INTERTIDAL

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INTERTIDAL
Julie Gough

• Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi
• 10 May - 4 June 2005

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Intertidal - artist statement Julie Gough May
2005 Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi 3/75 Flinders
Lane Melbourne http//www.gabriellepizzi.com.au/
Intertidal is an exhibition that visually
articulates how I have been feeling since I left
Australia in September 2001 for a year of
residencies and since that date have undergone a
non stop array of personal, employment and life
changing experiences. The only constant in my
life seems to be an endless sense of movement
somewhat like the tides. This connection with the
seas and salt waters gives me some courage and
much comfort and I feel its pull wherever I am.
This is likely why I am now living five house
distances from the beach in Townsville. I
created my first significant Intertidal work in
2003 at ANU for the ltABSTRACTIONSgt exhibition
http//www.anu.edu.au/culture/abstractions/artists
/jg_1.htm because this sense of being pulled in
different directions, living between and within
varied states and places then conveyed and still
best conveys the mysteries of place, seeming
coincidence and the relief and release of
locating story and medium in my everyday. Some
of the works in this exhibition are celebratory
and peaceful renditions of my inner state of
being, in flux, between land and sea, not settled
in new places, but testing waters and finding
much. Other pieces that pair with these emotive
painted renditions are ink jet print critical
responses to the commodification of Indigenous
art and process through the digitalisation of
time, space and identities. "Intertidal" is an
exhibition, like those past, about me now
navigating my reality. Consisting of reflections
in to the deep past of my self, family, ancestors
and the means of materialising form there are
also works about me now and questions about the
expectations of the art market.
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Julie Gough Lifebearer, 2005 Beach found pumice,
brass wire, driftwood 100 x 60 x 34 cm Acquired
National Gallery of Victoria
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Julie Gough Drift, 2005 Driftwood, nylon 130 x 90
x 20 cm Acquired National Gallery of Victoria
Julie Gough Seam, 2005 Beach found coal,
nylon 130 x 90 x 15 cm Acquired National Gallery
of Victoria
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"Some commentary about the necklace works
Drift, Seam, Lifebearer and Raft and Transmitting
Device in my solo exhibition Intertidal at
Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi 10 May 4 June
2005 Julie Gough May 2005 I like to think about
what it means for me to make necklaces that are
bigger-than-me that are not necessarily
beautiful and not clearly necklaces either ... I
ask is the traditional Tasmanian Aboriginal shell
necklace today a carefully maintained sign of
cultural continuity, connectivity, authenticity
and authority and if so is this different to
what it represented 200 years ago ? - my
answer is that I can't know what it once was and
provided outside of my own time and perspective.
My use of macro and maybe future micro scale
works are about that navigation of myself in my
work physically challenging myself, my arms, my
lifting, my body - around traditional practice,
place, materiality and cultural expectation of
what something is used for/is supposed to
"DO". These floating medium necklace forms work
for me as life Preservers ie operating perhaps
as memory retainers for people on the edge (the
peripheral me - the whole interstitial 'bit') .
The wood and the pumice necklaces - "drift" and
"lifebearer seem very much to me about returning
home (to Tasmania) sometime. They are my evidence
to me that I have an emergency means - a facility
- to make a craft tobring me home in the form of
a necklace - a magical necklace. I feel I can
(in my mind's eye) walk into Townsville beach
with these wrapped around me and float into the
sea and wash up back in North East Tasmania. I
feel that when I am collecting these materials -
that if I lose almost everything of myself -
even the possibility of asking for help to return
, If I cannot articulate my need in cogent
language to explain my need to return - that I
could still, if I can stay near a beach - make
the means of my return these necklaces or a
raft... My sense is that if I drowned with these
around me it would be in the arms of the sea and
the maker of all necklaces and would be peaceful.
