STOLEN GOLD

Joshua Searle

Curated by Emily McCulloch Childs

Flinders Hotel, Flinders Fringe Festival 2024

https://joshuasearle.com/page/2-STOLEN%20GOLD.html

https://flindersfringe.com.au

Joshua Searle, Aztec double-headed serpent, aerosol and pigmented ink on canvas, 151.5 x 177.5 cm 

Michael Grey’s ‘Pre-Columbian Art’, Thames and Hudson, 1978, was a seminal book on artworks from Central & South America held in the collections of museums, most noticeably the British Museum. Part of a series, the Thames & Hudson books on art formed a significant canonical text, appearing in school libraries across the world. They informed generations of thinking about such objects, colonial collections of museums, the origins of which were created by Empire.

The British Empire was the largest and most aggressively expansive of the European colonial superpowers. The fields of archaeology and anthropology were born as colonial activities, and thousands of objects were taken from societies across the globe to be housed in the empire’s colonial epicentre in London’s British Museum.

Joshua Searle is an Australian born artist of Colombian and settler colonial (Australian Irish) descent. He was born and raised on Bunurong/Boon Wurrung Country, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne. The Peninsula has a fraught colonial history, where colonial settlers cleared its forested land for farming, and was the site of a Quarantine Station built to help manage the pandemics created by the British Empire: most particularly smallpox.

When a friend gifted him a copy of Grey’s book that he had found in a local op shop, Searle’s first response was of anger at the assumption of the title. ‘Columbia’ refers to the 15th century Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who led an exploration into South America. The categorisation of ‘Pre-Columbian’ is used to define the time period of societies in the Americas as referencing Columbus, with no recognition given to the extraordinary Indigenous societies existing independently of European endeavour.

The works in Grey’s opus include remains of exemplary cultural societies. Most significantly for Searle, and the starting point for his series, are the Quimbaya, one of the Indigenous societies of the Bogotá Plain. Famous for their skill as goldsmiths, they excelled in the lost wax technique, a technique whose invention is more commonly attributed to the ancient Greeks. The Quimbaya used gold as a way of accessing the spirit world through the animal world, and of reverence for their god, the sun. Their concept of gold was starkly different from the Europeans’, whose lust for gold was driven by greed, and who raided the Colombians of their gold as they destroyed their societies. The myth of El Dorado, which was not a city, but an Indigenous chief, originates from this area.

The impact of Spanish colonisation has impacted knowledge of Searle’s ancestry. The various small Indigenous groups became absorbed into large cities such as the capital Bogotá, which today is a cultural capital, containing 120 public galleries and museums, including El Museo del Oro (The Bogotá Museum of Gold). Although it is practically impossible to know his full identity due to this displacement and disruption wrought by colonial powers, his artwork concepts nonetheless represent the history and experiences of his ancestors. Furthermore they provide the basis for an examination into his identity as a diasporic Australian.

By referencing these artworks, called ‘objects’ or ‘artefacts’ in colonial lexicon, in painting, the medium of the Great European Masters, Searle undertakes a process of reclamation. This includes his own identity as part of the colonial diaspora, and of the works themselves, as a reclamation of art and the skill of their makers (the peoples of the Bogotá plain are known as amongst the world’s finest goldsmiths, producing gold work so fine as to be almost filigree, and the significance of the pieces (many taken from religious ceremony).

The seed for this project began with a painting of the Colombian gold mask featured in the book, held in the collection of the British Museum. Titled ‘British Museum, London’, the work features a black mask on a yellow background, with black text that reads the works title underneath. It shows the way in which these works are now held as part of the stolen wealth of empire, and identified as belonging to the British.

This work inspired the creation of a significant body of new work. He embarked on a series of sketches, done on cardboard in his studio, in oil pastel and permanent marker or ink. Each one explores an image: an Aztec double-headed serpent, a Colossal Olmec head, a ceramic Tiahuanaco Llama, a gold Colombian figure. Many of these are held in museum collections around the world, most significantly in the British Museum.

This initial examination of collective culture identity and societal impact led to a more individual personal exploration in sketches. These include works exploring his own family’s identity and impact of colonisation, and his own loss of language and cultural knowledge.

From these sketches, Searle then created a further body of paintings, done in a variety of paint: acrylic, enamel, oil stick, spray paint, artist’s ink.

Created using a process of research and development, examining Colombia and Australia’s past and colonialism, the works held in the British Museum and Colombian museums, conversations and interviews with family members, they now form a major body of work: ‘STOLEN GOLD’ and ‘STOLEN GOLD in monochrome’.

