Barbiquaria

Artist Blak Douglas (1970)

Date2013

Object number00054557

NamePhotograph

MediumPhotographic print

DimensionsDisplay dimensions: 675 × 825 × 20 mm
Overall: 678 × 826 × 20 mm

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

DescriptionA black and white photograph by Adam Hill titled 'Barbiquaria' featuring a coin operated BBQ at a picnic park at Kamay / Botany Bay in New South Wales. At the time of the first encounters with Europeans there were two different Indigenous nations - the Goorawal People and the Gweagal People, living in the area which now includes Kamay Botany Bay National Park. In this photograph Adam Hill presents an apparently quintessential Australian image of mown lawns, picnic tables, a sheltered barbeque and flagpole. However, the title references the 1986 Australian film 'BabaKiueria' (Barbeque Area) which reverses historical narratives. The film tells of the invasion of BabaKiueria - a land peopled by European Australians by uniformed Indigenous Australians and the consequences for the local inhabitants. In linking to the incisive film, Adam Hill disrupts fixed ideas of ‘Australianness' and 'foreignness' as well as assumptions about connections with culture and place. HistoryThis work by Adam Hill was produced for East Coast Encounter, a multi-arts initiative involving Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, writers and songwriters to re-imagine the encounter by Lieutenant James Cook and his crew with Indigenous people in 1770. Cook's voyage along the Australian east coast has become central to national historical narratives. The East Coast Encounter project asked artists to re-envisage this seminal journey by imaginatively exploring moments of contact between two world views during these encounters. It also brought these events into the present by incorporating artists' reflections on their relevance today, and their responses to visits to significant contact locations. Topics such as encounter, impact, differing perspectives, nature and culture and views of country are investigated. Adam Hill is an Indigenous artist based in Sydney. His work is often confrontational and political, yet can also be humorous. Deceptively simple at first glance, Hills work a painter, sculptor and a photographer often uses images of 'western icons', such as this barbeque, to reiterate displacement and questions of identity. In Hill's photographs for East Coast Encounter, locations which commemorate the arrival of the First Fleet are re-framed into sites of loss, negotiation and reclamation. Titles and imagery work together to connote new perspectives. The park barbie, an Aussie icon, is reinterpreted through the title Barbiquaria (2013), referencing the 1986 satirical film BabaKiueria (Barbeque Area) in which uniformed Aboriginal people invade a beach of barbeque-loving white Australians. SignificanceThis photograph by Adam Hill gives a contemporary Indigenous perspective on first contact and the impact of Eurpoean colonisation. Forms part of the East Coast Encounter exhibition.