RIVERSTONE S & R A M I F I C AT I O N S BRONWYN BANCROFT
F OREWO RD
PAU L H OWAR D CURATOR VISUAL ARTS
Blacktown Arts Centre is proud to present an exhibition of new work by renowned artist, Bronwyn Bancroft. Bronwyn is a descendant of the Bundjalung people of the Djanbun clan, and grew up in the small country town of Tenterfield. Known nationally and internationally as an artist, designer and book illustrator, she is also an advocate of arts and education for Indigenous Australians. Bronwyn’s artwork explores her family’s history and a sense of place. Riverstones and Ramifications is an exploration around Bronwyn’s life in the bush and the city, a culmination of her life experiences. The exhibition highlights different notions around the artist’s sense of place and connection to country as an Aboriginal woman, while creating a visual representation of a contemporary Aboriginal existence.
In addition, we are delighted to be showing the outcomes of a photographic project, entitled Take A Walk With Me, that Bronwyn led with artist, Blak Douglas (aka Adam Hill) for young, aspiring Aboriginal artists in the Blacktown area. Blacktown Arts Centre would like to thank Bronwyn for her extraordinary new body of work, and also thank Bronwyn and Adam for sharing their knowledge and creativity with local young artists. We would also like to thank Elizabeth Fortescue for her essay that is included in this catalogue to the exhibition, and to Jason Eades and Ella Bancroft for opening the exhibition. Blacktown Arts Centre gratefully acknowledges the support of the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund for the Take a Walk with Me project and to AIME (The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience).
RIVER OF MEMO RY
ELI ZAB E T H FORT E SCU E Human beings have an ancient, uncanny connection to stones. Stones mark our burial sites. In Jewish tradition, a pebble of remembrance is placed on a grave when it is visited. In Scottish tradition, a stone from the bottom of a hill is added to a cairn at the top. Stonehenge exerts a special, mysterious power. And who hasn’t collected a pebble from the beach, marvelled at the eons that shaped it, and taken it home? In the same way, Bronwyn Bancroft’s exhibition, Riverstones and Ramifications, is a homage to the emotional and communicative power of stones. In Bancroft’s Sydney studio there is a whole bookcase full of beautiful, rounded river stones. Bancroft picks up the stones and turns them over gently and reverently, as though they were sacred objects. And that’s exactly what they are. Look carefully and you’ll notice the river stones have been skilfully sharpened along one edge. They are, in fact, tools that were once used for cutting everything from wood and bark to animal hide. These river stones were shaped many generations ago, and the people who shaped them were Bancroft’s ancestors. Bancroft is an Aboriginal Artist from New South Wales. Her indigenous
ancestors lived in the Bundjalung nation, the area now called Lionsville, in the Ewingar State Forest in far north-eastern NSW. Bancroft’s father, Bill, was born in Lionsville but travelled to Tenterfield to find work when he was still very young. Bill married Dot, and Bronwyn Bancroft was their seventh and last child. Bill Bancroft’s brother, however, lived in Lionsville all his life. His name was Gordon Kelmond Bancroft, but to his niece Bronwyn he was “Uncle Pat”. When Bill died at the age of 67, Bronwyn Bancroft asked Uncle Pat to become her surrogate dad. Uncle Pat became a powerful influence on the artist, teaching her the old bush ways and telling her the stories of his life as a gold miner, drover, stockman and master stockwhip maker. Uncle Pat had always been deeply fascinated by the land he lived in. From the age of seven, he had begun to find and collect the river stones that family members had long ago turned into the equivalent of pocketknives. He kept them for years. Uncle Pat would turn the stones over and over, showing his niece the evidence of different people’s work. “This fella worked hard and you can see how hard he chipped away,” Bancroft recalls her
uncle telling her. Turning to another stone, he would say, “This fella was a bit lazy”. Nevertheless, the stones still work. The artist says she has cut through a T-bone steak with one of them.
that have always been found in the Lionsville area. Uncle Pat referred to calcite as “bush crystals”. Lined up in formalistic rows, the calcite depicted in the paintings seems to shimmer and glint.
Uncle Pat died on Christmas Day, 2014, aged 94. True to her wish, he left his niece the stones that had forged such a special bond between them. There are about 20 of the stones, and they are between 15,000 to 20,000 years old, Bancroft says.
While Bancroft lives in inner Sydney, she bought her own house on Washpool Creek at Lionsville about 22 years ago and goes back there half a dozen times a year. She once spent a year living in Lionsville, sending her children to a nearby school. Her hope is to spend more time in Lionsville in future. “It’s everything to me,” Bancroft says. The nearest neighbours are 15 minutes away, and there is no television or Wi-fi. “Just a fixed line, a couple of goannas, a bearded lizard and lots of birdlife.”
Bancroft has done more than just keep and admire her uncle’s stones. In this exhibition she pays homage to the stones and the uncle who discovered them and recognised their significance. In her paintings of the stones she seeks to connect with them, she reaches out to those hands that once fashioned them and that used them in daily life. Her creation of the series of paintings in which the stones are the central motif is an urge to find family, to rediscover roots, to say to ancestors, “I’m still here, and I want to know you”. In other paintings in the exhibition, Bancroft depicts the chunks of calcite
For Bancroft, the stones are a poignant reminder of Uncle Pat. They are also a metaphor for his philosophy of life. “You start out as a river stone and you end up as sand,” Bancroft says. “So you don’t take yourself too seriously. Uncle Pat said if you were really good, you didn’t have to say anything.”
Elizabeth Fortescue is visual arts writer for The Daily Telegraph, and Australian correspondent for The Art Newspaper.
This series of works ‘From the Hands of my Ancestors’ was developed as a response to the death of my uncle Pat Bancroft on Christmas Day 2014.
