Publication Details Hardcover with dust jacket, 34.5 x 26 cm, 1kg, 158 pages, 122 image plates. ISBN: 978-0-6481529-8-9
Author and/or Editor name/s Texts: Deborah Edwards, D Harding, Jackie Huggins, Hannah Mathews, Ann Stephen, Paul S.C. Taçon, Nancy Underhill. Introduction: Hannah Mathews and D Harding. Editors: Hannah Mathews and D Harding
Author and/or Editor bio/s D Harding is a descendant of the Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples. Their early works give priority to documenting the oral accounts and lived realities of discrimination enacted against Aboriginal communities, in particular those inherited from matrilineal figures. Recent work is focused on enacting cultural continuum through practices that originate in Central Queensland.
Hannah Mathews is Senior Curator at MUMA, Melbourne. With a particular interest in contemporary art and performance, she has worked independently and held roles at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) and the Biennale of Sydney.
Year of Publication 2021
Publisher Co-published by Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne and Powered by Power, Sydney
Abstract A descendant of the Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples, much of D Harding’s multilayered practice is motivated by the cultural inheritances of family, who originate in the Fitzroy Basin and the sandstone belt of central Queensland. Harding’s works pay particular homage to the stories and presence of matrilineal figures.
This publication explores the artist’s relationship to their mother’s Country of Carnarvon Gorge and documents a major new commission and first-time collaboration with their mother Kate Harding. A textile artist, who since 2008 has employed quilt-making to tell her stories of family, culture and Country, Kate Harding’s quilts are presented alongside painterly responses undertaken by D Harding across various mediums. Together, their works reflect on cultural knowledge as it is held, practiced and transposed across generations, gender and place.
The publication includes a key text written in 1995 by Dr Jacky Huggins AM FAHA, ‘Kooramindanjie: Place and the Postcolonial’, re-published with a 2020 preface; new texts by curators/scholars Dr Deborah Edwards, Dr Nancy Underhill and Dr Ann Stephen FAHA; and a report from rock-art specialist Professor Paul S.C. Taçon on a fire-damaged site on Harding’s Country. Reflecting on the history of Carnarvon Gorge and its resonances within Australian modernism, Edwards’ and Underhill’s texts discuss the visits of artists Margaret Preston and Sidney Nolan to the Gorge in the 1930s and 1940s respectively, exploring the presence and influence of this Country on their later work. Stephen considers Harding’s work in its broader conversation with Minimalism, Conceptual Art and Indigenous modernisms.
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