I was rescued off a rock I was stranded on off
Rodrigues Island in 2002 - after near drowning -
I so nearly drowned - was embraced by the dark,
warm drift downwards - that I don't fear or
question the sea's ability to decide when to take
someone. The pumice necklace has come out of
land into fire (volcano) and into water sea to
float back to land and be built into a floating
land - a kind of island - that could take me
away. The coal necklace (SEAM) is also a bit
elemental in material - there is a lot of coal
mined up in QLD - but I am unsure where this coal
covered with barnacles and other sea life
has come from. I found it up here north of
Townsville at lowest tide like black spots that
seem/seam at first to be a mirage of poor vision
(black spot) yet announce a possibility of home
and hearth to me - they are a source of warmth
from fire and in the water they are the firestick
doused and "OUT" - I collect them and think about
how my ancestor's firesticks have not yet been
entirely relit from flicker to full flame by us,
their descendants. continues
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I feel afraid to light my coal necklace at this
point in my life, I am unsure of the spirits of
the dark and night that I would have to encounter
to be able to walk properly and cross into the
two worlds that I have trained myself to
tightrope 'between'. The coal necklace - the seam
- is like the weighty lifeblood of ancestry - the
coal black materiality of the earth that I
haven't answered nor perhaps recognised the
call. The coal coming to me from the sea is a bit
like a reminder to face the land and remember
responsibility to all sides of self - land and
waters. The necklace-like works operate as my
imaginings of how to merge and move myself around
(kind of like with time and tide) back to from
where I come. The necklaces are elemental ways
of re-joining myself back to traditions that seem
lost in their recognisable popularised makings in
my immediate family. The necklace and multiple
object in my art forms (over a decade) articulate
my connection to a culture that did collect (and
still does collect) to survive. Through
repetition and rhythm and staccato in my work a
language of understanding place and being-ness is
articulated and presented to outsiders. In this
way I offer viewers a way into forms such as
necklaces - and materials provided by nature
impact on me, seem to urge me to spell out myself
through them. The Transmitting Device
represents, for me, a means of sending my
thoughts back to my people/the old people and
homeland and also it is by extension a Receiving
Device for hearing back from home. It is an
apparatus of travel/communication through time
and place - whether actual or providing for me
the security of imagining possible what this
device promises to achieve - see website
(http//homes.jcu.edu.au/jc156215/) - see work
"Time Capsules (Bitter Pills)" that is a work
about the all consuming (literally in that
artwork) need to travel back to times of old
people to feel what it is/was like - to be THERE.
I made Time Capsules in the Eddystone Residency
mid 2001 - whilst sitting on beach and grabbed a
cuttlefish and suddenly carved a pile of these
tablets as though in a manic yet trancelike state
! - those pills evidenced/materialised this
desire for my impossible return to past of my
imagining - where I could dive deftly for
abalone, climb for possum, sing in language that
came out of country and sang true - unlike the
tongue that I now speak that I suspect would have
me killed by my old people if they didn't see I
was them. Word and voice wouldn't save me in my
current form/manifestation (out of man sealer
Briggs) - only action and evidenced/trace of
recognised behaviour could rescue me from swift
death. RAFT is a raft - I feel great making
things that are about movements and travel
through real and imagined TIME/SPACE back to
Tasmania and to a place in Tasmania and a
community of people there where I can be myself
and it would be called home. As an artist I am
a outsider in my own culture/s - alwayslooking in
or across at peoples/places/times and
figuring through art making my responses to being
where I am and how or determining whether I wish
to show that place I inhabit 'me' in relation
to that other place (mainstream society) or
whether I rework cultural matters from my own
perspective. continues
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Julie Gough Land and Sky from Sea 1, 2005 Oxides
and inks on canvas 82 x 43 cm Acquired National
Gallery of Victoria
Julie Gough Land and Sky from Sea 2, 2005 Oxides
and inks on canvas 80 x 52 cm Acquired National
Gallery of Victoria
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Julie Gough Transmitting Device, 2005 Lomandra
longifolia, limpets 40 x 25 x 25 cm Acquired
private collection
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Julie Gough Raft, 2005 Digital print on canvas 76
x 102 cm
Julie Gough Raft, 2005 Driftwood, lomandra
longifolia 185 x 63 x 15 cm Acquired private
collection
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Julie Gough Regeneration, 2005 bronze, eucalypt
branch approx. 200 x 8 x 20 cm
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Julie Gough Regeneration, 2005 Bronze, eucalypt
branch Regeneration is the result of an
opportunity to work both indoors and outdoors at
Chewton in the Victorian Goldfields in 2004 and
2005 courtesy of Andrea and Peter Hylands. Over a
year of visiting that place I developed ideas as
to what form an outdoor art work could take that
would not elementally disturb the environment of
that area that is distinguishable by eruptions of
quartz signalling former alluvial mining
activities. The quartz brought ideas of memorial
and memory, like bone it surfaces to reveal what
is never totally concealed about the actions of
the past. I eventually placed quartz onsite
adjacent to a state forest such a way that the
elements would eventually regain their hold on
the form created to move and remove it from
whatever story I invoked and impressed it into.
