The Possessive Logics of a White Colonising Aesthetic: Representations of Indigenous Children in the work of Brownie Downing

The home is itself the private realm of our intimate relationships to objects represented as symbols of security, as expressions of self-concept and as signs of ones connection to.

The White Spaces Research Network invites to you a public lecture:

The Possessive Logics of a White Colonising Aesthetic: Representations of Indigenous Children in the work of Brownie Downing.

The twentieth century marked the availability of leisure to the masses, an increase in private property ownership and proliferation of commodities for consumption, acquisition and collection. In particular, after World War II, the home became the primary site where personal objects were available to be used, stored, collected and displayed. The home is itself the private realm of our intimate relationships to objects represented as symbols of security, as expressions of self-concept and as signs of one’s connection to, or differentiation from other members of society (Kulka 1996; Miller 1998; Sturken 2007). As inanimate objects they come to represent and be imbued with different and multiple forms of meaning operating socially as well as discursively. In this paper I argue that the interpretive dimension of representation involves re-presentation; a discursive process that is operationalised by a white possessive logic to bring things into existence. I explore how white possession manifests as a colonising aesthetic in the artwork of Viola Edith Downing, otherwise known as ‘Brownie Downing’, who is considered to be one of Australia’s most recognised and popular commercial artists of the twentieth century.

Speaker:

Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Queensland University of Technology)

There will be a wine reception at 4:30pm and the lecture will follow at 5:30pm.