Give Way

Label

Darren Siwes’s eight-part photographic series Mis/perceptions was created in 2001, three years after the first Sorry Day. This now-annual event is a memorial for the Indigenous people who, as children, were forcibly removed from their families. Many Australians were genuinely shocked to learn about the brutal history of government policies that essentially amounted to cultural genocide. The receptiveness of many in the community to seeing Aboriginal people and hearing their stories precipitated the reconciliation movement, which had an explicit agenda of healing through dialogue and education.

In this series, Siwes photographs himself using a long exposure time to appear as a ghostly trace, haunting the sites in and around the city of Adelaide. Framed in this image by two large trees and an assortment of road signs, Siwes stands immobilized at a crossroads, like a spirit with unfinished business. The degree to which viewers see the figure emerge from or recede into the background seemingly stands as a litmus test for their attitudes toward the discourse of reconciliation.

From the 2020 exhibition Shifting the Lens: Contemporary Indigenous Australian Photography, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art

Course History

WRIT 5, Indigenous Knowledge and Development, Kenneth Bauer, Winter 2013

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

WRIT 5, Nature and Imagination: The Meanings of Place, William Nichols, Fall 2012

SART 29, Photography I, Brian Miller, Fall 2012

SART 30, Photography II, Brian Miller, Fall 2012

SART 25, Painting I, Esme Thompson, Fall 2012

SART 25, Painting I, Enrico Riley, Fall 2012

ANTH 30, Hunters and Gatherers, Nathaniel Dominy, Fall 2012

THEA 28, Dance Composition, Ford Evans, Fall 2012

SART 15, Drawing I, Gerald Auten, Fall 2012

SART 20, SART 71, Drawing II, Drawing III, Colleen Randall, Fall 2012

NAS 42, Gender Issues in Native American Life, Vera Palmer, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50.4, Indigenous Australian Art and the Politics of Curation, Stephen Gilchrist, Winter 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50.4, Indigenous Australian Art and the Politics of Curation, Stephen Gilchrist, Winter 2012

SART 17.9, The Photographer as Activist: Making Art Inspired by the Hood Museum's Collection, Virginia Beahan, Winter 2015

SART 29, Photography I, Christina Seely, Spring 2019

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Fall 2019

ANTH 3.02, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Fall 2019

SART 29, Photography I, Christina Seely, Fall 2019

ANTH 50.17, Rites of Passage, Sienna Craig, Spring 2020

Exhibition History

Crossing Cultures: The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 15, 2012-March 10, 2013; Toledo Museum of Art, April 11-July 14, 2013.

Shifting the Lens: Contemporary Indigenous Australian Photography, Luise and Morton Kaish Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 15–June 21, 2020.

Virtual Space for Dialogue, 2017, Self (Hood), Alison Guh, Class of 2017, Mellon Special Prjects Intern, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. https://www.aguh.vsfd.hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/

Publication History

Stephen Gilchrist, editor, Crossing Cultures, The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2012, p. 58, Fig 5.1; p. 158, no. 112.

Provenance

Greenway Art Gallery, Kent Town, Southern Australia, Australia; sold to Will Owen (1952-2015) and Harvey Wagner (1931-2017), Chapel Hill, North Carolina, September 4, 2002; lent to present collection, 2011; given to present collection, 2013.

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