Destiny Deacon

NGV Australia will open on 23 November with DESTINY, a retrospective exhibition of more than thirty years of work by Melbourne based contemporary artist Destiny Deacon, a descendant of the Kuku and Erub/Mer people from Far North Queensland and Torres Strait. The exhibition has been curated by NGV Curator of Indigenous Art, Myles Russell-Cook, who worked closely with Deacon and her long-time collaborator Virginia Fraser.

DESTINY opens with a two channel video work titled Abi See Da Classroom. To celebrate the ABC’s fifty-year anniversary of Australian television, Deacon and Fraser were given unrestricted access to the archive, possibly the most significant collection of film and television held in Australia. From uncomfortable to distasteful, to overtly racist, the two channels prompt audiences to reconsider how Black and Aboriginal people have historically been depicted on TV.

A mixture of photographic works and videos, created throughout Deacon’s career, unfold within the exhibition, introducing audiences to Deacon’s signature blend of artistic humour. Singular photographic images such as Adoption explore the relationship between seemingly innocent imagery and much darker and more complicated ideas. In this image Deacon has placed a collection of plastic, black toy babies into paper cupcake shells and titled the work Adoption as a direct reference to Australia’s shameful history of government-sanctioned Aboriginal child removal.

A new work by Deacon that will be featured in the exhibition is her representation of one of her iconic photographs from 1994, Whitey’s watching. The menacing face in Whitey’s watching belongs to the pre–2012 entry gate of Luna Park in St Kilda, Melbourne. Deacon wanted to preserve the face of her childhood, but in doing so has also captured a hallucinatory presence; the wide open eyes and exposed teeth glow with manic intensity. Deacon has transformed this photograph into a larger than life light box which draws audiences in and through the exhibition space.

An immersive and exciting area of the exhibition is Deacon and Fraser’s 2005 installation Colour blinded. In this installation, a series of black and white photographs taken on orthochromatic film – a type of film that is sensitive to all visible light except red – hang alongside two videos and three Perspex cubes. The Perspex cubes are filled with Styrofoam balls and golliwog dolls. The room is lit with low pressure sodium lamps, creating an effect in which the room pulsates with an intensely yellow glow, as though the white cube has been contaminated.

As one of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Deacon’s work seeks to subvert social norms through humour. I don’t wanna be a bludger is a film made in collaboration with the late Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Michael Riley, and features Deacon playing her outrageous alter-ego, Delores. The work centres around Delores deciding she no longer wants to be a ‘bludger’ on the dole, but rather, an artist. When interacting with other characters, Delores employs high-energy dialogue to ridicule negative stereotypes that persist about Aboriginal people.

A highly anticipated installation within the exhibition is a restaging of Deacon’s own lounge room in the gallery space. Over the years, Deacon and Fraser have created a number of domestic interiors of varying scales presented inside gallery settings. These lounge rooms and kitchens are always, to an extent, based on Deacon’s own home. Koori lounge room is filled with Deacon’s personal collection of ‘Koori Kitsch’, decorative objects with a complicated history that often perpetuate racist stereotypes about Indigenous people. Deacon elevates these objects, removing their status as derogatory and imbuing them with a second, more dignified life.

The exhibition concludes with a newly commissioned body of work by Deacon, including three photographic series. The final work in the show, simply titled Blak, is a reference to one of Deacon’s most well-known legacies. For Deacon, language, and in particular spelling, has provided an opportunity to reframe and assert her identity on her own terms. Deacon is credited as the first Indigenous person to change the spelling of Black to Blak when referring to Australian Indigenous people. In its deceptive simplicity, the recasting of this word resonated with Aboriginal Communities around Australia.

I am absolutely delighted that audiences will be given the opportunity to see this exhibition later this month. It is fitting that we reopen NGV Australia with a major exhibition of an artist who plays such an important part in the cultural life of this city and this country.

For those in our community who will not yet be able to visit Melbourne and the NGV, we’ll be sharing a virtual tour of the exhibition and interviews with Deacon in coming weeks for all to enjoy.

Have a great Sunday,

Tony Ellwood AM
Director, National Gallery of Victoria

I am absolutely delighted that audiences will be given the opportunity to see this exhibition later this month. It is fitting that we reopen NGV Australia with a major exhibition of an artist who plays such an important part in the cultural life of this city and this country.

For those in our community who will not yet be able to visit Melbourne and the NGV, we’ll be sharing a virtual tour of the exhibition and interviews with Deacon in coming weeks for all to enjoy.

Have a great Sunday,

Tony Ellwood AM
Director, National Gallery of Victoria