Senior Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Australia FranchescaCubillo said the exhibition The national picture: the art of Tasmania's Black War was "very important for us to have".
The exhibition, three years in the making, brings together for the first time a large group of paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and objects from public and private collections including the Queen Victoria Museum in Launceston, the British Museum and the State Library of New South Wales.
Co-curators of the exhibition The National Picture Professor Greg Lehman from the University of Tasmania, and Dr Tim Bonyhady from the ANU with National Gallery of Australia senior curator Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Franchesca Cubillo.
Photo: Sitthixay Ditthavong
It focuses on the period in the 1830s and 1840s when 90 per cent of the Tasmanian Indigenous population was killed by the British colonists and the surviving 47 were exiled to Flinders Island but is also relevant to what was happening on the mainland where other frontier wars were taking place. There are also contemporary works by Indigenous artists commenting on the period.
Cubillo said, "The exhibition is talking about a part of Australian history that very few people are aware of. The story is being told through wonderful, complex and problematic imagery from the period."
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The exhibition was curated by Professor Tim Bonyhady from the Australian National University and Dr Greg Lehman from the University of Tasmania, both of whom specialise in the period.
Lehman, who is himself a Tasmanian Aboriginal, said one of the key things in the exhibition was the work of Benjamin Duterrau (1768-1851), "the only major colonial artist in Australia who is yet to have an exhibition dedicated to his work".
Duterrau arrived in Australia in 1832 as a free settler and became interested in the efforts of Methodist bricklayer George Augustus Robinson to bring peace between white settlers and Tasmanian Indigenous people and depicted Aboriginal people in his work.
Bonyady said Duterrau's oil paintings were the biggest of the era and the exhibition is named after the largest – three metres by four metres – which is now lost.
"He also did the first etchings by an Australian artist in Australia and the first art lectures in Australia."
Cubillo said like many people, she was taught that Truganini was the last Tasmanian Aboriginal person.
"Of course, that's not the truth."
She said of the original surviving 47 Tasmanian Aboriginals' descendants, many of whom were consulted in the preparation of the exhibition, "they feel a personal connection to these works.
"They don't see these as artworks by famous artists – they see them as their family."
The national picture: the art of Tasmania's Black War opens on Saturday, May 12 at the National Gallery of Australia and runs until Saturday, July 29. Admission is free. nga.gov.au.
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Ron Cerabona is an arts reporter for The Canberra Times.
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