Translation: Heart

Photograph by Russell James. Collaborative art by Lance Chadd (AUS).

4’11” x 6’4” archival pigment ink printed on rag cotton with acrylic and ochre applications.

‘Koort’ , has an innocent face, its good and its kind and I think that people like that, who do eventually experience some Aboriginal culture and talk to Aboriginal people will find that they have a lot of intelligent wisdom and good humor that they don’t mind sharing. These people will learn to appreciate that the first Australians back then, were intelligent people with a culture and spirituality rich in respect for land and environment. Knowledge and wisdom we could all learn from today. This color and circles here, represent the culture or elements of a persons life. Or times of a persons life. Or three individual people, like Daughter, Mother and Grandmother. Or ones life at different stages. Like, when they are a girl, then when they are a woman and then when they are an elder. When people share cultures, you get a merging like we have today. We have merged here with white people photos and white peoples paints and that, but using that to represent culture, and small things like this here (smaller shapes) represent connections as well, between cultures and sharing’s. I turned this image around and I saw her looking at it’. (Aboriginal culture).