A Very Clear Picture

2019-23

Developed during a residency with the legal team of the Kimberley Land Council and supported by SPACED’S Rural Utopias program for socially engaged art, this suite of works examine the hypocrisies of the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act (1972) — legislation (and its associated bureaucracies) that take shape through words that appear clean on paper but wreak havoc in the world.

Since the WA Aboriginal Heritage Act came into effect in 1972 rendering it illegal to “destroy, damage, or alter” an Aboriginal site, over 3300 Section 18 applications have been received from individuals and organisations seeking legal permission to “destroy, damage or alter an Aboriginal site”. Between 1972-2022 only around three had ever been declined. This is the legislation that made the destruction of Juukan Gorge legal. Under the guise of protection this legislation provides a legal pathway for destruction.

Narrated in full and without pause by Sam Walsh AO, former CEO of Rio Tinto, Nine Hundred and Sixty Seven is a 2hr41m video produced in powerpoint that chronicles the purpose summaries of 967 Section 18 applications processed between 2010-20. While Sam read, Alana wrote. Trying to capture a word or phrase from every summary he narrated. These hastily scribbled notes forge A very clear picture of colonisation today. A proposal for screening and distribution documents a failed attempt to circulate the video Nine Hundred and Sixty Seven on television screens in regional airports across Western Australia.

In Plain Sight presents 67 pieces of A4 paper containing every word arranged in alphabetical order—debossed by hand without ink—from a completed Section 18 application form accessed via Freedom of Information that sought to “build a residence and access to residence”.

Pinned, piled, copied and bound, A4 paper is the central and repetitive motif of this work, probing the nexus between government, industry and settler daily life. And how it is not only large mines but, in a settler-colony, the deceptively simple need for a home always comes at the cost of someone else’s.

800+ pages of words, work and sources have been compiled into two ring bound folders - documenting, extending and archiving this work and its research. Three editions were produced. One is in the Kimberley Land Council’s archive. The others continue to circulate through exhibition and non-exhibition contexts like libraries and offices.