Metro Arts: Colour By Number

‘Colour by Number’ is a solo exhibition by Brisbane-based artist and Queensland College of Art graduate, Dale Harding, currently showing at Metro Arts in Brisbane City. Curated by Tony Albert, the exhibition focuses on issues of race, sexuality and the history of place, specifically within Australia.

Metro Arts has a casual, inviting atmosphere. The gallery is an Artist-Run Initiative (ARI) that brings together Brisbane’s artistic community. Before you head upstairs to the gallery space on Level Two, be sure to look up at the painted ceiling, a uniquely Australian take on Michelangelo’s famous ‘Creation of Adam’, complete with kangaroos and sunflowers.

This exhibition`s name, ‘Colour by Number’, makes reference to the children’s art game, as well as the past racist practice of numbering Aboriginal children according to the gradient of their skin tones. Featuring embroidered and framed statements, a cross-stitched tablecloth and a shelf with a ball of hair attached to a wall, Hardings’ artwork is channeled through his Aboriginal heritage. Having learned embroidery and cross-stitching techniques from his mother and grandmother, it seems that Harding could be using uses these mediums to come to terms with issues of racial discrimination and the forced contraction of women and children into domestic service during the 1950s and 1960s.

The first artwork entitled 'Of One's Own Country' is quite poetic in its asking the viewer to respond to and interpret it. It is only after reading the artist`s statement beside it that one fully grasps the then-obvious intention behind the work. It consists of a wooden plank painted white, on a white wall, above it a ball of what could only be described as fur or hair attached to the plank with two strings. One is forced to try and understand the uncanny relationship between these carefully-arranged objects. What is the plank? It does look a little like whiteboard, (perhaps a teaching tool?) or perhaps a bench of some kind. In this sense, the work is quite open-ended. It requires the viewers to make their own meanings. What can be said, however, is that both the whiteboard and bench allude to ideas of teaching and house/home and it is this that becomes the thread that ties the exhibition’s individual pieces together.

Moving on, it is the series of framed embroidered pieces entitled 'And All Who Enter' that captured me. ‘Proud to be a Brown Artist’, 'Bless Our Home With Brown Love' and ‘Homo Sweet Homo’ among other statements really told me that there were other specific ideas coming into play here: identity in relation to sexual orientation, race and home. Back in the 1950s and 60s children were taught how to embroider, and these pieces indicated to me that the inner child coming to terms with and understanding ‘who they are’ plays an important part in these works. Pink, brown and cream featuring frequently, reminding one of childhood ice-cream memories.

Adding interest are the frames around each of the embroidered works. Perhaps the framing of frames is indicative of boundaries imposed or it could suggest the idea of the history of place. It could be that the frames give a context for the works both of Harding and his forebears- they remind us that we are influenced by and respond to the surroundings in which we find ourselves. There is also pride in a work which one chooses to place a frame. It is a treasured thing. Advancing this notion of the crossing of artificial boundaries of sexuality and race is the stark work, ‘Breaking Boundaries”, consisting of a series of five timber pegs painted white and black.

Across from these vibrant embroidered pieces is a tablecloth flat on the floor. Cross- stitching, a traditional European handicraft which was brought here with European settlement, and this tablecloth is no exception to the floral patterns one is accustomed to seeing as decoration- aside from the kangaroo in each corner. The female members of Harding’s family were forced to learn embroidery skills but these skills seem to have become part of their knowledge which they then passed down to him in the traditional way. He has become a channel for the past experiences of his relatives and ancestors, learning their ways. In this sense, the exhibition becomes a time capsule; an interesting way to read Australian history.

Curator Tony Albert focuses on how Harding’s work demonstrates the importance of the history of place and the concept of ‘home’, hoping to awaken the viewer to the shaping of a rich artistic Australian culture. 

The exhibition runs until Saturday the 16^th October. Check it out while you can.

For more information on Metro Arts Gallery, click the link below. 

http://www.metroarts.com.au/ 

Images (from top to bottom):

• Metro Arts Gallery 
• Dale Harding: 'Of One's Own Country', 2011
• Dale Harding: 'And All Who Enter', 2010

Radio National Awaye!, n.d., image, viewed 6 October 2012,

<http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/dale-harding27s-colour-by-number/4283604>

Metro Arts, n.d., image, viewed 6 October 2012,

<http://theweekendedition.com.au/stumble-guide/detail/metro-arts/>