Deanne Gilson essay by Dr Estelle Barrett

Dr Estelle Barrett
Resisting Beauty in The Work of Deanne Gilson
Deanne Gilson: Karrap Karrap Beenyak – Flower Baskets of Knowledge, catalogue essay

Perhaps at no time in Australian history has the issue of “voice” been more salient. The French philosopher Michel Foucault once posed the question (after Samuel Beckett): “What does it matter who is speaking?” (Foucault,1998: 2006). Deanne Gilson’s exhibition, Karrap Karrap Beenyak – Flower Baskets of Knowledge demonstrates precisely why it matters. In this exhibition we are witness to a rich conversation between Gilson’s paintings and the work of Margaret Preston. However, while the exhibition references and acknowledges Margaret Preston, it also operates as a critique and resistance to underlying assumptions of colonial art in Australia, and in particular, the discourses upon which Preston’s work is founded.

The exhibition is comprised of a long panel painting that focusses on ‘women’s business’ and Aboriginal enjoyment of the land pre-colonisation. A group of twenty-three smaller framed works seek to reclaim Aboriginal practices and their symbolic, material and spiritual connection to Country. These also articulate a resistance to the colonial objectification of nature typified by, for example, the botanical collection and classification of Australian flora by the natural scientist, Joseph Banks. In addition, there are five larger unframed paintings that constitute a more strident and direct response to works in Margaret Preston’s oeuvre.

Preston aimed to lead the development of an Australian National Art and distinguish its aesthetic from European counterparts. She turned to Aboriginal art - its motifs, colours and other formal elements. Through her study of Indigenous art, she developed a theory of art that was essentially modernist. She claimed that there were several basic shapes and colours that belonged to Indigenous art: the circles and crescents of traditional Indigenous art; the acute triangle shape of the gum leaf and additionally, the colours of red, yellow and ochre. Though it was not present in traditional Indigenous art, Preston included blue to her schema as a means of adding depth, contrast and value to design and formal elements (Magnus, 2023: 2). Preston’s mode of making and use of Aboriginal motifs was primarily technical. Her use of colour line and form were structural elements through which their Aboriginal symbolic and cultural import were erased.

Whilst Preston was an advocate of Indigenous art, her aesthetic was abstracted from the connection to land/Country and the lived experience of the original makers of the symbols she appropriated. Gilson’s work questions this separation of place and people. This exhibition is a re-appropriation and reclamation of Aboriginal symbology and a celebration of her country, Wadawurrung Dja.

This is evident in, for example, the work entitled Post Colonisation, Our People, Baskets and Plants Lost Their Way: Red Waratah:

I am interrogating Preston and the interruption to our land, history and cultural practices. Finding my voice to speak Our/my truth as an Aboriginal woman, post Colonisation. (Gilson, 2023c)

In this painting the decorative vases and tableware included in many of Preston’s works are no longer visible. The flowers are contained in the ancestral basket or dilly bag, traditional holder of sacred knowledge. The baskets of flowers emerge from a dark, engulfing background. The rendering of this in charcoal, metonymic of healing, cleansing renewal.

Gilson’s images are concerned with people and place; with living nature rather than inanimate objects; with the use, sacred value and symbolic function of all entities, rather than abstract compositional form. Her work is above all, concerned with the spiritual beauty of Country rather than the fetishised domestic trappings of colonial everyday life, that in Preston’s art, amounts to a devaluing of Aboriginal sacred symbols. Gamilaroi academic, Donna Leslie illustrates this in her quotation of Preston’s own words and advice to would-be artists regarding the appropriation and use of motifs on Aboriginal shields, “Please do not bother about what the carver meant in the way of myths, rites etc. (Leslie cites Preston: 5). Through her visual narratives, Gilson re-appropriates, and revitalises the cultural uses and significance of the flowers, birds and trees, as well as the symbolism that bears a direct and indexical relationship to the cosmic landscape of her Country and the people who inhabit it.

