Sunday 30 November 2008, 1:30pm ABC1

Summer Series: Between the Lines - The Initiation of Adam Hill (repeat)

Between the Lines follows Adam Hill, an activist painter and musician defined by a mixed indigenous and white family heritage, as he goes on an artistic and personal journey of identity through his artwork.

Transcript

MIRIAM COROWA: Hello, I'm Miriam Corowa, welcome to Message Stick. Between The Lines provides a window into the life of Adam Hill, an activist, painter and musician defined by his mix of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal origins. In confronting his frustrations and his commitment towards his own Aboriginality, Adam struggles with the views held not only by the society around him, but also of those people who are closest to him. This program follows the artistic and personal journey of his life and his identity as expressed through his artwork. I hope you enjoy Between The Lines.

ADAM HILL: What I most like doing in life is following an unmapped path. I like spontaneity, and I like to just place myself in the lap of the gods, so to speak. I feel that I'm just on the verge of the next big thing, so there is no point in turning back now because you want to know what's around the corner.

MICHAEL HUTCHINGS: Adam is using his artwork as a way... It's almost like a diary for him, as he explores his own identity, I think that's going into his artwork a lot, the way he uses roads, and street signs, which are western icons, but he uses them as scars on the landscape, I think is a really powerful tool. Yeah, it's very political, but I like his sense of humour. There's a lot of irony and a lot of humour in his work, which reflects his personality, as well.

KEREN RUKI: The first piece of work of his that I'd seen was a very big graphic painting. An image of Bennelong Point, where the Sydney Opera House is, that was a bit of a piss-take, then as you're looking at this beautiful piece of work, there might be a little subtle piece in the corner. I think the one I'd seen had a little signpost in it that said 'Gubba lookout', and, you know, a Gubba is an Indigenous name for a white fella.

ALBERT DAVID: There's, like, a beautiful message in there that talks about everything we feel, people feel, Indigenous people, what we feel, and the message that gets across, I do it in dance. But I never seen it done in art before.

BOB HILL: I go to all his exhibitions, I think because I've got to, 'cause Adam keeps telling me I've got to come. I still enjoy it, I still enjoy his art, but some of the messages just lose me a little bit. Wondering.

RADIO PRESENTER: OK. 'On The Road To Yirrkala' there, Adam Hill and crew. And we've got Adam back in the studio, great track there. Now breaking it down into your show, how long has it been in the lead-up, you creating your work for the exhibition? Tell us about that process.

ADAM HILL: I've been painting solidly now for four months, which is a big chunk out of a fella's life, but that's the way it goes when you're trying to get up this ladder in the art world. And the exhibition title is 'A Sign Of The Crimes', and I've just modified the signs a little bit to put them in the context of where we're coming from, from an Indigenous perspective in this country, and using the signs to get across little messages saying that it's time for change.

STEPHEN MORI: Adam's not passive, and this gallery is not passive. It's definitely going to be under people's noses, and if we, or Adam, can pull it off, I mean, it will be a huge break. Not only for Adam, but for the gallery, you know. He's just on an edge, you know, I suppose it is a career edge.

ADAM HILL: I decided to rather focus my energies towards the Mori show, because it is Mori who is speaking for me at the moment, and who is advocating my art and pushing my art the way it should be pushed.

RADIO PRESENTER: Good morning Sydney, 97.3 FM, live and deadly, 7.50 on the Koori clock. I wanted to ask you, Adam, being a Koori and being an artist in the arena, tell us about your spiel, or your take on cultural identity, and your background as well.

ADAM HILL: I don't really recall talking to my parents about Aboriginal issues. It was not something that was discussed at the dinner table. I started to realise the shallowness of understanding that my parents had about Indigenous society, so there was no point ever really raising the discussion and consequently, in years to come, we started to enter quite a few heated debates.

BOB HILL: What are you? That's what she's asking you.

ADAM HILL: I'm Koori. And that's it. That's just all my life.

