Supported by Victoria University, the Koorie Heritage Trust toured the exhibition; Close to You: The Lisa Bellear Picture Show. The exhibition and catalogue pay tribute to the life and work of Lisa Bellear.
'It has been ten years since Lisa Bellear's too early death in 2006 during NAIDOC week, her favourite time of year. Her iconic poem A Suitcase Full of Mould presciently questions if she will life to 46, given this was the average life expectancy for Aboriginal women in Victoria in the 1990s. She died at 45.' (Introduction)
'Since the invasion, one in six Aboriginal children has been removed from their natural family. I was one of those victims. Because of the support and love of some close friends who are more like family, I can now call myself a survivor.' (Introduction)
'There is now an extensive and growing counter-archive of photography by Indigenous artists which records the subjective experience of Aboriginal people, returns the colonising gaze, and redresses a panoply of misinformed authoritarian images and cultural assumptions in ways which are set at once dignified, defiant, assertive and subversive. ' (Introduction)
'Lisa was radically intersectional well before it became a mere buzz word for the millennials, for she truly lived the idea that each of the movements she was involved in needed to investigate the ways it oppressed in order to become effective.' (Introduction)
'When I was asked to speak as a 'radical feminist by and organiser, I asked...'Hey what is a radical feminist?' There was a pause at the end of the phone, mmm well, anyway to make life easier (for the organisers), I agreed.' (Introduction)
Lisa Bellear's public interface was warm and seemingly unjudgmental, but her photographs of signs and graffiti, for instance, show a sly, dry sense of humour. She heroised certain people, but was quick to record their public difficulties or falls from grace as many shots of Lowitja O'Dohohue and Geoff Clarke on newspaper front pages and TV screens reveal.' (Introduction)
