True: Kevin Gilbert 1933 – 1993

Visual Art Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

True: Kevin Gilbert 1933 – 1993

Tuggeranong Arts Centre | 13 June – 9 August 2025

Kevin Gilbert, Wiradjuri, is best known to many Australians as an activist, a First Nations human rights defender. He was born on 10 July 1933 to the Wiradjuri Nation on the banks of the Kalara (Lachlan) river near Condobolin, New South Wales. His father’s ancestry was English and Irish, and his mother was of Aboriginal and Irish descent. His childhood was one of intimate connection with his mother’s Country. When he was seven his father killed his mother then himself. A biography of Gilbert here provides extensive background which perhaps explains the reasons why he was passionate about the need for activism.

What may be less known by many is that Gilbert is also recognised as an iconic poet, playwright and author. And his artistic talent also includes painting, printmaking, photography and producing artworks of Wiradjuri spirituality and teachings. He received the Human Rights Award for Literature for his anthology Inside Black Australia in 1988. He was awarded an Australian Artists Creative fellowship in 1992. He became the first Aboriginal/Wiradjuri poet to be published in the French language with the bilingual anthology Le Versant Noir (2018).

 Gilbert used his pen as his weapon:

The pen is mightier than the sword

but only when

it sows the seeds of thought

in minds of men

to kindle love and grow

through the burnt page

destroyed by huns and vandals in their rage (Gilbert 1994, 48).

The Vienna Convention defines treaties as agreements between sovereign equals as a means to promote friendly and cooperative relations among nations. For Gilbert, a treaty was about a just way forward: ‘with all domestic options exhausted, a Sovereign Treaty is our only peaceful way to justice. There can be no reconciliation without a Sovereign Treaty’ (Gilbert 1993, endpaper).

Gilbert died of emphysema on 1 April 1993 in Canberra. A memorial was held at the Aboriginal Embassy. He was remembered as the Land Rights Man, Treaty man, and Rainmaker. His final writing, dated February 1993, reads:

If we want the Dream to come true

we must BE true to the Dream

but all this will only be meaningful

if there are Dreamers who respond

and make the Dream come true (Breath of Life 1996, title page)

32 years later, this exhibition shares the truth of Gilbert’s sixty years of life. In what would have been his 92nd year, we have an opportunity to celebrate his life and art with images and poetry created during his lifetime along with some works editioned for the first time.

Gilbert is recognised as the first Aboriginal fine art printmaker, so it is most fitting that the exhibition includes many fine art lino prints expressing his core themes of a spiritual presence enhancing the cultural survival of his People against the seemingly insurmountable odds in an oppressive colonial system. His poetry is displayed on fine silk hangings. There are books to look at.

Installation image - Brian Rope

Installation image - Brian Rope

Installation image - Brian Rope

Installation image - Brian Rope

 And, of course, there are his black and white photographic prints, re-telling the stories of significant and most important moments in this country’s history. The Justice Freedom and Hope Convoy arriving at Yarra Bay La Perouse, then reaching the shores of Sydney Harbour where the invasion was being re-enacted. The March for Justice Banner displaying Xavier Herbert’s profound statement crystallising Australia’s then international image: White Australia: Not a Nation, but a community of thieves. The early morning march on the day Australia’s new Parliament House opened showing a banner with the words 40,000 years of Dreamtime, 200 years of nightmare.

Kevin Gilbert - Raising Our Sovereign Flag, Opening New Parliament House, Canberra, 9 May 1988

Kevin Gilbert - When Children March 1988 Silver gelatin Print

Kevin Gilbert - Liberation of Our Nations, 25 January 1988

Kevin Gilbert, Bird Cage Reserve, Murrumbidgee. Image courtesy of Ellie Gilbert

Reminders of events that happened, things for us to reflect on nearly 40 years later. What has changed? What has stayed the same?

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

Watching Me, Watching You

Photography and Videography | Brian Rope

Watching Me, Watching You | Jemima Campey

Tuggeranong Arts Centre Foyer | 8 to 29 October 2022

Jemima Campey (Ngunnawal/Ngambri lands) graduated from the Australian National University in 2021 with degrees in English and Visual Arts. She is currently completing her Honours in Visual Arts.

 

Campey makes photos, performances, installations and films. Through the use of appropriated and reworked materials which are borrowed from a day-to-day context, she touches various overlapping themes and strategies, including performance and contemporary culture. Her text and photographic works are often deeply personal, providing insight into her act of making art.

 

I’ve previously seen only a little of Campey’s artwork – videos in which she examined the phenomenon of the ‘apology video’, exploring how the spread of social media was impacting and re-shaping the nature of peoples’ emotions.

 

In this exhibition, Watching Me, Watching You, she has worked with both appropriated material and newly created photographs, and presents a selection of her recent works, united by their focus on the intersections of contemporary culture, online behaviours, and performance.

 

She has drawn from her own experiences growing up during the rise of social media and from the writings of Rayne Fisher-Quaan, a Canadian political commentator who, aged seventeen, created the organisation March for Our Education to lead student actions protesting the repeal of the sex education content of a Health and Physical Education curriculum.

 

Campey has used video and photography to make sense of some aspects of online life and subcultures that may not be well known to those who do not engage with particular trends or online platforms. A 500cm long inkjet print titled Doomscrolling reveals the types of interactions that might be read on some platforms, such as Pinterest. Here is just a tiny section of the text on the scroll:

 

SHE IS BEAUTIFUL. HER BODY IS BEAUTIFUL. With that said, she is clearly tilting a lot and flexing to make herself look thinner and more toned. she’s also using the clothing to her advantage to make her body look how she wants, which is her right, just remember that everything on the internet can be so tainted and altered from its natural state.

 

And one response to that:

 

yesss, thank you also notice that she like purposely took her shirt off for the pic

 

We all know that social media can infiltrate almost every part of our lives. We can present ourselves to others in whatever way we choose. Some opt to perform for their audience, whom they may or may not know, to create the image they wish to portray. Doing so raises such questions as “What are the impacts of adopting a moral superiority within your online persona and brand?”

 

Campey does not claim to answer these questions. Rather, she considers how authenticity and perception come into play in various online spaces, such as dating apps.

 

That’s All I Have to Say (a 9-channel digital video which runs for a little over three minutes) is intriguing. It is important to put on the headphones and listen to the words spoken by numerous people whilst viewing the images scattered on the screen.

 

That’s All I Have To Say. 2021. Still from video 03_07

Lovers’ Hands, (a ten-minute long looped video screening within a lovely and very small handmade frame) is also well worth close inspection.

 

Lovers Hands (2021). Installation image supplied. Digital video and handmade frame. 10_02, looped

There is a performance video piece, Routine, showing the artist herself engaging in a somewhat drawn-out and surreal process performing wellness and wellness-related activities – skincare, vitamins, hair brushing and so on.

 

Routine (still) 27_45. 2022

 

And to complete this modest but thoughtful exhibition, there is just one photograph. It is a self-portrait, Saint Belle, again focussing on the wellness industry, which is booming as consumers spend on products to improve their health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness.

 

Saint Belle. 2022. Inkjet print, 84.1x59.4 cm

This review was first published online on 17/10/22 by the Canberra Times here and then in print (page 27) on 24/10/22. It is also available on the author's blog here.