Waru

by Jan Aird - KickArts Contemporary Arts
(Cairns QLD Australia)

Official Launch Friday October 2 @ 6.00pm
Vernon Ah Kee was born in Innisfail and is of the Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidindji and Gugu Yimithirr peoples. His art - conceptual text pieces, videos, photographs and drawings are primarily a critique of Australian culture, specifically the black white dichotomy.

The Waru Cricket Project has at its core an acute sense of inquiry and identity. It is comprised of new work and features three components: A three screen video installation documenting the philosophy and social dynamic of the Waru Cricket Team (an all Indigenous cricket team who are based in Innisfail); a 3-D installation consisting of an assortment of new and used cricketing equipment and paraphernalia associated with the Waru team, customised to reflect their philosophy and identity, and a photographic series (large scale digital prints) that documents the energy and spirit of the Waru Team.

Vernon says, "The game of cricket plays a large part in the life of my family. My family, like many families in North Queensland engaged numerously and heatedly in backyard and neighbourhood battles of ‘footy’ (i.e. rugby league) and cricket. For me, the game of cricket was, and is still, engrossing; full of drama. And I had good reason for being enthralled. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the era that yielded the great West Indies teams. I was the first generation of cricket fanatics to grow up thinking of the game in terms of it being a world sport with teams of ‘black’ men (the West Indies, India, Pakistan etc.) competing against teams of ‘white’ men (England, New Zealand, Australia etc.) on a more than equal footing. How odd, confusing and ultimately disappointing then to see in succeeding years in Australia that for many young Aboriginal cricketers - talent, ability, determination and ‘runs-on-the-board’ - would not be enough to secure any lasting representative honours. Alas, the perception of cricket in Australia, at the national and state representative level is of an exclusively ‘white’ thing. Cricket, like the beach, remains a lasting bastion of white Australian power and identity, (as emphatically demonstrated December 2005 at Cronulla) and should be defended as such. Certainly, as Aboriginal people engaged in the game, my family can readily confirm the race and skin-colour based name-calling that pervades the game in North Queensland - the kind of ‘banter’ pundits consign to ‘harmless sledging’ or ‘gamesmanship’ when really it's just bold ‘blood-in-the-face’ racism."

On the surface Waru is about the game of Cricket. Look closer however, and it is a metaphorical insight into Aboriginal engagement with the broader society in Australia through the game of cricket; the nature and shape of this engagement, and the strategies that ‘blackfellas’ employ in their efforts to achieve and draw strength, sustenance, satisfaction, and triumph from "playing cricket" in Australia. Waru is also about humour and plays on blackfella/whitefella interaction, as evidenced in Vernon’s previous work ‘Cant Chant’ (2007). Waru discusses several loaded themes that operate in the common spaces of society and history in North Queensland. These are the common spaces that idealise and would define a ‘place’ for the Aborigine still in the ‘Far North’ as opposed to common spaces that utilise sport in Australia to affirm long-established ‘norms’ which typify Australian popular culture and the nationalist identity.

Waru infuses itself in themes that interchangeably shift from local to national to the international when taking into account the notion that sport, sporting endeavour, and sport appreciation are really a global undertaking and a very human condition. Waru’s approach to discussions on race, contested spaces, territorial conflict, and identity are particularly apt when imagining how these themes are ‘played out’ in hotspots globally, nationally, and locally.

Waru will give regional arts audiences, both indigenous and non-indigenous, the opportunity to view challenging work by an internationally recognised indigenous artist. The work itself is a companion piece to Vernon Ah Kee's CantChant Installation for which he was chosen to represesent Australia at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Further, the work directly involves an Indigenous Community in Northern Queensland, giving them the opportunity to address, in a positive way, the unrecognised contribution of Aboriginal cricketers to the game, and to Australian life in general.

To challenge accepted notions of what the game of cricket means to Australian popular culture and nationalist identity. To challenge the accepted points of entry and interaction processes for Aboriginal people engaged in the dynamic that is cricket in North Queensland. To posit that Aboriginal Art can and does critically and technologically engage with and contribute to both contemporary art discourse and post colonial theory.

Waru officially opens at KickArts in Gallery One on Friday October 2 at 6.00pm and runs to November 21. All welcome. Entry is free.