THEA ANAMARA PERKINS
”THAT WHICH ENDURES”
15 SEPTEMBER–12 OCTOBER
Thea Anamara Perkins, USG1, 2022, acrylic on clayboard, 12.7 x 17.8 cm. Courtesy the artist and N.Smith Gallery, Sydney
ARTIST STATEMENT
This series is a celebration of the civil rights movement led by First Nations people in Australia. I’ve sourced lesser known images, candid, taken on the periphery to convey the human scale of these movements. Following on from my interest in my family archives, and that this exhibition is at the University of Sydney I am examining events that my Grandfather took part in around the time that he was at university specifically the freedom rides and early years of the Foundation For Aboriginal Affairs. Pop was among the first First Nations people to graduate, and I think these images speak to the wider, often alienating experience of accessing tertiary education for First Nations people especially at that time. Sourcing black and white images, all of these events took place during Assimilation. Using black and white removed the expressive power of colour, and delves instead into grey. There is also an echo of the Colourism that defined politic of the time. I have included a colourful landscape as a vibrant counterpoint - country is where we draw culture.
The images, some taken from Super 8s, have a quietness that belies the impact these moments had on this country. I would love for viewers to see themselves in these images, from little things big things grow after all.
Thea Anamara Perkins is represented by N.Smith Gallery
Thea Anamara Perkins, FAAFAA4, 2022, Acrylic on clayboard, 45.7 cm x 61 cm, Paul Ramsay Foundation Collection. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
“We know we cannot live in the past but the past lives in us”
Thea Anamara Perkins is descended from a renowned lineage of warriors - black and white - fighters for social justice and First Nations rights. Members of her family committed their entire existence seeking better lives, not only for their immediate relations but also for all First Nations Peoples.
Thea Anamara Perkins, That Which Endures, 2022, installation view, dimensions variable. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Nearly every Australian of a certain period – the mid to late 20th century – is likely familiar with the name of her maternal grandfather - revered, indefatigable Arrernte/Kalkadoon activist Charles Nelson Perkins (1936 – 2000).
Thea Anamara Perkins, That Which Endures, 2022, installation view, dimensions variable. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Born on the kitchen table at The Bungalow Half-Caste Home in Alice Springs, Charles Perkins, broke ground and barriers as a First Nations man who would not take no for an answer, refused to be boxed in, pilloried by the nay-sayers in his lifelong fight for equal conditions for his people.
Yet, while the everlasting light of her grandfather illuminates Thea’s life (and that of her family), she has also been surrounded, by the grounded matrilineal strength of women kin – her mother Hetti, aunt Rachel, grandmother Eileen and great-grandmother Hetti just some of the lifelines which have sustained and nurtured her, encouraging her artistic development.
Thea Anamara Perkins, Bungalow 9, 2022, Acrylic on clayboard, 91.5 cm x 122 cm. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Thea’s life has been immersed in culture and creative practice. Growing up surrounded by works of art created by some of the greatest innovators of First Nations visual culture. Literature, performance and the moving image were equally part of this worldview.
Her mother is acknowledged as one of the country’s leading First Nations curators and cultural leaders, here and overseas. Her aunt is respected for her contribution to, and shaping of the way in which First Nations Peoples are represented and viewed in multiple media: film, television, digital broadcast and streaming, nationally and across the world.
Thea Anamara Perkins, That Which Endures, 2022, installation view, dimensions variable. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Thea has always been an observer – her twinkling liquid, deepest-black button eyes as an infant in arms when I first met her - always watchful, absorbing all that was happening in the world around her.
Thea draws quiet, determined strength from her ancestors, evident in her chosen medium of painting. These intimate canvases - rendered in tones of black, white and grey – attract the viewer, enticing them to lean in, to view the delicate, liquid brush strokes of the artist’s hand, up close and personal.
Thea Anamara Perkins, That Which Endures, 2022, installation view, dimensions variable. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
The images appear familiar – are they reproductions, representations of family album snapshots? Or mirrors onto events from times not long gone; yet in the same moment, seemingly eons past in terms of innocence and optimism?
Thea Anamara Perkins, That Which Endures, 2022, installation view, dimensions variable. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
The incessant grinding down of decency in recent decades has been enervating, fatiguing, despairing – all those hard fought gains by warriors in the past seemingly undone at the whim of small-minded faceless grey men.
The accumulative impact of wilful inaction and degradation has heightened everyone’s levels of anxiety, yet this is when we most need to hold onto the best that human nature is capable of being – irrepressible, audacious, resolute, steadfast – solid and deadly.
Thea Anamara Perkins, That Which Endures, 2022, installation view, dimensions variable. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Lean into these little gems, let the sensuality of the materials wash over you as you wonder about times gone depicted as snippets of historical archives, an era seemingly more innocent than now. We do well to remember that in the shadows lay lessons of bygone times. And while we cannot live in the past, the past lives in us still.
© Dr Brenda L Croft
Gurindji | Malngin | Mudburra Peoples; Anglo-Australian | Chinese | German | Irish heritageProfessor of Indigenous Art History and Curatorship, Australian National University 2022
Roomsheet
Essay by Brenda L Croft
PODCAST
In this episode Tesha Malott and Thea Anamara Perkins speak about her family, practice, and That which endures, Thea’s latest body of work shown at Verge in September 2022. Thea Anamara Perkins is an Arrunda and Kawkadoon artist whose practice incorporates portraiture and landscape to depict authentic representations of First Nations peoples and Country.
With a delicate hand, Thea answers heavy questions about what it means to be Indigenous in contemporary Australia, and how Aboriginal people can and should be portrayed.
That which endures illuminated lesser-shown moments of the assimilation period and the fight for Indigenous civil rights in the 60s. Alongside these figurative images, a large landscape painting, showing both the birth and resting place of Charles was displayed, connecting country to ancestry. The works featured Charles Perkins during his time as a student at the University of Sydney as well as other key historical moments of the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs in Sydney and the Freedom Rides.