Quartz is a magical and potent material existing
before and outliving human time. Sensing that
this aspect of timelessness was central to my
appreciation of the material enabled me to
understand into what form to configure the
quartz. Nature to nature, place to place, within
me I carry some knowledge, some blood, some
cultural memory of my ancestors. One ancestor,
Woretermoeteyenner, was a Tasmanian Aboriginal
woman who travelled widely during her life,
meeting and working with people of many cultures
through the first half of the 1800s.
Woretermoeteyenner means a eucalypt leaf and I
always feel strongly connected to this ancestor
in the presence of these majesterial beings.
Before moving far north to Townsville I realised
that a representation of a Tasmanian eucalypt
leaf would be an object, placed, left signalling
my visit that I could ably make to leave behind
outside as an ephemeral marker in a marked place,
from and of that region and yet also from deep
within me, my story and past. Regeneration is
an activated form of the quartz installation that
remains to wear at Chewton. This branch with its
leaves seeming to march upwards and out of a
space is able to be carried and live indoors or
out whilst it traces and takes me and my
connections to people and place onwards. The
trail of six bronze eucalyptus leaves tracking up
a length of timber provide a different means of
memorial than the more unstructured external
quartz leaf that changes with every rain. The
golden bronze of each leaf references also the
alluvial goldfields of Chewton and the alchemical
magic of molten metal. Each cast leaf also traces
the generations from Woretermoeteyenner to me,
the same leaf, our regeneration. With sincere
thanks to Andrea and Peter Hylands, Jean-Pierre
Chabrol, Clive Willman and Ray for their ongoing
assistance in the creation, exhibition and
relocation of this work to Gallery Gabrielle
Pizzi. http//www.andreahylands.com
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Julie Gough Promissory Note Opposite Swan
Island, 2005 Tea-tree, timber, string, fur 229 h
x 240 w x 130 d cm Acquired Flinders
University, South Australia
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Artists Statement Julie Gough, 2005 Promissory
note opposite Swan Island Tea tree, timber,
string, possum fur 229 h x 240 w x 130 d
cm Opposite Swan Island on the north east
corner of Tasmania on 6th August 1831 at least
one of my ancestors was made a crucial promise
by an envoy of the Government that has not been
kept we are waiting George Augustus Robinson
6th August 1831 This morning I developed my
plans to the chief Mannalargenna and explained to
him the benevolent views of the
government towards himself and people. He
cordially acquiesced and expressed his entire
approbation of the salutary measure, and promised
his utmost aid and assistance. I informed him
in the presence of Kickerterpoller that I was
commissioned by the Governor to inform them that,
if the natives would desist from their wonted
outrages upon the whites, they would be allowed
to remain in their respective districts and
would have flour, tea and sugar, clothes c given
them that a good white man would dwell with
them who would take care of them and would not
allow any bad white man to shoot them, and he
would go about the bush like myself and they then
could hunt. He was much delighted. The chief and
the other natives went to hunt kangaroo returned
with some swan's eggs which the chief presented
me as a present from himself - this was an
instance of gratitude seldom met with from the
whites. continues
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continues
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Julie Gough Intertidal Zone, 2005 crushed
cuttlefish, crushed beach found charcoal, beach
oxides, beach graphite, wax on nine pieces of
timber 220 x 300 x130 cm Acquired Art Gallery of
South Australia
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Julie Gough Intertidal, 2005 found ground
cuttlefish, charcoal, graphite, oxides, ground
pumice, bought oxide on canvas 106 x 140 cm
Acquired Private collection
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Julie Gough Me-bay, 2005 Digital print on
canvas 77 x 105 cm Acquired private collection
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Julie Gough Me-bay, 2005 Digital print on
