Malahide

Julie Gough is a Tasmanian Aboriginal, Scottish and Irish artist, whose maternal Trawlwoolway heritage, from Tebrikunna, in far northeastern Lutruwita (Tasmania), is a primary inspiration for her work. Gough’s artistic practice is driven by her interest in history and her personal experiences, along with the silenced histories of Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

Malahide is a large-scale necklace made from 108 pieces of coal, strung and suspended over antlers found in Tasmania. The work takes its name from a colonial property, Malahide, in the Fingal valley, Tasmania, a place laden with the violence of her island’s colonial past, and the site of continuing coal mining. For Gough, coal is a familial material: her Scottish ancestors were miners. Yet, rather than recalling the warmth of a hearth, coal’s cold, dark unreadable surface here serves as a reminder of the cavernous depths from which it has been extracted. The antlers, from deer introduced by British colonists, are the trophies of the hunt and correspond with the forced removal of Aboriginal people from their Country. Through her Ancestors’ dispossession, Gough did not inherit the tradition of making shell necklaces from her immediate family. In Malahide, she has translated the usually intimate scale of that practice to create a heavy sculpture, one that carries the weight and burden of Australia’s shared histories between First People and colonists. Steeped in multiple meanings, the work serves to memorialise, remind and uncover the forgotten.

Gloria Strzelecki, Associate Curator of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art