BOB HILL: Well, see, I said I'm an Australian, then I'm Aboriginal. And everyone that comes to this country should be Australian. Doesn't matter what your religious beliefs or your culture or anything. If you want to come to this country, you're an Australian. So, I'm not exposed to that, to the Aboriginal culture, and, in all my life, actually, I haven't been. I was very happy, I was very sad to lose my wife. Unfortunately these things happen. I'm virtually in a cocoon, because I go to work, I come home, I've got work to do in the house. I allow myself the luxury of a weekend to maybe go and have a beer with my mates. So, yep, I'm an Australian, and proud of it. I'm Aboriginal, and I'm proud of that. There are things that you just can't change, and being what you're born is one of them. I don't hide the fact. All my friends know what I am, and they accept me for what I am. Same as I know what they are, and I accept them for what they are.

ADAM HILL: I would sometimes hear adverse comments from my mother towards the stereotype of Indigenous people. She would actually make a comment towards my father in categorising him within a stereotype of the way society views Indigenous people. Of course that made me feel frustrated. My parents insisted that I attain the relevant academic record at school, and I am very much appreciative of that because I've suddenly realised you can't play the blackfella's game in the white man's uniform if you don't have some form of basic education. You grow with your father and you grow with your mother and you don't really notice skin colour. It wasn't really until the first years of high school, there were groups of students within the school who were Aboriginal, did any focus come back on me and my father, and that's perhaps when I started to question about Aboriginality, but nothing was ever said at the time.

JEAN SOUTH: Adam was just coming out of school, I think he was 19 or 20. He wanted to study graphic design. And he came through the Aboriginal unit, because I think he may have been a little bit too shy. He wanted to search for his own identity or his own Aboriginality. He did a lot of research on that. Adam's been allowed to think for himself. He's an educated young man, and his dad didn't have that opportunity. Well, I wouldn't say he did want to pass as a white, but that was just how life was.

BOB HILL: It's always been Australia Day. 26 of January, every year. Great day. It should be the coming together of all nations, and I love it, I think it's terrific. Ah, just a barbie, and have a few drinks with my friends. Normally, that's what we do. You just get with friends and have a good time.

ADAM HILL: Did you put down one?

BOB HILL: No. We used to have what they called Empire Day, and, heaven forbid, if we ever get the republic well, who knows what'll happen. I hope I never see it. I like Australia as Australia is.

ADAM HILL: But generally, I spend it at Redfern at the festival. That's my community, so to speak, so it's a family environment, more or less. I painted the big banner for the backdrop of the stage. So it's just nice to have an input in that festival in some way, each year. I look forward to catching up with people I haven't seen for a while. This was inspired by the riots at Cronulla. And there was an image on the front page of the paper that had this bogan with writing on his chest, somebody had written for him. It said, "We grew here, you flew here." Yeah? So, I come up with this one. 'Cause the clouds are like the government, they just hang overhead and they cast a shadow. So that's why I call them 'government clouds'. The lines have become synonymous with my style. I introduced them for two reasons - one - to help me achieve a perspective in the sky, in the big skies that we have. And the other thing is that I refer to them as my spirit lines, and it's the song lines that are passed through Aboriginal heritage, and through information is conveyed orally through the understanding of song, in understanding the culture. So I introduced those as a key symbol of my spirituality, in showing that wherever you are this spirituality is present. I already know that they're going to question my Aboriginality because of the colour of my skin, so I dress up in the suit to try and break the stereotype that people build up about an Indigenous person. The only reason I continue to do it is because I find it humorous, I find it comical.

ALBERT DAVID: One day I will wear a suit, I still haven't got one. One day I will, until I met him, a couple of years ago during some performance in our company for Bangarra.