canvas 77 x 105 cm Acquired private collection
Julie Gough Tidal, 2005 Beach found, crushed
cuttlefish, oxides, charcoal, graphite, bought
oxide on canvas 86 x 107 cm Acquired private
collection
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Julie Gough Intertidal Drift, 2005 Beach found
ground cuttlefish, charcoal, graphite, oxides,
pumice, bought oxide on canvas 70 x 96
cm Acquired private collection
Julie Gough Resignation, 2005 Digital print on
canvas 87 x 115 cm

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Artist statement Resignation, 2005 Digital
print on canvas 82 x 116 cm and Me-bay,
2005 Digital print on canvas 77 x 105
cm Opening EBAY recently I looked up the
category of Aboriginal Art to find many dozens
of paintings for auction that are authenticated
by the inclusion of an obviously Aboriginal
person holding up said painting/s in unknown
backyard/s to unknown photographer/s. Photo after
photo of unimpressed-looking people presented
(for me) a scene of depressing resignation. The
subjects of the photos became objects of
commodification alongside their art making.
Thinking about the intent of the photos I
wondered whether the artists may not be holding
up their own work but that of forgers. I fear
that forgers may be paying increasingly famous
Aboriginal artists to sign a pile of pre-produced
paintings and to be photographed holding up each
in a production line of profitable abuse. I
decided to be photographed in my yard holding one
of my own paintings. Fortuitously, one of these
photographs was taken by the manager of an
Aboriginal arts centre who was staying with me at
the time and understood with mirth and grief what
I was trying to say. I am an Aboriginal artist.
My pale-skinned presence in the photographs may
ironically serve to de-authenticate the
Aboriginality of the painting I am holding and
thus reduce its perceived value. I am
resigned!. Julie Gough April 2005
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Julie Gough Limpet, 2005 (and detail) Beach found
ground cuttlefish, beach found ground charcoal,
linen stitching on canvas 102 x 77 cm Acquired
private collection
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Julie Gough Cowrie, 2005 Beach found oxides,
bought oxides, beeswax, eucalyptus oil, ground
shells on canvas 73 x 102 cm Acquired private
collection
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Julie Gough - Biography and general artist
statement Julie Gough is a visual artist
working predominantly in sculpture and
installation art who is also currently
employed as a Lecturer in Visual Arts at James
Cook University, Townsville. Julies art and
research practice involves uncovering and
re-presenting historical stories as part of an
ongoing project that questions and re-evaluates
the impact of the past on our present lives. Much
of her sculptural work refers to her own and her
familys experiences as Tasmanian Aboriginal
people and is concerned with developing a visual
language to express and engage with conflicting
and subsumed histories. A central intention of
Julies art is to invite a viewer to a closer
understanding of our continuing roles in, and
proximity to unresolved National stories. My
work revisits sites of history and memory often
recorded only in text. I rework versions of the
past from between the lines, seeking voices and
direction in a detective-like search for
alternative and visual means of representation. I
sculpt as my way to retrieve the forgotten or
unspoken narratives of this nation, and to invite
the viewer to engage with stories and
implications perhaps not otherwise voluntarily
approached. Julie Gough, 1999 Since undertaking
a solo artist residency (Arts Tasmania Wilderness
Residency, Eddystone Light, 2001) in her
maternal (Trawlwoolway) ancestral homeland of
Tebrikunna in far north east Tasmania Julie
Goughs work has evolved into more personal,
introspective musings about intangible states of
being. Formerly hard-edged sometimes satirical
political commentary about race and identity
today Julie Goughs work reflects on both
internal and external states of being
and negotiation. I am interested in shorelines
the places between past and present, day and
night, conscious and unconscious. My art making
navigates these spaces of evocation in an effort
to trigger re-surfacings of cultural memories
