Body of Objects

2018 - Installation (Installation)
11 objects, dimensions variable

Dale Harding’s installation Body of Objects consists of eleven sculptural works that the artist based on imagery found at sandstone sites across Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland. Mouth-blown with ochre on sandstone, these extraordinary stencilled images depict weaponry, domestic tools, and ceremonial objects that are specific to the region and that relate to Harding’s own ancestry. In response to these enduring indexes of Indigenous material culture, Harding produced a suite of cast objects using the stencilled imagery as a guide, along with objects that relate to his family history: boomerangs, spears, clubs, and whips are all part of the display. Reproduced in silicone, the soft objects—some translucent, flaccid, and some embedded with spikes— droop over the edges of numerous white museum plinths of varying sizes and heights. This mutability works to unsettle the conventions of their museum-style display, referencing the way in which such objects have been displaced, exchanged, and interpreted since colonization. This complicates any easy distinction or classification between notions of original and copy, traditional and contemporary, utilitarian object and cultural fetish.

A descendant of the Bidjara, Ghungalu, and Garingbal peoples, Dale Harding’s work references and expands upon the philosophical and spiritual touchstones of his cultural inheritance. Through a variety of media, Harding examines the visual and social languages of his communities. Some of his works involve stories from the artist’s maternal family line, and others draw on the techniques, tools, and iconography that are present in Carnarvon Gorge—a significant cultural site for the Indigenous peoples of Central Queensland, globally recognised for its stenciled rock art. Concurrently, Harding references and interrogates European and American art historical traditions—including Colour Field painting, Minimalism, and performance, as well as modes of museological display and the categorization of art and cultural objects. His profound commitment to an archaeology of reproduction unravels the type of display that seeks to stabilize the material that is the subject of his work. His objects are traced in history, yet liberated from it. They remain in flux, offering a sharp comment on the gendered and racial stereotypes still associated with certain Indigenous historical objects.

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