ADAM HILL: Yeah, I would see you all the time there, with about 10 women around you, and I'd think, "One day I want to be like that. How come he not wearing a suit? I'm wearing the suit, but I don't got the 10 women there." Not wearing the suit, you got the 10 women. I'm thinking, "Hmm, I think it's time to go back to nature." When I tell my relatives I'm performing with Albert on this tour, I play didgeridoo, my relative says, "Do you take your boot-polish with you?" So I look more like what the people think I'm supposed to look like.

ALBERT DAVID: I'm not far off from where he is. People judge him by the colour of his skin. When I came down here, nobody knew I was Australian. No-one knew I was an Aboriginal. Everybody thought I was African. I come from up there. I come from an island called Iama. Iama is a turtle-back island. I always think about home, and I keep the balance here in Sydney by doing that. Always make myself at home.

ADAM HILL: I don't know exactly where home is, because we disconnected from home. I know where my grandmother come from - Burnt Bridge in Kempsey. But I didn't grow up there. I grew up in somewhere else's country, in Darug country, Darug country, Western Sydney. My grandmother, she died because... my father explains to me, when she died in his arms, that the doctor said he wouldn't come because she wasn't Catholic. He didn't come because she was black. I know she didn't have a voice, just from that story. I've got one photograph of her holding my father when he was a baby and she had a domestic outfit. So the strength comes because she... she's coming through me in the New Age where I have the opportunity to actually say something without serious ramifications. But he doesn't talk about it, because he realises he's stuck in a corner. He...he wants to say this stuff. But in where he grew up, he was never allowed to say it. So that's just stayed with him all his life. He's not allowed to say it. Now, amongst his mates, if he said this stuff, they would ridicule him, just like that little child in school. It doesn't get to come out. That's my dad. He's a little child that's never got to come out. When you're 64 and you've never got to let this out, that is...that is effecting you... very badly.

BOB HILL: That's my mother and that's me when I was a baby. I found her when she passed away. She was...huh! She was just...she just said to me, said, "I'm just gonna go and lay down for a minute." And I went to wake her up, went to get her... I think it must have been getting around near tea time or something, dinner time. And I couldn't wake her up. Oh, well, I was only nine years old. She was only 32 when she passed away. We were just bundled up and... ..put on a train and that was it. That's why I can't even remember how we got... My father stayed working on that sheep station. He couldn't look after us, the two of us - my sister and myself. So that's when we went to stay with our cousin. I didn't even know that cousin existed until we got there. We never ever had any visitors from...from my mother's side of the family. I don't know if I had aunties on that side. Never ever...never even really talked about them. I don't know why. But never...so I don't know what's going. Adam's tried chasing them up, haven't you?

ADAM HILL: Yeah.

BOB HILL: The Morthems.

ADAM HILL: They're all still there, the mob. Big mob.

BOB HILL: Who knows, who knows? If I've got relations up there, I wouldn't mind meeting them. Got to be somebody up there somewhere. Yeah. I'm gonna have to go up there, sooner or later. Sooner rather than later, while I've got time.

ADAM HILL: I should go after my exhibition, with you.

BOB HILL: For your exhibition?

ADAM HILL: After.

BOB HILL: Don't go up there in the winter time.

ADAM HILL: Why not?

BOB HILL: 'Cause it's too bloody cold.

ADAM HILL: Too bloody cold anywhere. Well, of course, I would like to have... ..would like to know my closest relatives and to have a...and to actually have a...a home, so to speak. A home that is my home, that is my...my people's home. But I'm so detached from that community because of where I've grown up that I'm just...it's just like any other stranger walking into the community, really, until I say my grandmother's name and who I'm related to. It's important...it is important for me to have that. And it's something that I'll continue to... to investigate by making more trips up there, perhaps even residing there until I know as much about my grandmother as I can. It's a very uncomfortable period for relationships between myself and my father. And...perhaps my father is feeling a little more uncomfortable about that by not attending my exhibition opening. So, whilst I'm not intending to point the finger at my father in that sense, my father, essentially, becomes under the spotlight as well. It makes me feel... like I ask my question, "What am I doing here? ”What am I...? "Where is my place? Where is my...?" I don't really understand...