These paintings are striking in colour, style, scale and power. Often reduced down to the line work of the object, they create direct, emotional impact. The colours and use of materials such as spray paint bring them into the contemporary age, into Searle’s generation.The works draw upon the strength and skills of his ancestors, the great artists and societies of Central America, as an affirmation of sophistication and complexity, the antithesis of the othering mythology created by the colonial machine.

They are bold and political, but also very personal. Through them, the artist has undergone a fundamental reclamation of self. He has learnt of complex and skilled societies, whose artists created works of such skill they are still not fully understood today. Whilst living on land far away from these societies, this project has led him to discover much hidden history, which he then brings the audience into, enlightening them and leading them to explore their own past and other cultures.

The monochromatic works bring us even further into a reduced set of commentary on our current society, and where the artist sits in the world, how he sees and what he feels. It is socio-cultural but also again deeply personal, and we are fortunate to be given a view into his mind and its reflections of the past and contemporary world.

Emily McCulloch Childs, 2024

Texts:

Michael Grey, Pre-Columbian art, Thames & Hudson UK, 1978

Clemencia Plazas, Amelicia Santacruz Alvarez, Meyby Rios Cardenas, Hector Garcia Botero, Molas: Capas De Sabiduría, Layers of Wisdom, Museo Del Oro, Bogota, Colombia, 2017, 2021.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quimbaya

Julie Jones, ed., The art of Precolumbian gold: the Jan Mitchell collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985 https://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15324coll10/id/119535

El Dorado: City of Gold
Lost Cities with Albert Lin, National Geographic

El Dorado: Power and Gold in Ancient Colombia Exhibition, British Museum 2013
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/oct/15/british-museum-el-dorado-exhibition

Everywhen Artspace and The Indigenous Jewellery Project is proud to present a special NAIDOC Week exhibition: Donna Brown: Gumbaynggirr Jeweller, a new exhibition of jewellery by Nambucca Valley, mid-north coast NSW based artist Donna Brown (Gumbaynggirr).

Brown uses silver, copper, silk, enamel and emu feathers to create ethereal necklaces and chest pieces relating to her heritage and local Dreamings. Emu tracks, astronomy and fresh water/salt water imagery are strongly represented in her work.

Donna Brown has exhibited nationally as a painter, printmaker, textile artist, illustrator and jeweller, and has several of her works held in public gallery collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Brown has been a workshop facilitator working for Aboriginal art centres such as Mornington Island Art Centre, Queensland, facilitating metal and felt jewellery workshops.

This exhibition evolves from a project created by Everywhen co-director Emily McCulloch Childs, The Indigenous Jewellery Project (IJP), a national contemporary jewellery project working with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander jewellers in workshops held on Country with UNSW lecturer Melinda Young, in order to develop a platform for Indigenous contemporary jewellery.

In 2021 IJP partnered with the Australian Design Centre, Create NSW and Jaanymili Bawrrungga, an Aboriginal organisation in Bawrrungga (Bowraville) NSW, in a workshop and professional development project, with works available at the ADC Object online store. A selection of these works are currently on display in the Object Space Window at Australian Design Centre.

Brown had previously been part of Shiny Shiny Blak Bling, a Melbourne based collective of Aboriginal jewellers who worked with jeweller Peter Eccles in developing silversmithing practice. This collective had been one of the inspirations for the creation of The Indigenous Jewellery Project. In a lovely circumstance of fate, IJP began working with one of the artists that had led to its creation, and from this well this current exhibition was born.

It explores Brown’s Aboriginal heritage, silversmithing training and development working with IJP and subsequently remotely continuing the relationship between curator and artist, and brings the beauty and natural world from the artist’s coastal and forest home to the Mornington Peninsula.

Connexions

Indian Ocean Craft Triennial

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021 – OCTOBER 16, 2021

Emily Beckley, Fatemeh Boroujeni, Eden Lennox, Sultana Shamshi, Melissa Cameron, Blandine Hallé

Curated by Blandine Halle and Melissa Cameron

With a mission to show the complexity and diversity of Australian jewellery talent to audiences outside this country, Connexions invited artists from a range of cultural backgrounds to share their works. On display are new pieces by Emily Beckley – Indigenous artist from Horn Island in the Torres Strait; Fatemeh Boroujeni – an ethnic Bakhtiari who was born in Iran; Eden Lennox – Perth artist with Jewish, Irish, French, and Australian ancestry; Sultana Shamshi – born in Bombay, India, has lived Europe, Southeast Asia and for a long time Perth; Melissa Cameron – former immigrant to the USA, recently returned; and Blandine Hallé – born in France, lives in Perth and Paris.

Connexions had a pandemic-abbreviated debut at the Parcours Bijoux International Triennial in 2020 at Galerie Assemblages in France and will finally be shown in full at IOTA21 in Perth.

See the nuanced and diverse works we have created, highlighting the depth and richness of cultural influence, and talent, in this place.

