Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/brian-mckinnon

Birth Place

Geraldton, WA, Australia

Biography

A descendant of the Amungu and Wongai peoples, Brian McKinnon was born in Geraldton, Western Australia in 1957. His mother, one of the Stolen Generations, comes from the Amungu people of the mid-west coast, and his father, from whom he takes his beliefs and customs, comes from the Wongai people of the Western Desert. Using a range of diverse materials, McKinnon’s art practice is informed and inspired by his memories of childhood, as well as historical and contemporary politics and events. McKinnon signs his paintings ‘Tabulk’, a name adopted out of respect for his great-great-great grandmother, Tulbak, who was one of the very last of the Swan River clan in Perth, Western Australia. McKinnon and his family felt the full effect of several generations of assimilationist government policies on Indigenous people. His family was dispersed after the passing of his grandfather, as the authorities considered his part Aboriginal grandmother unfit to look after her family. The majority stayed in New Norcia, Western Australia, but others were taken as far as Adelaide, South Australia. This displacement and profound social disruption continues to be a powerful motivation for McKinnon’s work. Born Brian Charles Dodd (his name later changed at the age of eighteen without his knowledge or consent); McKinnon spent his early infancy ‘out bush’ with his Grandmother and her husband, as they worked on the rabbit-proof fence. Their diet was unsuitable for him, causing quite severe reactions, and consequently at age five he was brought back to his mother, who resided in a fringe camp called Blood Alley, located at the foot of Mount Misery, Western Australia. Built from scraps of wood and corrugated iron discarded at a rubbish tip nearby, the makeshift shanties had dirt floors and no power or running water. As the eldest of four children, it was his responsibility to collect water from a stand pipe on the side of the road where farmers obtained water for their stock. His family’s furniture was meagre, with a cable drum and banana boxes acting as table and chairs, and an open fire for cooking and heating. It was here, however, that McKinnon first took an interest in art, watching the elders carve emu eggs, which were later sold to tourists in town. At the age of twelve he left home and lived a nomadic life, travelling up and down the west coast of Australia, working and labouring wherever he could. Reflecting on this period, McKinnon asserts that he was an angry young man, not knowing how to respond to the world, often reacting in violence. He spent several years in juvenile detention centres as a result, and at times felt that there was no way to escape his turbulent circumstances, always being sent back to the very place that he was running from. The work In Australia Being Aboriginal is a Prison, 2010, addresses this time in his life, a work which was shortlisted for the 2011 Victorian Indigenous Arts Awards. At the age of eighteen, McKinnon hitchhiked with his half-brother to Victoria, convinced that he would not survive beyond age twenty if he continued on his current path. He eventually settled in Geelong, Victoria and later married and had three children. Although he started his life anew, his separation from family and country created long-lasting feelings of betrayal, guilt and isolation. The Last Supper, 1997 is an exploration of these issues, where McKinnon identifies with Judas Iscariot as an outsider and betrayer of his family and people. The painting also acknowledges the Christian beliefs held by many of McKinnon’s relatives, particularly his cousin Roy Nai-Smith, who passed away from Asbestosis in the same year, and to whom McKinnon dedicated the work. Since 1996, McKinnon has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, including group and solo hangings in Italy. In 1997 the artist travelled to Italy in an arts exchange project titled Sogno Indigeno (Indigenous Dream), which toured various locations in northern Italy, before travelling to Victoria, Australia in 1998 for NAIDOC Week. Along with carved emu eggs, McKinnon exhibited paintings that addressed a reclamation of country and culture, and works that mirrored his own intermittent journeys back to his ancestral lands. Another notable aspect of McKinnon’s oeuvre is his exploration and use of found materials and objects in a process of bricolage. An expression of identity as well as cultural conflict in process, materials such as barbed wire and corrugated iron reference his childhood experiences in Blood Alley. Brass breastplates (or Kingplates or gorgets) represent his ancestors, and were worn by Aboriginal people in the nineteenth and twentieth century as a colonial strategy of reward for those who distinguished themselves in the eyes of their non-Aboriginal perceived masters. By reversing the original concept, McKinnon reveals the violence in the original act. This bricolage can be seen in Bush Rugby Can Be Painful, 2008, which references an incident that took place when McKinnon was playing bush rugby as a child. Wire was lodged above his left eye after a strong tackle and he was refused treatment by the doctor due to his Aboriginality. He was instead taken to the vet to have the wire removed. Similarly, the work Sorry (King Little Johnny), 2008, also applies bricolage to summon the artist’s childhood memories of living at Blood Alley whilst simultaneously addressing the refusal of then Prime Minister John Howard to apologise to Australia’s Stolen Generations. This work made headlines after being removed from an exhibition of Indigenous art, held to celebrate NAIDOC week at Parliament House, Melbourne, in July 2006. Ironically censored from the centre of Victorian democracy, it was deemed ‘too political’ for parliament. The use of waste materials and creative process of bricolage also offers a metaphor for the plight of his people, constrained to live on the outskirts of western society. In 2008-9 the artist moved toward a more aesthetic bricolage in his artistic practice, appropriating a diverse range of imagery and styles, including Indigenous and ancient Sumerian designs, as well as imagery from Ellsworth Kelly and Emory Douglas. Beyond the uncompromising political messages, each painting quietly married symbols and imagery to create a subtle dialogue on the nature of self-representation. In 2011, McKinnon’s work has focused on the theme of burial sites, particularly their desecration, in part inspired by his examination of hollow-log coffins and Pukumani poles at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Using images of European burial sites found on the internet and printed onto sticky labels, the copies are placed onto a large, gridded canvas to highlight the conscious desecration of burial sites on the Tiwi, Melville and Bathurst Islands during colonisation and as recently as 1974. His process is a reversal of the concept of desecration that also deliberately cheapens what is considered sacred to any people and country. McKinnon has exhibited throughout Australia and Europe and his work has been collected by numerous institutions including the Societá Degli Operai, Italy, the Giuseppe Viola Collection, Italy, the Western Australian Museum, the Parliament of Victoria, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne and the Berndt Museum of Anthropology (The University of Western Australia). McKinnon has been a finalist in the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards (2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011) and the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards (2009). In 2006 he was awarded the Gumbri White Dove Acquisitive Award for Victorian Indigenous artists. Writers: Monique Farchione Date written: 2008 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 1957

Summary

Brian McKinnon is a Geelong-based artist who explores issues from his childhood as well as the ongoing fight for the recognition of Indigenous rights. He is a descendant of the Amungu and Wongai people of Western Australia.

Gender

Male

Died

None listed

Age at death

None listed