RADIO PRESENTER: And I've seen a lot of your work. I'm actually...I'm actually a really big fan of your work. Is it the same kind of style and look?

ADAM HILL: Pretty much. You're gonna see...

RADIO PRESENTER: How would you describe it for listeners that may not have seen it?

ADAM HILL: For example, I'll give you one. There's a giant white toaster - and I've chosen this one because it's symbolic of white goods. And popping up out of the toaster are two bits of burnt toast. And it's an amazing image and it's called 'The Abolition of ATSIC'. So I take these little things that we're familiar with in domestic environment and put it into a scenario getting across a social message. For those who have attended the last couple of exhibitions of mine, you have come to know them as being modern day corroborees. Well, I just like to get the balance and it's certainly no exception for this one next Wednesday night at Mori Gallery - that's 168 Day St in Sydney. And you're gonna see Josh and two of his co-dancers from NAISDA bump up some beautiful TI stuff with sounds like this.

RADIO PRESENTER: You've also got some back-up with some food, some transport as well.

ADAM HILL: Definitely. Aunty Beryl's going to be handling the bush tucker for us on the night. They're going to bring a bus across to transport a mob who want to come from the Block. So jump onboard the Koori bus and come across be a part of the show.

STEPHEN MORI: I don't see him, in inverted commas, as an 'Aboriginal artist', you know. I see him as an Aboriginal person, but as somebody using all the content that he can get together to talk about as big an issue as he can muster up. And I think that that's what's, you know, really fantastic about his work. He uses his Aboriginality very well. He uses it sort of in a humorous way, but he also uses it as a weapon. And I think he's a very successful terrorist.

ADAM HILL: Thank you for congregating here tonight. What I'm going to do is hand you over to Dr Richard Green to... to language introduction to the country on which we stand.

MAN AT EXHIBITION: (SPEAKS INDIGIENOUS LANGUAGE) For 200 years, 218 years - camera - we've had people telling us that we don't speak our language. Who are we talking amongst when we're speaking if you claim that we don't speak our language? Not yourselves, but the academics out there.

MAN AT EXHIBITION: Black. What does it mean for me to be black? What makes me black? Not just my skin colour, for even the blackest brother can be white. Black is a thought process for me and a way of life. To be black is to be free. Free from the heart, free from the head, Free to take that man for what he is. Free to choose and make your own decisions, based upon your...

ADAM HILL: I want to thank you guys once again. I thank my dearest friends, who have been supporters for so long and come to my exhibitions regularly. You get to know me in my private life and I'm not as harsh as this. I've got to make these comments 'cause that's what I'm about. Why do I paint about this and not pretty flowers or dots and sell them in copious amounts in foreign shores? Because something flows through me and that's my grandmother. That's Clorine Morthem from Kempsey, Burnt Bridge, who gives me my Aboriginality and my father's heritage down through there. So my...I'm proud of that heritage and I speak on behalf of my forefamily that never got to speak for themselves. Thank you, once again, for being here tonight. Enjoy! If I look at the way, the path that I've chosen to walk upon, it's obviously a balance towards my Indigenous heritage. The important thing is, living at Redfern, for me, is that it's going to influence my art because I'm already starting to think about things to paint. And what's really interesting is that, whereas, up until now, the finger has been pointed at... the prejudiced white community, now, more so, I'm finding the finger is going to be pointed at... these blackfellas here and getting them to take a look at themselves. The other day at the Redfern Community Centre was the...this uncle, this old uncle, he turns around to me and says to me, "You Adam Hill?" And I, "That's right." And he said, "I'm your father's first cousin." Well, I meet a blood relative that I didn't know I had. So he told me who I'm related to up in Kempsey. I'll go back with my father, hopefully, to introduce him to the extended family, whom he doesn't know exist either. And it will be like, 'This Is Your Life' for my dad and myself.