beyond habituated contemporary frameworks that
distrust the sensorial. My feeling is that there
is something other through which humans
individually mediate the world. Working with this
spirit of our presence provides me meaning,
reason and a way (art making) to engage with the
often detached exteriorised public world. My
intention is to investigate and provide new ways
to reflect upon and hence understand places of
time, memory, history and the past within a
personal present. Julie Gough,
2001 continues
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Julie Goughs first major exhibiting opportunity
was Perspecta 1995, curated by Judy Annear, at
the Art Gallery of New South Wales and that same
year Gabrielle Pizzi invited Julie to exhibit in
Melbourne for the first time in the exhibition
New Faces New Directions. Since that initial
group showing Julie has exhibited in solo
exhibitions at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi on three
occasions Heartland in 2001, Re-collections in
1997 and Dark Secrets/Home Truths in 1996. Since
1994 Julie Gough has exhibited in over eighty
exhibitions, nationally and internationally and
Julies work is represented in collections includi
ng the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra,
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart,
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, The Art
Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, The National
Museum Australia, Canberra, Mildura Arts Centre,
Victoria, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, City of Port
Phillip, Victoria. Julie has previously been
employed as a Curator of Indigenous Art at the
National Gallery of Victoria, a lecturer
in Aboriginal studies at Riawunna at the
University of Tasmania and as an Interpretation
Officer, Aboriginal Culture at the Tasmanian
Parks and Wildlife Service. Other experiences
include Co-judging the annual Telstra NATSIAA
(National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Art Awards) Awards hosted by the Museum and Art
Gallery of the Northern Territory in 2004,
co-judging the National Interpretation Awards,
Australia 2004 and as Tasmanian representative on
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts
Board of the Australia Council, 2003. Julie has
undertaken artist residencies in Tasmania
(Wilderness Residency, Arts Tasmania, 2001), New
York (Greene St Studio, Australia Council for the
Arts, 2002, London (Samstag Scholarship, MVA,
University of London 1997-8), Paris and Mauritius
(Commonwealth Award, 2001-2) and was awarded a
PhD from the University of Tasmania in 2001
(Transforming Histories the visual disclosure of
contentious pasts, 2000), MFA (University of
London, Goldsmiths College,1998), BFA 1st class
Honours (University of Tasmania 1994), BVA
(Curtin University, 1993) and BA (Prehistory and
English Literature, UWA, 1986). Selected
websites http//homes.jcu.edu.au/jc156215/ http
//www.arts.tas.gov.au/index.html http//www.andrea
hylands.com
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• INTERTIDAL Art works by Julie Gough 10th May
  - 4th June 2005
• Paintings on canvas
• Tidal, 2005
• beach found ground cuttlefish, charcoal,
  graphite, oxides,pumice, bought oxide on canvas 
• 86 x 107 cm
• Intertidal, 2005
• found ground cuttlefish, charcoal, graphite,
  oxides,grit, bought oxide on canvas
• 106 x 140 cm
• Intertidal Drift, 2005
• Beach found ground cuttlefish, charcoal,
  graphite, oxides,grit, bought oxide on canvas
• 70 x 96 cm
• Cowrie, 2005
• beach found ground  graphite, beach found ground
  oxides,beach found ground shell grit, bought
  oxides, beeswax,
• eucalyptus oil on canvas 
• 73 x 102 cm

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• Sculptures
• Intertidal Zone, 2005
• Beach found ground cuttlefish, charcoal,
  graphite, oxides,grit, bought oxide on timber
• 220 x 300 x 130 cm
• Drift, 2005
• driftwood, nylon
• 130 x 90 x 20 cm
• Lifebearer, 2005
• beach found pumice, brass wire floated from
  Tonga region eruption which occurred 2 years ago
• 100 x 60 x 34 cm
• Seam, 2005
• beach found coal, nylon
• 130 x 90 x 15cm

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Digital Prints on canvas Me-Bay,
2005 digital print on canvas 77 x 105 cm
Resignation, 2005 digital print on
canvas 87 x 115 cm Raft, 2005 digital
print on canvas 76 x 102 cm