Heroes of Colonial Encounters - Gooseberry

Artist Helen S Tiernan (born 1952)

Date2017

Object number00055138

NamePainting

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsOverall: 362 × 510 × 20 mm

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

DescriptionA painting of Cora Gooseberry by Helen S Tiernan. This painting is part of a series of portraits that make up 'Heroes of Colonial Encounters'. Gooseberry's Indigenous name is recorded as being Kaaroo and she was the daughter of Moorooboora who was a prominent leader of the Murro-ore-dial clan, south of Sydney. Kaaroo was also the wife of Bungaree, the chief of the Broken Bay clan. She became a long term and well known resident of the colony of Sydney and was also referred to as Queen Gooseberry. 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 'Gooseberry, widow of King Bungaree'. 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'.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. "Bungaree’s wife, Cora Gooseberry, was known as ‘Queen of Sydney to South Head’ or ‘Queen of Sydney and Botany’ and was a Sydney identity for 20 years after Bungaree’s death. Cora was often seen wrapped in a government issued blanket, her head covered with a scarf and a clay pipe in her mouth, sitting with her family and other Aboriginal people camped on the footpath outside the Cricketers’ Arms, a hotel on the corner of Pitt and Market streets in Sydney. She befriended the owner of the hotel Edward Borton who later owned the Sydney Arms Hotel in Castlereagh Street where he allowed Gooseberry to sleep at nights. Here she was eventually found dead at the age of 75, in July 1852. Borton paid for a gravestone and her burial in the Presbyterian section of the Devonshire Street Cemetery (also known as the Sandhills cemetery, it was on the site of Central Railway). At the time she was thought to be the last of the Guringai (Kuring-gai) clan to survive, but it later became evident that the descendants of the Guringai people had joined remnants of other Aboriginal language groups to ensure their survival. Cora Gooseberry’s gravestone is now in the Pioneers cemetery at Botany." - Barani, Sydney's Aborginal History http://www.sydneybarani.com.au SignificanceThis painting of Gooseberry 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.