Cirrus@Austlit

'Norman washes the clothes by hand in water drawn from the Hawksbury River, which runs through part of the artist’s ancestral country. The Hawksbury region was one of the first areas outside of Port Jackson (Sydney) to be occupied by free settlers, and saw some of the earliest and bloodiest conflicts between local clans and Europeans.'

'Norman washes the clothes silently and hangs them to dry on lines which intersect the space. When the clothes are hung out, they form an unstable surface for a looping projection of analogue slides, each hand inscribed with the name, date and location of every documented massacre of Indigenous people that has taken place on the Australian continent under British colonial rule.'

'Audiences reclaim their clothing once it is dry- it is returned to them bearing the symbolic trace of a violent and largely unspoken history.' (Source: Sarah-Jane Norman website)