Julie Gough

Me-Bay  2005

Julie Gough
Me-bay 2005
Digital print on canvas
77 x 105 cm
Private collection
Exhibited in: Intertidal, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, Victoria, 2005 (Solo exhibition)

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Bad Aboriginal Art 1997

  
Julie Gough
Bad Aboriginal Art 1997
Five handcrafted dolls, one 1974 How to make Aboriginal Arts and Craft childrens’ book, variable dimensions
Exhibited in NAIDOC exhibition, Moonah Arts Centre, 1997

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Bad Language 1996

Julie Gough
Bad Language 1996
found paperback books, wood, plastic coated wire
80 x 170 x 6 cm
collection of the Art Gallery of West Australia
Exhibited in: Dark Secrets/Home Truths, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 1996 (Solo exhibition)

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Folklore 1997

Julie Gough
Folklore 1997
vintage curtains, Tasmanian oak light box showing image of diorama in Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart
190 x 300 x 15 cm
collection of the artist
Exhibited in: Re-collection, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 29 July – 23 August 1997 (Solo exhibition)

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My Tools Today  1996

Julie Gough
My tools today 1996
147 kitchen tools on nails through eyelets on inkjet print on fabric of Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery c.1974
220 x 360 x 12 cm
Exhibited Adelaide Biennale 1998, Koln Art Fair, 1996
Collection of the artist
Exhibited in: Re-collection, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 29 July – 23 August 1997 (Solo exhibition)

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Magnum-as-Cook in the Time/Space Continuum 1996

Julie Gough
Magnum as Cook in the Time/Space continuum 1996
mixed media, variable dimensions
collection of the artist
Exhibited in: Re-collection, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 29 July – 23 August 1997 (Solo exhibition)
Exhibited in: Extracts, Boomalli Aboriginal Artist’s Co-Operative, Sydney, 1997 (Group exhibition)

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Medical Series 1994

Julie Gough
Medical Series 1994
Ten case-studies of medical and anthropological measurements for indicating racial difference
mixed media, variable dimensions
Exhibited in Perspecta 1994, curated by Judy Annear, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Group exhibition)
Acquired by Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery 1995

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The Trouble with Rolf  1995

Julie Gough
The Trouble With Rolf  1995
plaster Aborginal stockmen 1950-60cast wall ornaments in plaster, huon pine fence posts, fencing wire, text
variable dimensions
collection the artist
Exhibited in: Dark Secrets/Home Truths, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 1996 (Solo exhibition)

View this work and several others from this period online  at this archived (c.1999) site: http://iccs.arts.utas.edu.au/colonial/old_caia_site/juliegough/index.html    I used  the term “Aboriginalia” and made art with Aboriginalia objects from 1995 to c.2001 (See PhD thesis – downloadable on: https://juliegough.wordpress.com/phd-download-link/ )

The Trouble with Rolf  (artist statement, 1995):
This work developed from the fourth verse of Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport by Rolf Harris (1966). The 4th verse apparently refers to a dying (white) pastoralist’s last words; his will and testament whereby he is giving away his ‘property’. He mutters: ‘Let me Abo’s go loose, Lew, let me Abo’s go loose…. They’re of no further use, Lew, so let me Abo’s go loose, Altogether now…’

I represented one meaning behind the words by introducing plaster cast Aboriginal stockmen heads, in a  musical notation formation spelling-out the fencing-in or -out that has been enforced onto many outback Aboriginal people. Rolf is probably also referring to the ‘freeing’ of Aboriginal stockmen/musterers during the mid 1960’s when the Equal Wages Bill was passed in Australia. Previously, Aboriginal workers were paid a pittance, or with food/tobacco rations. Paradoxically, the legislation resulted in thousands of rural Aboriginal people facing unemployment and being forced off their traditional lands (where they had often managed to continue living due to white ‘landowners’ allowing them to work on these properties). It led to large numbers of Aboriginal people living as displaced persons on the outskirts of townships, many up to the present-day.
The song Tie me Kangaroo Down, Sport is a troublesome lyrical arrangement because each verse except for the fourth has Australian fauna as its focus – kangaroos, koalas, platypus, etc.  The fourth verse includes Aborigines as part of the ‘wildlife’ of the Australian landscape, and even goes so far as to suggest that they can be ‘let loose’ – released at the whim of a stockman/bushman – inferring that Aboriginal people were under the control of others.
Yet this song is of it’s own time, as was Rolf in the mid 1960’s – can Rolf be entirely castigated for proposing a pseudo freedom for the ‘captives’ ?
My aim in utilising the song and ‘found’ Aboriginalia – kitsch plaster wall ornament of an Aboriginal stockman, which I then reproduced in multiple, is to reclaim representations of Aboriginal people for ourselves. I believe that the only way to work with imagery, text, inferences that are ‘out there’ already performing their intended roles in society, is to claim these representations, and reuse them subversively outside their original context.
* The redirection into new performative roles of their power to damage and undermine can question and redefine our understanding of that past in our country’s present and future. Addendum – 1997:   Rolf  changed this fourth verse in recent sheet-music reprints of this song, and he no longer sings the fourth verse as he originally intended either. The trouble is, that like Eeny meeny miny mo…music and verse are one of the most pervasive ways to enter into the popular unconscious, and it will be some time before those familiar with the song can replace the original version with the new. I think Rolf was reflecting his times, and the mind-frame of most non-Aboriginal Australian’s in the mid-sixties – where I think he is still ensconced today. I believe that it is crucial that this history hidden amidst the popular is not forgotten.

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Pedagogical (Inner Soul) Pressure  1996

Julie Gough
Pedagogical (Inner Soul) Pressure 1996
40 pairs of second hand school shoes, lights, slides, found photos, stilts, shoe shine box, acrylic on wood
≈ 300 x 450 x 60 cm
collection the artist
Exhibited in: Dark Secrets/Home Truths, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 1996 (Solo exhibition)

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Lying with the Land, 1 & 2  1995

 
Julie Gough
Lying with the land, 1, 1996
photographs, wood, tin, buttons, ink print on cotton,plaster, light bulbs
variable dimensions
collection the artist
&
Julie Gough
Lying with the land, 2, 1996
photographs, wood, tin, jars, tea,sugar, tobacco, flour,salt
variable dimensions
collection the artist
Exhibited in: Dark Secrets/Home Truths, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 1996 (Solo exhibition)

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Human Nature and Material Culture  1994

 
Julie Gough
Human Nature and Material Culture 1994
carpet, bathroom scales, oil on tin (miniature depiction of 1830 Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines), wool
collection of the National Gallery of Australia
Inside scales is a painting in the round of / as above right image:
Unknown artist, Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aboriginal People, c.1830, oil on huon pine board; 36 x 22.8 cm, National Library of Australia, PIC R7247 LOC MS SR Cabinet 3/9, image #: nla.pic-an2291826, http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview/?pi=nla.pic-an2291826&fullrecord=yes
Exhibited in:New Faces – New Directions, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 1995 (Group exhibition)

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Snow White & Black Beauty  1996

Julie Gough
Black Beauty 1996
mixed media, 70 x 35 x 15 cm
collection the artist
&
Julie Gough
Snow White  1996 
mixed media, 70 x 35 x 15 cm
collection the artist
Exhibited in: Handbag, curated by Vivonne Thwaites, Festival Theatre Foyer, Adelaide, 1996 (Group exhibition)  

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She Loves me, she loves me not… 1995

Julie Gough
She loves me, she loves me not…   1995
13 plastic roses, 13 synthetic slippers, 13 found Govt. photos c.1962, plastic magnification inserts, variable dimensions
collection of Mildura Arts Centre
Exhibited in: Dark Secrets/Home Truths, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 1996 (Solo exhibition)

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mOTHER  1995

 
Julie Gough
mOTHER  1995
mixed media, variable dimensions
collection of the artist
Exhibited in: Dark Secrets/Home Truths, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 1996 (Solo exhibition)

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Moree (Genetic Pool)  1995

Julie Gough
Moree – Genetic pool 1995
mixed media: men’s and boy’s 1950s-60s bathers, in disinfectant in working washing machine, postcards of rural Australia towns showing swimming pools, test-tubes in wooden rack filled with milky substance, variable dimensions
collection the artist
Exhibited in: Dark Secrets/Home Truths, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 1996 (Solo exhibition)

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Rifle & Boomerang  1993

Julie Gough
Rifle & Boomerang 1993
nine Australian timbers, oil on canvas, oil on acrylic
120 x 90 x 9 cm
collection of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Exhibited in: Curtin University BFA Graduate Show, Bentley, West Australia, 1993 (Group exhibition)  

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