Heroes of Colonial Encounters - Wife of Cullah-Aa

Artist Helen S Tiernan (born 1952)

Date2017

Object number00055137

NamePainting

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsOverall: 510 × 362 × 20 mm

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

DescriptionA painting of Punch, wife of Cullah-Aa by Helen 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. In Fernyhough's painting the woman depicted is referred to as 'Punch, wife of Cullabaa, Broken Bay Tribe'. Fernyhough produced numerous sketches of Indigenous people in New South Wales, giving them anglicized names. In Helen 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'. Charles Rodius is also recorded in 1834 as having drawn in 'Punch, Ginn of Culaba, Broken-Bay Tribe, Culaba. Five Islands Tribe, N.S.Wales'.HistoryThis painting is part of a series of portraits that make up 'Heroes of Colonial Encounters'. Helen 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 woman known as 'Punch' was known as being the wife of Cullah-Aa or Cullabaa. Although William Fernyhough listed Punch as being from the Broken Bay Tribe in the Sydney area, it is recorded that Punch and Cullah-Aa were originally from the Darkinjung and Kuringgai lands located north in the Brisbane Waters region. SignificanceThis painting of Punch 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.