The painting Ba-gurrk Yaluk Beenyak (Women sitting under the night sky and making camp by the river) challenges the erroneous concept of Terra Nullius upon which the refusal to recognise Aboriginal existence on the Country at the time of settlement was based. In this painting, human figures inhabit the work by implication: the fire around which the women sit; the baskets and artefacts they make. The enjoyment of the land and the cherished bounty of nature is conveyed in the artist’s own poetic account of this work:

With their baskets full, ready to prepare a meal for their family, the women share stories and go about their daily routines, under the night sky. The Southern Cross and Emu Constellation depict time and the changing seasons on Dja. An eel is caught in a hand-woven trap, made from flax and other grasses. Wattle seed is added to flavour food and crushed similarly to kangaroo grass to make dampers. The Murnong daisy tuber is crushed, or roasted whole to eat. The kangaroo apple is eaten ripe and the Bogong moth was also eaten for a source of protein. The season is entering what we call Spring in Western culture, just past the cool season, wattle is flowering and the banksias are at their end. Birds are mating and the eels are hatching. Evidence we were here first (Gilson, 2023c).

Gilson’s art is a vehicle for preserving culture and memory.

Edward S. Casey’s book Remembering (2000), illuminates the pivotal connection that exists between place, lived experience and art-making. Casey emphasises the role of place in the workings of memory. He contends that place helps to ‘fix’ or allow memory to take hold and to overcome displacement. Place not only aids the flow of memory, but also acts as a container and preserver of memory and experiences. ‘Memory is naturally place-oriented and place supported. It is not indifferently dispersed, but rests on the particularities of what is properly in place’ (Casey, 2000: 187). He explains further, that memory is itself a (fluid) place, ‘wherein the past can revive and survive’ (Casey, 2000: 186-187).

Place, as a container of our entire memorial lives, acts to alleviate the anxieties of disorientation and separation. Casey’s work supports the idea that the material or embodied nature of the preservation of memory through art is a crucial foundation of conscious thought and well-being. This underscores the work of Deanne Gilson.

By reconnecting her subjects, mode of making, formal elements, and symbols from traditional Indigenous practices to Country and kin, Gilson’s contemporary practice articulates what is absent in much of Preston’s work. Materials such as ochre, gold leaf and charcoal take on cultural and individual significance - pink, brown and black ochre variously refer to skin colour and in some cases, are indexical symbols of the locations where the ochre and wood for charcoal burning are found and used. White ochre is a reference to sacred rites and ceremony. In this body of work white is also symbolic of the spirit of the artist’s grandmother and of Aboriginal spirituality. This is emphasised in the work, Full Moon Ceremony - Kunuwarra, Ba-gurrk Murrup, (Women’s Spirit, Dance of the Black Swan) and again in the smaller work, Waxlip Orchid. In the artist’s words, the white butterfly portrayed in this work refers to, “My Nan’s spirit held in the cabbage butterfly hovering over one of her favourite flowers” (Gilson, 2023c).

Gold is both self-referential relating to the precious metal sought in the Ballarat Goldfields but it is also symbolic of the people who inhabit the land. Gilson’s reinsertion of people into her paintings operates both as reclamation and critique of the colonial objectification of Indigenous people through cheaply manufactured kitsch objects. She says of these figures in the work, The Wurrak (Banksia) Basket:

The figures from left to right are all ceramic kitsch objects I saw on eBay, mainly from the early 50’s to 70’s in Australia. I have taken the objects off their base… turning them into real people… They represent the reality of who we are as strong resourceful people who successfully lived off the land for thousands of years and not as the object of the gaze. (Gilson, 2023c).

We can see this reinsertion of inhabitants into the landscape again in the larger work playfully entitled, Post Preston, After the Appropriation - Don’t Gang Gang Up on Me, Ya Galah – Wunggurrwil Ba-gurrk Murrup, (Strong Women’s Spirit).

