All knowledge is situated and therefore partial.1
– Aileen Moreton-Robinson
Captain James Cook remains an enduring and dominant figure within the Australian imagination. The impact of Cook’s three voyages is felt throughout the Pacific and in his home country of England. The artworks exhibited by Kate Golding have been developed in response to notions of unlearning Eurocentric colonial histories in order to encourage discourse into underrepresented narratives. By using a variety of photographic methods, Golding’s creative works seek to examine the photographic medium’s role in colonisation and question the monological narratives signified through colonial monuments.
_____________________________
1 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Talkin’ up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2000), xxii.
The artist acknowledges the First Nations of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung on whose land this exhibition takes place. Kate offers her respect to the elders past, present and future and extends this respect to all First Nations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, acknowledging that sovereignty has never been ceded.
Image: Kate Golding, 2016-17, Birthplace / death place, 4 cyanotypes on watercolour paper, dowel, metal clips, string, dimensions variable. Documentation image by Vivian Cooper Smith.