Dark landscape paintings11/13/2023 ![]() I was trying to implicate the viewer in the history, to make them consider why they are seeing something. "When I first started making these works. They're abstract - so you're not meant to see anything," Quilty explains. "With his ink blots, he was deciphering paranoid and delusional behaviour. We expect - and perhaps dread - the revelation that might come if we gaze too long at these canvases. Quilty's Rorschach paintings are undeniably beautiful - the colour palette the sense of composition - but they also unsettle, partly because the Rorschach test brings its own set of connotations. "The trauma - you can still feel it in there." Australian uglyĮarly in Quilty: Painting the Shadows, the artist says: "Paint's such a luscious thing, such a beautiful medium that you can kind of deceive people into reading the story that they would be uncomfortable naturally reading." But Aunty Blacklock says "you can feel the heartache in the painting". ![]() ![]() The resulting artwork is beautiful in many ways. He speaks of "channelling the suffering the broken, forgotten history the insanity of people trying to forget this history the denialists" into his latest painting, "to make something very positive". Quilty sketched the site during his visit, focusing on the landscape around a large grey tree, dead and blackened in places from successive bushfires, that has stood since the massacre - "like a sentinel to the memory of that place," in his words. Quilty attended this year's memorial service, presided over by local elders including Aunty Sue Blacklock and Uncle Lyall Munro, with the intention of creating one of his Rorschach landscapes.īoth elders gave their backing for the artist to tell the story of this massacre through his painting. They were camped peacefully, and probably preparing the evening meal, when they were attacked. The new ABC documentary Quilty: Painting the Shadows follows the creation of the artist's most recent Rorschach landscape, depicting the site of the 1838 Myall Creek massacre, on Gamilaraay country in Northern NSW.Įvery year since 2000, Indigenous and non-Indigenous members of the community have gathered to commemorate the 28 women, men and children of the Wirrayaraay tribe who were murdered by 12 stockmen at Myall Creek station. So the community would live there for a period of time before moving to the next beautiful place," he explains. "Most of the massacres that took place around Australia were at beautiful locations - because, for example, a waterfall is where there is permanent water. One of the cruel ironies for Quilty, who studied Aboriginal culture and history through Monash University, is that in many cases the most beautiful locations in Australia also have the darkest human histories.
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