In this work the artist depicts herself as one of a generation of powerful women. The woman dressed in red is a reference to Gilson herself. On one side of this figure is her ancestor Queen Mary; on the other side is Gilson’s mother in bridal white connoting purity and Aboriginal women’s survival from the debasements of colonisation. The smaller figure refers, perhaps, to a child lost, or taken, that is now returned. The squabbling of the birds, both belies and evokes a more profound and bitter history of oppression. This work like the other four larger works in the exhibition is unframed. The back ground is rendered in ochre, the colour of the earth. This challenges Western notions of land ownership and containment. The ochre allows for a continuous flow of Country across the works evoking a timeless and infinite layering of County. (Gilson 2023b).

The decorative vase depicted in still life painting is here, subverted by a delicate overlay of the dilly bag motif painted in white ochre. The repetition of the inverted arch form of which the basket is composed has been used by Gilson in earlier works to denote the feathers of Bunjil, the Wedge-Tail Eagle and Creator Deity (Barrett 2017). It is also a symbol used in traditional Indigenous paintings and refers to people meeting and sitting on Country. Gilson explains that it literally refers to buttocks, (Gilson September 2023b). There is subtle humour here for those who care to look for it. The basket of flowers sits not on a table, but on a volume entitled. Post Preston after the Appropriation - perhaps a fitting title for the narrative that is woven throughout the body of work in this exhibition.

In this work too, the hard-edge compositions of Preston’s stencilled Waratahs are replaced by soft brush stokes giving the flowers a visceral, fleshy appearance. The diagonal and irregular arrangement of leaves suggest movement and life. In contrast to this bold, but reverently wrought beauty, is the sense of perturbation evoked by an almost chaotic arrangement of the flowers in the work entitled, The Wurrak (Banksia) Basket. The liveliness here repels rather than attracts. The section of gold that makes up a large portion of the possum skin basket can be likened to a calloused gash. Compositionally and formally, the work is an unmitigated refusal of the decorative in still life painting. The work is perhaps allegorical of resilience in the face of a traumatic history.

There is extensive use of charcoal in Gilson’s making of the series of smaller works in this exhibition and its use is significant in many respects. Firstly, the charcoal, is collected from her mother’s fire at home and is brought to her, almost daily by her father. This instantiates a strong connection to her family, ancestors and Dja, the Country from which the wood was sourced. In Aboriginal cosmology, all entities including those from the metaphysical realm are interrelated; past present and future are contemporaneous. Gilson concurs with the belief that ensuring a harmonious relationship between human and non-human entities through cultural practices is fundamental to Indigenous notions of spirituality and she strives to convey this in her choice of materials and mode of making (Gilson, 2023a).

Charcoal has connotations of healing, cleansing and renewal because it is imbued with smoke and is therefore, related to smoking ceremony as well the traditional care of country though controlled burning. The colour black is also symbolic of trauma and Gilson’s account of its insistence in her work is apposite here. The repetitious rubbing of charcoal against the canvas causes painful chafing and scratching of her skin. Gilson relates how her use of it in the making of these works was almost obsessive. She agrees that this may be related to the importance of her art-making in assuaging trauma. This resonates with the idea that physical self-harming can operate as an attempt to replace or substitute emotional pain with physical pain. Gilson refers again, to the notion of repetition as a measure of overcoming grief and trauma through her use of the colour pink, an example of which can be seen in the work, Before Joseph Banks, Our Baskets and Plants Held Sacred Knowledge, Pink Pig Face. For the artist, pink is a personal symbol of grief and mourning. It refers to the untimely death of a close friend and is the colour that Gilson and other mourners wore to her funeral. The work is annotated: “After Deb, the sun shone for her” (Gilson, 2023c).

