The next installation is from Vernon Ah Kee and as I’ve looked at that portrait many times I see Barak’s last son, David. I see him as a child through this portrait and then he becomes Barak and I clearly see the sadness. I clearly see those heavy times and then Barak said ‘I am just too tired’.

The third installation is by Brook Andrew. Brook’s work, to me, represents the seesawing of black and white cultures. The journey that was very jagged, that is still jagged. A lot of our history has been boxed in a way and Brook shows this quite clearly. When we look to our young people I hope that each and every one of our community, particularly in Wurundjeri community, is able to see this work and draw their own perspective from it but realise that this is a magnificent installation work. That is seen through the eyes of three young contemporary Aboriginal artists.

Film - 'Auntie Joy Murphy Wandin: Coranderrk', National Gallery of Victoria

Joy Murphy-Wandin: I am sitting in a beautiful spot called Badger Creek. Badger Creek was the flow on through to Coranderrk Station and Coranderrk Station is where my family lived including Barak. He was long gone when I was a child but what I’ve learnt from my parents and from those people who lived at Coranderrk was that he was a man of trust, he was a man of vigour, he was a man that would lead his people into a turmoil that needed to be resolved.

When I think about Wurundjeri country before it was settled our people were the greatest architects, engineers, orators, the greatest scientists – you could put any label on them because that’s how they survived for thousands and thousands of years. But they were regarded as still being savages and in some cases not human beings.

Coranderrk was one of the reserves set up by the government when they proclaimed the Aboriginal protection act. In my mind, and certainly in many of the people that lived there, they were not protected. First of all Wurundjeri country, with all its wonderful bush, that was totally destructed – cleared – 4850 acres of it became their new settlement.

The people that were resident at Coranderrk came from mainly Victoria and southern parts of New South Wales but they were forbidden to speak their language and the government called this the protection act. But my grandmother refused not to be able to speak her language. And at an evening, when it was prayer time she would call the women into her house and pull the little hessian curtains across the window and they would all speak their language. So in her way she was a little bit of a renegade and I hope some of that is within me.

I remember my Mum telling me about my Grandmother, when she would come into Healesville, my Uncle would bring her in on horse and cart and then on return home she would take off her best dress and her boots and run down to what people knew as the Yarra, which is the Birrarung. She needed to cleanse herself from this township – a township that had invaded her family, her culture and her heritage. And I think that Granny Jemima was possibly like my mum where you were told you do something well then you just did it and if you were treated fairly well then that was okay.

They certainly became skilled in other ways – this settlement established a bakery, a brick kiln, a school, housing. They became agriculturalists receiving the blue ribbon at the Royal Melbourne Agricultural Show for the best hops grown. They grazed cows, they had horses, there were sheep. Today much of that Coranderrk land is full of wineries.

When they brought in the half-caste act if you were able bodied and you were 35 years of age then you would have to leave the station. This of course was the start of the demise of Coranderrk. The people that were left at Coranderrk were the elderly, the sick, children and women. But not only that – about that period of time there was an excise of half of that 4850 acres and it was all because they were totally a sustainable community.

During the attempts to close Coranderrk Barak became very out spoken. A man that befriended white people so that he could know that his voice would be heard, know that the message would be heard. He became very determined and very strong willed because the force of government didn’t stop.

Barak also made friends with a wonderful Scottish woman named Anne Bon and she became the actual political advocate in parliament. She even treated Barak as a friend because they shared loss. They had both lost children and became very appreciative of one another.

I believe his heart was broken when his son Davis passed away. I think the second breaking of Barak’s heart was when he could not win the fight, when Coranderrk was closed. And of course his last fight, although he felt that the battle was over, was when he had a cut, a burn, to his hand and it wouldn’t heal. He knew that it was time for Barak to be gone.