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The oil painting Murriland! #1 (2015-2017) by Aboriginal-Australian artist Gordon Hookey is
a critical visual retelling of the history of the Australian state of Queensland, home of the Murri
people, from the beginning of time up until its colonization by the British Empire and the
aftermath of said colonization which lasts until today. Large in scope, this oil painting on canvas
is also large in scale: it spans 2,11m x 10m (cf. Folkerts 2016). Hookey painted the piece for
the Amsterdam-based exhibition ‘Frontier Imaginaries’ and the documenta 14 in Kassel,
Germany, and it was produced as a response to the artwork History of Zaire, 1973-1974, by
Tshibumba Kanda Matulu (cf. Clement, 2022).
The colourful painting draws from Aboriginal art and stories, like the Rainbow Serpent,
but also portrays specific historical characters and events such as Captain James Cook’s arrival
in Australia and uses writing to critique past and present events of denying the violence of
Australian colonization explicitly and harshly. For instance, it is written on the painting, that in
“2017, white blindfold anglo-australians sarcastically label their horrific past as ‘black
armband’ history, to patronise, to disassociate themselves, to try to negate their atrocious
colonial wars and to disrespect and show contempt for Murris”. In weaving colonial domination
into the bigger picture of Australian history, Murriland! #1 contradicts the colonial narrative
which claims that Australia was terra nullius, empty land, before the British arrived, as well as
the false believe that colonialism is over today, and therefore unveils the continuing injustice
that has been done by colonialism.
Gordon Hookey stresses that his art consists in a practise of accumulation and building
on the past. He considers himself not a singular artist, but as part of a lineage (cf. Folkerts 2016).
In writing the stories of his ancestors forth, he aims to uphold a legacy that has been forcefully
interrupted and considerably destroyed by the British. Hookey’s work of creating a genealogy
that reaches back way further than the British settlement of the land, is an act of decolonial
resistance against the efforts of the colonizers to try to silence Aboriginal voices and to deny
the value of their culture. Painting against (post-)colonial domination, Gordon Hookey, while
telling stories of violence and subjugation without making light of them, never portrays
Aboriginal people as victims, but aims to empower them and rewrite their history. He states
that “[m]y spirit, my soul, has not been colonized” (Folkerts 2016). Whereas history books and
mainstream media mostly tell stories about Aboriginal people and Australia’s past, Hookey
fights for self-representation. The fact that his work was displayed at the documenta, one of the
most important modern art exhibitions, is from a decolonial perspective a hopeful sign that
mainstream art institutions acknowledge the importance of marginalized voices and use their
own privilege to help counter the hegemonic narrative about colonization and the British
Empire.