The works in the series of small painting are framed. Gilson suggests that the frames can be likened to coffins and that this relates to the mourning for a time before the cultural significance of Aboriginal flora had been effaced by the classifications of Western natural sciences and the discourses of white Australian art. The trees, birds and flowers are located in specific sites on Country, where the artist walks, lives and works. Each have cultural and symbolic meaning. The central motif – the dillybag or basket depicted throughout, is of central significance as the holder of sacred knowledge. Each of their contents bear particular cultural uses and significance. For example: the banksia was used for making spears and fire lights and its nectar for healing for cuts and abrasions; the wood and leaves of the Flowering Gum is used in smoking ceremonies and is a habitat for the birds. This links back to the Creation story and its account of how the birds and their colours came from Binbeal, the rainbow. The black wattle sap is a binder that Gilson uses in her ochre paints as ancestors used it to bind pigments and seal the fur tightly on possum skin drums, as well as other artefacts. Gilson’s account of the importance of the Murnong daisy, a staple part of the pre-settlement diet and main food source for Wadawurrung people is especially poignant:

The murnong tubers were eaten raw, roasted in the fire and then crushed and mixed into a paste for pupups - babies to eat. It was harvested by the women and farmed for many generations. After the introduction of the sheep and cattle off the First Fleet, it disappeared as it was pulled tubers and all by them. Many Victorian Aboriginal people starved once this happened … (Gilson, 2023c)

Gilson’s work continues to evolve through a unique intercultural aesthetic informed by both her own cultural knowledge and the influence of her training as an artist. Her paintings resonate with the work of Preston in terms of its location within the genre of still life painting and its seemingly decorative aesthetic. However, Karrap Karrap Beenyak – Flower Baskets of Knowledge disrupts these aspects through its predominantly narrative perspective. Gilson says of her art making, “I can’t be where I am not telling the truth… finding a balance between telling the story of my people and trauma, but also looking up seeing the beauty of the birds, trees and plants” (Gilson, 2023a). Her art is not concerned with Vanitas notions of ostentation, pride, immortality or death. She says also, that her vision is shaped by her culture and the lived experience of Country and people rather than a concern with abstract theories of form and perspective. Her objects are tilted so that they appear to be floating, evoking the spirit and emotion of Country and natural entities that co-exist in a cosmic landscape (Gilson, 2023b).

There is a resisting beauty in this important work of reclamation.

Dr Estelle Barrett
Honorary Professorial Fellow
The Victorian College of the Arts,
Melbourne University

References

Barrett, E. (2017) “Memory Image Matter: trauma and acts of unforgetting, Studies in Material Thinking, Vol 16, Issue 8, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland N.Z. pp. 1-22. Accessed 25/9/2023 at: https://www.materialthinkingorg/papers/243

Casey, E. S. (2000). Remembering: A phenomenological study. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Foucault, M. (1998) “What is an author” in Michel Foucault, Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, edited by James D. Faubion, translated by Robert Hurley and others, New York: The New Press

Gallery of New South Wales, (2005) Art and Life, 29 July – 23 October, (exhibition education kit), Sydney NSW. Accessed 25/92023 at: https://archive.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/sub/preston/edu_kit

Gilson, D. (2023a) Interviewed by Estelle Barrett 18 September.

Gilson, D. (2023b) Interviewed by Estelle Barrett 27 September.

Gilson, D. (2023c) Karrap Karrap Beenyak – Flower Baskets of Knowledge, exhibition notes, September 2023.

Leslie, D. (2015) “Margaret Preston and assimilation”, Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues Vo 18 No 3. Victoria: Federation University of Australia. pp. 2-16. Accessed 23 /9/2023 at: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/196153353.pdf. ISSN: 1440-5202

Magnus H. (2023) “Appropriation or appreciation? Margaret Preston and the search for a uniquely ‘Australian’ Aesthetic” Arts and Divinity Faculty Journal, University of St Andrews, College Gate, St Andrews University Scotland, February 2023.pp 1-9.

Accessed 23/9/2023 at: https://artsanddivinityfacultyjournal.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/files/2023/02/Margaret-Preston-Essay-HM-2_Hugh-Magnus.pdf

Peel, R. (2006) “Margaret Preston: A material girl explained”, Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material, (conference proceedings) Book Paper and Photograph SIG Symposium April 19-21 2006, Wellington New Zealand. pp. 18-35.

Accessed 23/9/2023 at: https://aiccm.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AICCM_BP2006_Peel_p18-35.pdf