Emily Beckley, Sabagorar Susueri (Bridal Necklace), 2019, silver (oxidised), silk, 85 x 90 x 2 mm (pendant size). Photo Melinda Young

Emily Beckley’s work Sabagorar Susueri has been acquired for National Gallery of Australia‘s Art Cases Program.

 The National Gallery of Australia Art Cases is a free outreach program coordinated through the NGA’s Touring Exhibitions team which involves lending art filled suitcases to schools, libraries, galleries, aged-care homes and other community organisations across Australia. The program was developed to provide an opportunity for people of all ages to experience and handle works of art. The cases travel to venues individually or in pairs, with each case containing six works. The works have been chosen to generate discussion and an enthusiasm for art, and the cases are used for art-making activities, storytelling, school outreach and Art and Dementia programs. 

Thanks to the generous support of the Neilson Foundation, NGA has refurbished the existing three cases and expanding the program to a total of five cases. This includes undertaking a thematic rearrangement of the works, acquiring additional works which add to the diversity of artists and art practices represented and updating the education kit and other accompanying resources. 

Emily Beckley

Year of Birth: 1965

Language Groups: Meriam Mir, Kala Lagaw Ya

Place of Birth:  Thursday Island, Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, Australia

Emily Beckley is an artist based on Horn Island, Torres Strait Islands, Queensland. She belongs to the language groups Meriam Mir and Kala Lagaw Ya. A trained painter, Beckley’s work in painting is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.

Beckley’s art is often concerned with reviving and maintaining cultural practice from her Meriam Mer ancestry. She draws on her experiences along with the stories and history of her culture from her parents from the Meriam – Samsep of Mer and Panai of Mabuiag to create works in metal as a way to connect the past to the future. 

Her Contemporary Jewellery practice evolved through two workshops held by The Indigenous Jewellery Project (curator Emily McCulloch Childs and contemporary jeweller Melinda Young) during 2018, at Gab Titui Cultural Centre, Torres Strait Island and at ANU School of Art & Design Jewellery & Object Workshop.

The sabagorar pendant was originally carved as a bride’s pendant from a turtle shell and was part of the many items that was collected by Alfred C Haddon in 1898 during The Recording of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. It is held in the collection of the British Museum. It has been approximately 120 years since this pendant was taken from Mer (Murray Island), Torres Strait, and decades since these pendants have been created. 
The recreation of this pendant in the contemporary era links the past to the present, which is of vital importance. This is done in order to revitalise an art practice in metal jewellery, which brings life to the beauty of a hidden treasure of Torres Strait art.

In February 2021, the Indigenous Jewellery Project partnered with Australian Design Centre for a week of professional development workshops with Jaanymili Bawrrungga, a women’s group of Gumbaynggirr artists in the NSW mid-north coast town of Bawrrungga (Bowraville), 

The Gumbaynggirr have inhabited the area for thousands of years. The word Bowra comes from the Gumbaynggirr place name, Bawrrung, which possibly means cabbage tree palm, or ‘bullrout fish’, ‘scrub turkey’ or ‘bald head’. There is a strong tradition of wood carving and jewellery making, which continues today.

Gumbaynggirr artists were invited to participate in a five-day contemporary jewellery making workshop. The professional workshop was attended by local artists who were introduced to jewellery making techniques, taught by Melinda Young (UNSW) including saw piercing, metal texturing, heat patination, cold-joining, making jewellery findings and air-dry clay beads, knotting and cordage, all with a focus on working with natural materials including locally collected native timber and shells.

Outcomes included necklaces, earrings and bracelets.

Previously these artists have been learning painting and ceramics at the Nambucca Valley Phoenix Community Support Services run by Jaanymili Bawrrungga Inc and Arcadian Creative Management in Bowraville.

These workshops offer a positive opportunity for local women to learn new skills and share this knowledge in the broader community.

In May 2021 the artists exhibited their work in a pop-up exhibition in ADC Object Store. 

Artists included: Donna Brown, Jasmine Stadhams, Rebecca Stadhams, Lavinna Inglis, Monica Christine Inglis, Aunty Marjory Buchanon, Denise Buchanan, Anne Francine Edwards,  Yarra Stedhams, Annalisa Wilson.

This was the third Indigenous Jewellery Project workshop Australian Design Centre has produced in partnership with founding curator Emily McCulloch Childs and leading contemporary jeweller Melinda Young. 

This project was proudly supported by the NSW Government though Create NSW as part of Arts Restart.

Emily Beckley, a Meriam Mer/Kala Lagaw artist who has been working with The Indigenous Jewellery Project for several years, is the first Indigenous Australian contemporary jeweller to exhibit in Paris, with new work featured in the exhibition Connexions at Parcours Bijoux 2020, Galerie Assemblages, Paris, 13-25 October 2020.