Uncle Pat was 94 and he was my mentor. He bequeathed me his collection of stones, which includes axes, pocket knives, flints, crystals and calcite samples. Some of these stones are thousands of years old and would have been made by my family. I have a powerful urge to document this enduring link that speaks to the tenacity of my family and our existence at the base of the Bundjalung State Forest, where we have lived since the beginning of our time and still do. Bronwyn Bancroft
From the Hands of My Ancestors 1 (Series of 8) 2015, Acrylic on archival paper, 127 x 92 cm
From the Hands of My Ancestors 2 (Series of 8) 2015, Acrylic on archival paper, 127 x 92 cm
From the Hands of My Ancestors 3 (Series of 8) 2015, Acrylic on archival paper, 127 x 92 cm
From the Hands of My Ancestors 4 (Series of 8) 2015, Acrylic on archival paper, 127 x 92 cm
Transitions 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm Collection Geordie Harrison
Falling Through Time, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 270 cm
Life Adorned (front & back cover image) 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm
R IVERSTONES AND RAMI F I CATI O N S ART WORK LIST 1. From the Hands of My Ancestors #1, (Series of 8), 2015, Acrylic on archival canson paper, 127 x 92 cm 2. From the Hands of My Ancestors #2, (Series of 8), 2015, Acrylic on archival canson paper, 127 x 92 cm 3. From the Hands of My Ancestors #3, (Series of 8), 2015, Acrylic on archival canson paper, 127 x 92 cm 4. From the Hands of My Ancestors #4, (Series of 8), 2015, Acrylic on archival canson paper, 127 x 92 cm 5. From the Hands of My Ancestors #5, (Series of 8), 2015, Acrylic on archival canson paper, 127 x 92 cm 6. From the Hands of My Ancestors #6, (Series of 8), 2015, Acrylic on archival canson paper, 127 x 92 cm 7. From the Hands of My Ancestors #7, (Series of 8), 2015, Acrylic on archival canson paper, 127 x 92 cm 8. From the Hands of My Ancestors #8, (Series of 8), 2015, Acrylic on archival canson paper, 127 x 92 cm 9. Falling Through Time, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 270 cm
10. Life Adorned, 2014, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm 11. Meet me at the Mountain, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm 12. Time Travellers I, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm 13. Time Travellers II, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm 14. Pat's Place I, 2014, Photographic print on German rag paper, 70 x 47 cm 15. Pat's Place II, 2014, Photographic print on German rag paper, 70 x 47 cm 16. Annie Alice Bancroft, Acrylic on photographic print, 57.5 x 39 cm 17. Transitions, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm 18. x29 postcards, 2014, Photographic prints on German rag paper, variable dimensions 19. x2 painted tins, variable dimensions 20. 30-40 riverstones, 9 axes, 1 calcite sample, 2 flints, variable dimensions
TAKE A WALK WI TH ME C RYSTAL F ERG USO N, B IANCA HOLLOWAY, DAM I TA SAUND ERS, ALAJA H W R IGHT Bronwyn Bancroft worked with Aboriginal artist, and long-time Blacktown resident, Adam Hill, on a project called Take A Walk With Me with young, aspiring Aboriginal artists in the Blacktown area. The concept was guided by the young artists to document the streets and spaces in Blacktown with instant photography in order to catch a different view of their environment. The young artists
Untitled 2015
have documented what they see with digital and Polaroid film. They are all currently in their final years at Mitchell High School and Blacktown Girls High School. The project was supported by The Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, with assistance from the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME).
Spirit Level 2015
“Take A Walk with Me was a concept that I created to assist young Aboriginal high school students, from the Blacktown area, and engage them in a creative journey with senior artists, Adam Hill and myself. As we move through our artistic careers – young and old – we need to engage in knowledge and artistic exchanges. This was an experience based on reciprocity and the results speak for themselves.” Bronwyn Bancroft
“Take A Walk With Me was a refreshing project that promoted a sharing of artistic discussion through the use of the camera. To pinpoint an aesthetic beauty within a CBD invokes a challenge for a photographer at any level. I found myself reliving my early studies of photography at high school and realised that we really all remain students when working with this exciting medium.” Adam Hill
ACKNOWLED G EMEN TS
Jenny Bisset
Erin Rackley
Manager Arts & Cultural Development/ Director Blacktown Arts Centre
Senior Administration Officer
Monir Rowshan
Administration Officer
Cultural Planning & Community Engagement Coordinator
Miguel Olmo
Audrey Newton Gabrielle Zerni Administration Trainee
Coordinator Operations & Administration
Jason Abbott, Taryn Leahy
Paul Howard
Bianca Devine
Visual Arts Curator
Maria Mitar Performing Arts Curator
Paschal Berry Performing Arts Curator
Jodie Polutele
Exhibition Installers
Publicity
Sharon Hickey Photographer
Sam Felix Joseph Designer
Justin Attwater
Producer - Community Engagement Programs & Marketing
Operations & Building Work
Sanki Tennakoon
Theresa Sargeant
Arts Marketing Assistant
Digital Reproduction
Curator Paul Howard Blacktown Arts Centre wishes to thank AIME (Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience), in particular Hannah Cheeseman; and the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund for the Take A Walk With Me project. Additional thanks to Blacktown Arts Centre and Arts and Cultural Development staff and Blacktown City Council staff from Community Development; Building Construction and Maintenance; Communication, Events and Industry Liaison; Corporate Finance; Governance and Property; the Depot and the Information Centre. Bronwyn Bancroft wishes to thank Laura Jones and Hamish Brown for their assistance.
Blacktown Arts Centre is an initiative of Blacktown City Council supported by Arts NSW