r e a - gins_leap / dubb_speak, 2007
ARTIST PROJECT
r e a (Gamilaraay / Wailwan, Australia)
gins_leap / dubb_speak
4 May - 16 June 2007 / Gallery 1
gins_leap /dubb_speak a multi-screen, nine cycle sound and video installation. It takes the viewer on an intimate journey into the lives of four Australian indigenous women, tracing their memories, connections, and on-going relationship with country/place/identity.
gins_leap / dubb_speak began with a series of conversations r e a recorded in Coonabarabran in 2001 and developed into a multi-channel interactive video work. Indigenous oral history has it that many years ago Gin’s Leap was the site of a tragic death leap by a young woman. The title of the work is provocative because of present-day connotations of the word “gin”, a demeaning term for Aboriginal women. Originally a neutral term for woman or girl in a Tasmanian language, the word took a decidedly racist, sexist turn when linguistically appropriated by the colonizers. The idea of “gin” operates at two levels in gins_leap / dubb_speak. At one level, it refers to the stories persisting in local Indigenous oral history and collective memory of the young woman’s tragic fall from a rocky outcrop at some indefinable past time. It also refers to the four contemporary “gins” participating under r e a’s guidance: r e a herself, Maria, Sharmaine and Susan. These four women grew up together in Coonabarabran. The image cycles in gins_leap / dubb_speak relate to the fugitive memories of their shared past, and to their present lives.
The work surrounds and envelops its audience. It is activated by entry into a gentle space of silent, meditative water. The viewer is immersed in darkness and greeted by a low susurration of unearthly, eerie wind-like resonance symbolising the mourning of their past. The poetic visual imagery of the landscape and the beguiling soundscape are equally important. The repetitive cycle of visual imagery and lyrical haunting soundscape of half-remembered fragments of conversation, birdcall and flowing water, gives this work a deeply meditative quality. The landscape itself, we realise, represents culture as much as nature.
This work about contemporary Indigenous identities reclaims positive, self-defined identities, expressed via the women’s continuing relationship with their ancestral homeland. gins_leap / dubb_speak acts as an antidote to earlier Other-defined constructions of Indigenous identity, where neutral words like “gin”, in the mouths of the colonizers, turned racist and ugly. The word “gin”, in this context, is redressed, and returned to its earlier, innocent usage.
r e a, a Gamilaraay/Wailwan woman, is one of Australia’s foremost visual artists who has exhibited nationally and internationally. gins_leap / dubb_speak is a touring project by dLux Media Arts in their national new media programme. It was first presented at the Commonwealth Games show in Melbourne 2006, curated by the National Museum of Victoria and Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Abridged extracts from an essay by Dr Christine Nicholls, a writer, curator and academic who works in Australian Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide.