This work is made up of 226 components representing 226 years since the beginning of colonization. The individual pieces – made of printed images of various diamond designs sgraffitoed onto ceramic tiles, which are stuck onto tags (resembling the shape of headstones) and then stitched through a sewing machine – signify people. Some are children, some are old and others in various stages of initiation represented by different sections of designs, and with different sewn lines and cotton colours. All are representative of individual and collaborative relationships to family, clan and tribal groups through skin, moiety and kinship. Eight strands of string signify eight skins.
These variables speak to the complex nature of our Ancestors society that was not recognized at the time of colonization, and not properly understood today because of the devastating effects of colonization to these breathtakingly complex social structures.
Cut threads hanging from every piece are a metaphor for the severed relationships to culture, family and land.
“A central motif of eastern Australian Aboriginal cultural expression is the parallel line and ‘concentric’ diamonds, etched into the ground of ceremonial spaces, into weapons and utensils, possibly the human body and into the trunks of living trees as funerary posts and revelatory devices. They represent the beginning and continuity of the spiritual world and are used by Penny to provide a sacred window into the spirit world.”1.
My Gamilleroi grandfather Bruce Maurer was an undertaker for much of his life and the diamonds traditionally signified burial. My pieces represent spirits from our Gamilleroi tribe who died in the frontier wars and were never given a proper burial. This is a memorial to those people. A symbolic gesture of recognition to those suspended or stranded spirits.
Detail from Stranded by Penny Evans 2014
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1. Djon Mundine OAM, Jan 2014 essay for catalogue for The AB-sorption Method and exhibition by Penny Evans, Lismore Regional Gallery February 2014.