Australian artist Dr Julie Gough uses a variety of mediums from film to sound, shadows and kangaroo skins to ensure the violence and mistreatment of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people in the 1800s is not lost in the retelling of Australian colonial history.

 

At Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) in Wagga Wagga as part of CSU’s Visiting Artist Program, Dr Gough has spoken about her research of colonial land grants, official records and journals to ensure the story of the Aboriginal people in colonial Van Dieman’s Land is not forgotten “in the mire of the history of Tasmania”.

 

Dr Gough is an artist, curator, writer and academic. She comes from the Trawlwoolway people from northeast Tasmania on her mother’s side. Her father’s side were Scottish immigrants. Also in the family history mix are convicts and coal miners. 

 

Her practice gives a voice to the injustices suffered by the Aboriginal people, from the removal of land through colonial grants and the erection of fences to the removal of a large number of Aboriginal children from their families in the first half of the 1800s.

 

One of her next projects will investigate the presence and pressure of eco-tourism on Aboriginal places in Tasmania alongside the absence of Tasmanian Aboriginal history within most local tourism ventures.

 

Associate Professor Margaret Woodward, Head of the School of Communication and Creative Industries at CSU in Wagga Wagga, said, “Julie is a high profile Indigenous artist and academic with a reputation of both national and international standing.

 

“She is also an adjunct lecturer at Charles Sturt University and co-developed the first Indigenous art subject, Aboriginal Australian Art, now being delivered at Charles Sturt University.”

 

Dr Gough is currently artist-in-residence at CSU in Wagga Wagga until to Friday 30 September.

 

During her stay, Ms Gough will give a free public seminar about her artwork from 4.30pm to 5.30pm on Thursday 29 September in the theatrette in building 21, School of Communication and Creative Industries, near car park 2, Darnell Smith Drive, CSU in Wagga Wagga. She will also give a presentation on Tasmanian Aboriginal fibre work at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery from 2pm on Wednesday 28 September.