KEY POINTS:
When Australian new media artist Regina Saunders would go back to her community at Coonabarabran, 450km northwest of Sydney over the Blue Mountains, people would ask how her painting was going.
"I would say 'fine', because I couldn't explain all the time what I did," says Saunders, who
works under the name "Rea".
The piece gins - leap/dub - speak at the Moving Image Centre was a way to show her fellow Gamilaraay people her working method of multiscreen digital installations. It was made over four years, starting with a three-month stay in the town.
"I had been travelling back for school holidays since I was 7, but this was the first time I had lived there for an extended time since then," says Rea. "To make a piece of work like this you have to go back to the community, then introduce technology - cameras, mikes - over about four weeks.
"I made the decision to shoot the whole thing as a documentary, then cut it up and turn it into an art piece, because I couldn't spend a lot of time getting people to understand the technology and what I was trying to do ... they were very surprised when they saw the finished piece."
Gin's Leap is a rock formation near Coonabarabran from which, according to indigenous oral history, a young woman leapt to her death.
gins - leap/dub - speak has four Aboriginal women, including Rea, talking about their histories and relationships to land, language and family. By setting down their experiences as indigenous women, the four try to reclaim their identities from the negative constructions of the past, such as the bad connotations the word "gin" has for Australians.
While her friends Maria, Sharmaine and Susan were happy to talk on camera, they did not want their physical forms in the final work, so apart from shots of hands it is only their voices that are heard. "It is a journey in a landscape," Rea says.
Short clips of bush and water, sand and seeds, hands scrubbing a schoolhouse floor drift across the four screens. Unfortunately, the speaker system at the MIC muffles much of the soundtrack, so like many new media works it becomes more interesting to talk about than to experience.
While Rea's friends never left Coonabarabran, her life changed when her 3-year-old brother was knocked down on a zebra crossing during a trip to Sydney. The family moved to the city to be near medical treatment.
In the intervening years, Regina Saunders became Rea, pronounced re as in "reference to", and learned to see the world through the lens of art theory. Her explorations of language and history eventually led to her day job teaching indigenous history at the University of New South Wales. "I teach it in parallel with Australian history because it is not considered part of Australian history," she says.
That teaching experience is behind Rea's other work in Turbulence, the three-part installation maang at the New Gallery until June 4.
Maang looks at language, history and the mental, emotional and spiritual impact of colonisation on indigenous Australians. When it was first shown in Australia, it was censored because of its use of a minute of footage from 1965 of Pitinjarra people coming out of their desert homeland after a British nuclear bomb test at Maralinga.
While Rea had clearance from film-maker William Grayden and the Pitinjarra to use the film, members of the Warburton community where it was shot objected.
Rea accepts the need to hold back what is secret, sacred and ceremonial, but she considers the footage, which is widely known, as historical.
"I wanted to bring home the idea that this is our history," she says. "What was most difficult was they were in my country dictating what should happen to my work. I would never go into their country and think I could have that power, yet they were given that power because they were seen as more indigenous than I was by the white Australian gallery director, and that really bothered me."
Fortunately maang will return for showings in Melbourne and Adelaide.
Rea is now pursuing a doctorate in museum studies, because her art practice has made her aware of how museums and art galleries act as gatekeepers for indigenous people.
She says Aboriginal artists still struggle to break into the mainstream.
"What is interesting here is how Maori artists are acknowledged and accepted as New Zealand artists.
"In Australia, unless it's about funding and there has to be an indigenous artist from an urban area, they won't select you for shows. They will always select a desert artist who is a painter.
"Those artists are no less political, but their work is about selling to an art world what they want, and what they want is beautiful symbolism which projects indigenous identity.
"For a non-indigenous person buying those works, it is about claiming that part of their Australian heritage, whereas for work like mine, collectors have to be politically aware and open to that dialogue.
"My work is not in your face in that it's a blaming and shaming thing. I'm an indigenous person exploring my history, these are things I have discovered and I think other Australians should also know about this."
