Audio Transcript
My name’s Libby Harward and I’m a Quandamooka woman and artist. My work is about the fact that our Aboriginal strength and sovereignty still exists in this, what I call, the colonial crust that sits on top. So I use a lot of bitumen and road signs to talk about Aboriginal sovereignty because it brings that story into the here and now and how we’re living.
My work will take any kind of form that it needs to, to communicate that. And I also try to use a lot of my own Indigenous language or the languages that we used and shared around this area. So this work has the sculptural element but also a sound element. I think visually we have very constructed ways of reading things, whereas when it comes to sound there’s a lot more freedom in the perception and experiencing. So that work was a way for me to condense in a space, my sense of listening and I put an ancestral story within all these layers so you can hear the sounds of the construction and destruction of our lands and you also hear the sound of a snake’s belly sliding through the background of all these, these layers of noise, reminding us of our creation stories.
I often try to make work that involves people to experience, but think and listen at the same time. I did have a word for that and I’ve created a work around that process - ‘GANNGULANJI’ so ‘GANNGU’ is to call out and to hear at the same time and GANNGULANJI means to think. So it’s a process of calling out, listening and thinking all at the same time. So I think that would be how I want people to take on the work and I’d like it to make them understand that the context of how Australia has formed and hopefully with that knowledge we can create a better future.