BRAD DARKSON

Acknowledgements:

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I pay my respects to the Kaurna community for supporting this project, in particular I'd like to thank ngangki burka senior Kaurna woman Aunty Lynette Crocker and Uncle Moogy Sumner for their dedication to culture and Community, for their guidance and for their time. Thanks to Uncle Lewis O'Brien, Uncle Mickey O'Brien, Aunty Jenny O'Brien, Sonya Rankine and Aunty Betty Sumner for your support at the BabaKiueria Community Day.

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Thanks also to Community members for their contributions to the museum cabinets.

Ali Baker

Lynette Crocker

Nici Cumpston

Dominic Guerrera

Natalie Harkin

Jai Harkin-Noack

Simone Tur

James Tylor

Raymond Zada

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Thank you Patrice for engaging the project and providing me with so much support for an extended period, and Eleanor for your time, patience and advice.

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Thanks to Steve Rhall for his 'Artwork Catalogue Essay'.

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I'd like to also acknowledge the support from the Museum of Economic Botany and Adelaide Botanic Gardens for facilitating and providing permission for Community to be present on site, in particular Lindl Lawton and John Sandham, along with the garden curators.

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An ACE commission with production support from the Museum of Economic Botany.

Curatorial Rationale

In Good Company

2023

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This text has grown from a conversation between the writer and artist on 15 August 2023, at the artist’s studio at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental.

As we talk, Brad carves a plongi (club) from a piece of casuarina gathered from the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. Watching him work, I am reminded of one of his earlier works, Smart Object (2020); a precursor to the enlightenment (2023) which hangs at the Museum of Economic Botany (MEB) as part of Ruled Us, Ruled Us, Ruled Us. In Smart Object, sophisticated motion capture technologies are used to generate a looped 3D animation of the artist’s avatar that performs the plongi carving process. Also modelled in 3D, the enlightenment consists of four screens that each show a rotating digital render of the artist’s head, mimicking the busts of scientists that sit atop the MEB cabinets, looking down on the collection. Writing on this most recent work, post-conceptual artist and academic Steven Rhall notes that ‘the animated bust disrupts the notion of a fixed and singular author. It embodies the fluidity of identity, potentially reshaping traditional power dynamics within the museum space.’[1] the enlightenment connects Brad with the existing features of the museum, inserting him into the story of the MEB’s collection.

We start by talking about the genesis of Ruled Us, Ruled Us, Ruled Us: ‘ACE commissioned me to produce a non-gallery artwork that referenced connections between Adelaide and London, as well as ideas of transmission, links between species, points of contact, ecological harm, encroachment on natural habitats. The reason I chose the Museum of Economic Botany [as both a research topic and presentation site] is due to its link to Kew Gardens in London. The Museum in Kew Gardens is the first one of its kind, then they went around the world during the expansion of empire, making carbon copies of the same building, same kind of architecture, design, and the same plants. Inside, they wanted to trial and catalogue and see what worked’.

Here, Brad stops carving to pick up a book, The Museum of Economic Botany at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens – a Souvenir (2010). He quotes from the journal of Albert Molineux published in 1881: ‘I do not intend to write a dissertation on the value of economy, but think it would be well were everyone to study how to prevent waste and make the most of everything that comes their way.’ [2] I interject, ‘the emphasis is on assigning value to Western plants that’s what’s in the Museum?’ His reply comes quickly, ‘It’s all very steeped within a system of thought based on Western economic trade. Kew Gardens was part of this mission. It relied on a network of gardens to map the world’s natural resources and move them between countries.’ I ask about the featured sound work, Ruled Us, Ruled Us, Ruled Us (2023). Echoing throughout the museum, Brad has layered the spoken words of Ngangki Burka, Senior Kaurna Woman Aunty Lynette Crocker with the sound of clapsticks, carved from wood gathered in the Gardens. ‘I audio recorded an interview/yarn with Aunty Lynette around the economics of plants and different value systems. When she talks about world views and value systems, and the economics of plants and agriculture, she also talks about the reasons for that stuff. Policies of assimilation and the way that colonisation was so systematic, it had to be efficient and productive. They couldn’t waste anything during these processes because it cost so much money. They had these models they would roll out everywhere. The British East India Company, for example. South Australia had the South Australia Company, and that’s what Aunty Lynette talks about: how do you effectively colonise? You need to be efficient.’ When I ask Brad why he chose sound as a medium, he speaks about the way in which architecture influences how an artwork is experienced: ‘it’s about valuing oral histories. And the way that sound reflects off things. The acoustics of space are always unique to a particular building’. The Adelaide Botanic Gardens also provided fertile ground for the development of this exhibition. Brad worked with their staff to negotiate access to materials cut from trees and collected from the ground to be made into coolamons, shields and clapsticks. This process sits at the heart of Brad’s practice and, in many ways, is the Brad Darkson, ‘botanic coolamon’ (2023), most personally important aspect of the overall project.

‘I worked with Uncle Moogy and family and friends to come into the Gardens to practice culture; to collect materials from trees and for objects to be carved for inclusion in the exhibition, but also just objects for us to keep for ourselves and for scars to be left as evidence of people practicing culture. Most importantly, it’s about the feeling we have when we’re practicing culture together; that what we’re doing is important for Country to heal and for Community, for people, to heal. I don’t want this to be something for them—this is something for us. These processes are influenced heavily by power dynamics. It’s steeped in “permission” and managing blak fellas. For me, it’s about trust, building trust, and challenging why they do not trust that we’re not going to harm the tree when we cut bark from it.’ Our discussion on power and autonomy leads into Brad’s thoughts about the digitally manipulated archival photographs included in the exhibition: ‘The only reason they are in there is because Uncle Moogy was wanting me to look for evidence of people on the [Adelaide Botanic Gardens] site. They are there for him—not to show other people, he just wanted that. It’s about Community being able to look back at our ancestors practicing culture.’ But Brad didn’t find the evidence he went looking for, instead turning up a photograph in the State Library archives from the early 1900s that features a group of young girls, settlers, dressed in frilly white dresses, standing in the hollow of an ancient Red Gum. In an act of defiance, he has digitally removed the girls from the photograph, erasing them as the lives and occupation of Kaurna people in this area have been historically erased from the colonial record.

