Peta Jeffries
The art of colonisation and decolonisation: dismantling rural settler futurities through art practice as research
Symposium presentation 12pm Thurs Dec 8
Abstract
Within Australia, art shapes understandings of and connections to place. Art defines individual and collective identities, especially in rural spaces, where people are defined in relation to land. These relationships and identities, however, are restricted by notions of ‘white possession’, colonial myth, and fantasy. These colonial logics seek to maintain power over some by reproducing oppressive epistemologies and ontologies. Adopting intersectionality and Phillips’ Indigenist Standpoint Pedagogy as a methodological framework, this art practice as research examines contested histories and rural subjectivities hidden within crevice communities. By contextualising key historical, institutional, and social factors as a form of truth-telling, this project questions how the personal is political, to identify insights gained through the process of mark-making to consider whether an art practice as research approach can be a model for practice in dismantling settler futurities.
Invited artist, HR Gallop Gallery, Dec 6-8
Artist’s Statement: My art practice as research focusses on processes of identity formation through the reclamation of family and other hidden or erased histories. This ethnographic research examines human relations with the natural environment throughout history, in particular my personal relationship with the unceded lands of First Nations peoples and the transgenerational legacies of our shared histories which shape our current ways of being and doing. My research intersects art, history, environmental studies and geography, social work and biography, to consider how we all adapt to climate change. My art process is also about resilience, change, and addressing the reproduction of colonial knowledges and practices. I draw on historical records, oral histories, social memories, archives and ecological research to refocus on human-nature interconnection and interdependency and increase critical understanding of colonial processes of place-making. Memory, commemoration, and memorial is also an area of focus in this broader attempt to unsettle oppressive power structures in real and material ways. My art practice is also about examining my own positionality and standpoint to support my teaching and research beyond art practice.
Peta Jeffries is a lecturer and researcher in the School of Indigenous Australian Studies at Charles Sturt University and a researcher within the Gulbali Institute. Although adopting social science and humanities research methods and methodologies, Peta’s praxis is often grounded by arts practice as research.
Main image: Tim Keegan, Macquarie/Wambuul River near Dubbo/Creative Commons (Placeholder image)