Heroes of Colonial Encounters - Tommy

Artist Helen S Tiernan (born 1952)

Date2017

Object number00055136

NamePainting

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsOverall: 510 × 362 × 20 mm

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

DescriptionA painting of Tommy from the Guringai people by Helen S Tiernan. This painting is part of a series of portraits that make up 'Heroes of Colonial Encounters'. The painting is based on one of a series historic portraits made in 1836 by William Fernyhough who was an assistant surveyor and architect under Major Thomas Mitchell. Fernyhough produced numerous sketches of Indigenous people in New South Wales, giving them anglicized names. In Helen S Tiernan's work she combines European heroes such as Cook, Banks, Bligh, Phillip and Flinders with their Indigenous contemporaries - Bennelong, Bungaree, Truganini, Colby, Bidgee Bidgee and Ballodere. Here all figures are now shown as equals - no longer separated by European colonial ideas that cast Indigenous people as 'Primitives'. HistoryThis painting is part of a series of portraits that make up 'Heroes of Colonial Encounters'. Helen S Tiernan explores the singular European view of colonial history and the way Indigenous peoples are depicted as the 'primitive' or 'other'. The portraits she paints of Bennelong, Bungaree, Colby, Bidgee Bidgee, Ballodere and Tommy sees them equal to their European contemporaries such as Cook, Joseph Banks, William Bligh, Arthur Philip and Matthew Flinders. All portraits are to hang together on the same wall, equally ornate, equal in style and equal in history. The only differences in the treatment of the subjects are the shape of the frame. Indigenous heroes are depicted in oval frames while European men are shown in square and more informal frames. Tommy was a Guringai man from the Hawkesbury River region who sailed on the brig MERCURY on 1 March 1822 to ‘the sperm whale fishery’ of New Zealand. He was one of four Indigenous crewmen, along with Boatswain, Bulgabraa and Jem, who were described as ‘Black Natives inserted in Ship at an [1/120] share’.Tommy sailed again with the whaler and gained a reputation as being an excellent whale harpooner. SignificanceThis painting of Tommy by Helen S Tiernan provides a dual perspective of histories and first encounters in Australia and through the Pacific. Most post-colonial art takes its subject from earlier colonial times, but this doesn’t mean their interests are purely historical. To the contrary, the point of post-colonialism is to show how many unresolved issues from colonial history are embedded in the present.