‘The documentation of people with connection to Country was detrimental to the expansion of Empire... It was all within the broader story of cultural genocide. Like ‘Terra Nullius’. It was the basis for how they could justify what they were doing: stealing land, murdering people, trying to wipe out a culture.’ Our conversation continues and we arrive at the objects placed in the MEB’s cabinets. This is a simple though significant action of intervention, and Brad seems most excited by this element of the project: ‘When I invite people to bring their own culture to the Museum—something that’s significant to them from a cultural perspective, something that’s significant to them about plants or something that critiques museum spaces and a colonial world view—that becomes like a community act of resistance, as well as a way to show people evidence of people being present.’ As with many of Brad’s works, I seek to find answers but am instead left with more questions and ideas upon which to reflect. At the heart of the expansive body of work presented as part of Ruled Us, Ruled Us, Ruled Us is a simple premise; Brad is asking us to examine the value systems of the Museum and our wider culture in modern settler society. ‘How do we value plants? How do we value people? How do we value culture?’ 

- Eleanor Scicchitano

Eleanor is the Director of Post Office Projects in Port Adelaide, and co-curator of Ruled Us, Ruled Us, Ruled Us

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https://realcuratorswearblack.com/Info

https://www.postofficeprojects.com.au/

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1) Steven Rhall, ‘Artwork catalogue essay’, 2023

2) Albert Molineux, Journal, 1881, published in The Museum of Economic Botany at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens – a Souvenir, ed. Peter Emmett and Tony Kanellos, Board of the Botanic Gardens & State Herbarium, 2010.

Artwork Catalogue Essay

Artwork Catalogue Essay

2023

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This text accompanies other materials within the compendium that is the ‘art catalogue’ (potentially being held by you or read on a screen right now). My understanding of art catalogues and their various purposes is limited by the ‘art world’ I have experienced, along with the understanding that, like art itself, the catalogue can operate in many ways beyond its (likely) more functional and explanatory purposes and beginnings.

When it comes to cataloguing, the functions of natural history museums can be seen as exemplary. They aim to inventory their contents objectively and, in doing so, catalogue the world beyond their boundaries. The museum's connection to the colonial project often influences what is included and how it's catalogued. However, this essay does not explain this relationship or the museum’s support of the colonial project. In my opinion, it’s not the role of First Nations people to carry out such explanations. It's likely, too, that many who encounter this catalogue are already aware of these relationships and associated motives. 

Despite the subjective nature of art catalogues, the "catalogue essay" still tends to have a descriptive function, much like the cataloguing function of a museum. These essays take different routes to unpack and explore the artwork or project that gives rise to the catalogue itself. Although I haven't physically experienced the collaborative artwork, geographical distance shouldn't hinder analysis. The project, as viewed as not confined by a specific location, enables this discussion. 

Brad Darkson invited me to write this "essay" about a project otherwise outside my conscious attention and geographical reach. Nonetheless, through various materials supplied by Brad, I gained a reading of the project otherwise precluded through distance. The reading obtained results from both our subjectivities—how Brad came to frame the work’s components and combined with my subjectivity and the limitations or freedoms it entails.

As an exercise to avoid common subjective readings of the art project and to borrow the museum's attempted objectivity, I have employed artificial intelligence to distil some of the project's main themes or outcomes as prompted by Brad’s ‘source material’ yet also via some of my own keywords – such as narrative and authorship – which came to mind as some of the work’s main themes. This approach both aims to reduce the (human) subjectivity that could overwhelm the art catalogue essay, and attempts to mirror the objective, though not entirely and often problematic, functions of the museum.

In addition to supplying my keywords, a ‘subjective’ voice that still emerged in the AI-generated copy was seemingly informed by AI trying to replicate the subjective voice of human subjectivity and, perhaps, through the influence of extant and most

common subjectivities about art by First Nations people and of art itself by First Nations people (particularly when intersecting with the colonial project).

In conclusion...

(Suggested) Title: Unveiled Narratives: Duplication, Authority, and Shifting Perspectives. 

Excerpt 1: pertaining to Brad’s 3d bust animation: 

This act of replication raised intriguing questions about authorial power and representation. By positioning himself, an Aboriginal man, alongside physical busts of historical figures within the museum, Brad sought to challenge the established narrative of authority. This deliberate gesture confronted the historical associations tied to colonial perspectives on Indigenous botany, aiming to reclaim space and reshape the discourse. The duplication of Brad's likeness served as a thought-provoking reminder of the historical busts traditionally displayed in museums, symbolising authority and reverence. However, the animated bust disrupted the notion of a fixed and singular author. It embodied the fluidity of identity, potentially reshaping traditional power dynamics within the museum space. This invited contemplation on the multiplicity of voices and narratives that existed beyond the boundaries of historical canon.

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- Steven Rhall

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Steven is a post-conceptual artist operating from a First Nations, white-passing, genderqueer, positionality. Rhall's interdisciplinary practice responds to the intersectionality of First Nation art practice and the Western art canon. He interrogates modes of representation, classification and hierarchy using installation, performance, process lead methodologies, 'curatorial' projects, sculpture, and via public & private interventions.

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https://stevenrhall.com/