Connexions is curated by Blandine Hallé and Melissa Cameron. Our aim in its conception was to introduce an international audience to Australian contemporary jewellery, its breadth and depth. This became augmented by what we as organisers wanted to share about Australia, versus what was at the forefront of the news media at that time; namely the mass-murders in Christchurch, perpetrated by an Australian.

This exhibition evolved to be a counter-action of sorts, aiming to present a cross-section of Australian makers with cross-cultural backgrounds, while showcasing artists with multifarious and deep connections to the human body.

Selected for their existing contribution to this dialogue, each of our artists mines and/or interrogates their own histories for their artwork. Together the complex, nuanced and diverse works that we anticipate from these artists will, en masse, portray Australia as a community that respects difference and honours diversity and complexity, more effectively than any single dialogue in which we might hope to engage.

Contemporary jewellery relies upon the human body for transmission, making it the most accessible and personal art form. This body-to-body connection heightens the visual spectacle of the works while acting as an inlet for diverse people and cultures to interface through simultaneous interaction – wearing and viewing. Through this exhibit we aim to connect the audience to us, to share our Australian identity.

Artists: Blandine Hallé – Eden Lennox – Emily Beckley – Fatemeh Boroujeni – Melissa Cameron – Sultana Shamshi

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Mara Ninti (Clever Hands) Liritja (necklaces) by Lynette Lewis
Ernabella Arts & The Indigenous Jewellery Project

Women in Design

DESIGN Canberra 2017

Craft ACT: Craft & Design Centre

Curated by Emily McCulloch Childs

 Artist’s statement:

My name is Lynette Lewis. I am an artist and mother from Ernabella. I use my hands to express my country and my culture. I am interested in the patterns, the lines and colours I see in the world around me.

I create work in ceramics, painting and more recently contemporary jewellery. For a long time I have also created traditional jewellery using tatu (seeds) and punu (timber carving.) My mother, Atipalku Intjalki, is also an artist; she passed these jewellery skills down to me.

In my painting and ceramics I tell the tjala Tjukurpa (honey ant story) of my father’s country, a place called Makiri near Fregon in the APY Lands. Tjala or honey ants live deep in the ground beneath Mulga trees in tunnels called nyinantu.

When I create liritja  (necklaces) I use beautiful coloured wooden beads and also wayanu (quandong) seeds cast in resin. Resin holds light. The resin beads glow with their beautiful colours in the same way the mana maru (backside) of the tjala do when they are full of sweet honey.

The Indigenous Jewellery Project

The Indigenous Jewellery Project is the first nation-wide Indigenous contemporary jewellery project, working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned art centres across Australia, comprising research, workshops, photography, films, and exhibitions.

The Indigenous Jewellery Project was created by McCulloch & McCulloch co-director Emily McCulloch Childs to help traditional jewellers at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned art centres across Australia and contemporary jewellers. These have included Erub Erwer Meta in the Torres Strait Islands, Ikuntji Artists in Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory, Ernabella Arts in the APY Lands, South Australia and Buku-Larrnggay Mulka in Yirrkala, NE Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.

IJP has run workshops with artist Kate Rohde and contemporary jeweller Melinda Young and been involved in over 14 exhibitions including at the JamFactory, Adelaide, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin, NGV Store, National Contemporary Jewellery Award, Griffith Regional Gallery and touring to Sturt Centre for Design, NSW, Stanley Street Galleries, Sydney, Craft ACT, Canberra, Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, Desert Mob, Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs, and the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin.

 Lynette Lewis: Mara Ninti (Clever Hands)

Lynette Lewis is an artist, ceramicist and jeweller from Ernabella Arts, Pukatja community, APY Lands, in northern South Australia. She learnt jewellery from her mother, artist Atipalku Intjalki. Anangu jewellery is a thousands year old tradition that is still practiced very much today. Jewellers use native plant seed beads such as quandong: called wayanu in Pitjantjatjara, and gum nuts, called tatü, to make liritja (necklaces).

In 2015 Lynette participated in an Indigenous Jewellery Project workshop with contemporary jeweller & UNSW lecture Melinda Young, and IJP curator Emily McCulloch Childs. Her work focuses exclusively on the Anangu liritja tradition.

Using a combination of natural seed beads, seeds cast in resin during IJP’s previous workshop at Ernabella with Kate Rohde, and other beads, Lynette created a stunning series of necklaces, displaying her skill with design and colour.

A diptych of these were selected for the National Contemporary Jewellery Award, Griffith Regional Gallery, making Lynette the first Aboriginal jeweller to be a finalist in this award.

Mara Ninti is her first solo exhibition.