Poles Apart
Artist
Blak Douglas
(1970)
Date2013
Object number00054561
NamePhotograph
MediumPhotograph
DimensionsDisplay dimensions: 675 × 825 × 20 mm
Overall: 680 × 825 × 20 mm
Overall: 680 × 825 × 20 mm
Copyright© Adam Hill
ClassificationsArt
Credit LineANMM Collection
DescriptionA black and white photograph by Adam Hill titled 'Poles Apart' featuring a flag pole seen from the base.
This photograph is part of a series by Adam Hill looking at the notion of historical erasure, interrogating the impact of Cooks landing here in 1770 by focusing on the present. This image contains the signs of industrial civilisation, the pole and its surroundings giving no indication that there ever were Aboriginal people living here.
This flag pole is seen without a flag, reminiscent of a ships mast and extends starkly upwards. The simplicity of the image is deceptive as the pole, its function to hoist a flag and its location on the east coast of Australia, all symbolise European settlement in an already settled land.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 stark waterfront landscape, to reiterate displacement and questions of identity.
Hill's photographs for East Coast Encounter look at the notion of historical erasure, interogating the impact of Cooks landing here in 1770 by focusing on the present, and in this image of a flag pole, the by products of European settlement.SignificanceThis photograph by Adam Hill gives a contemporary Indigenous perspective on first contact and the impact of European colonisation. Forms part of the East Coast Encounter exhibition.
