Walk the Line

Artist Blak Douglas (1970)

Date2013

Object number00054562

NamePhotograph

MediumPhotograph

DimensionsDisplay dimensions: 675 × 825 × 20 mm
Overall: 677 × 826 × 20 mm

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

DescriptionThis black and white photograph by Adam Hill is titled 'Walk the Line' and depicts a cleared landscape with a low fence, two tanks and electricity lines. This type of landscape represents the signs of industrial civilisation, giving no indication that there ever were Aboriginal people here. In his series of images for East Coast Encounters, Adam Hill looks at the notion of historical erasure, with the artists work interogating the impact of Cooks landing here in 1770 by focusing on the present.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 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.