We Call Them Pirates Out Here was painted in 2004 by Aboriginal artist Daniel Boyd. Through
this piece, Boyd mocks Emanuel Phillips Fox’s painting The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany
Bay (1902). Fox’s painting evokes the traditional portrayal of Captain Cook as a hero against the
backdrop of whitewashed colonialism. By changing the composition of this canonical
representation of the landing, Boyd revises this historical episode through a postcolonial lens.
The result is a parodic painting that, by mimicking Fox’s traditional style, subverts the original
discourse. The concept of mimicry—put forward by Bhabha and understood as the mockery
contained in “the copying of the colonizing culture, behaviour, manners and values by the
colonized” (Ashcroft et al., 125)—can be perceived in that Boyd keeps a similar visual aesthetic
while altering the composition.
This work is an example of counter-discourse because it challenges the hegemonic narrative
surrounding the colonisation of Australia. The characterisation of Captain Cook as a pirate implies
that the figure that has historically been glorified as a hero in Europe is a villain from an
Aboriginal perspective. Boyd’s art piece displays a subversive attitude towards the dominant
discourse.
Towards the right, Fox’s painting includes two armed Indigenous men standing before the
colonisers. In his work, Boyd has chosen to replace them by two Xanthorrhoea grass trees, which
are autochthonous to Australia. This exchange ridicules the colonisers’ attitude: the armed crew
members are aiming at inoffensive plants, so Captain Cook’s heroic gesture of keeping them from
shooting is made to look absurd. On the left background section, a smoke column is visible. This
element serves the purpose of stating the fact that Australia was inhabited and not, as it was
declared, terra nullius.
Daniel Boyd has explained in an interview that his original inspiration to shape the painting as a
postcard came from seeing Emanuel Phillips Fox’s work printed in that format. The artist initially
had the idea of sending the painting to England—just like you would send a postcard—to criticise
the consequences of British colonial practices.
The work, however, is not currently displayed in the United Kingdom. Instead, its home is the
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. The museum provides easy access to exhaustive
information on the artist and the work’s meaning, as well as the source of the funds for its
acquisition. On top of that, the museum’s website includes a pop-up window—as do most
Australian institutions’ websites—explaining that “The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional owners of Tallawoladah,
the land upon which the MCA stands” (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia website). The
museum’s display of this piece, together with the transparency surrounding both the information
around its acquisition and the land the museum occupies make it stand out as a role model.