Sugar Ghosts x Inmates

Hope O’Chin x Perrin Ellis

22 July - 13 August 2023

Artwork: Hope O’Chin x Perrin Ellis

Sugar Ghosts x Inmates presented works by Dr. Hope O’Chin and Perrin Ellis unpacking the role of archive as both a living and lived artifact, the traditions of the archivist, and what is made both present + obliterated in the course of creating record. 

Drawing on First Nations artist Hope O’Chin’s personal experiences of living in the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement during the 1950-60’s and her significant role working in lost archives with the Queensland Government later in her life, O’Chin’s paintings are narrative histories. O’Chin’s paintings record the impact of the Acts that enabled the forcible removal of Aboriginal children by the Australian Government from the late 1800’s - early 1970’s. They illuminate the personal, cultural, and political power in recording a silenced history.  Simultaneously, they speak to the violence of the abuse of the enforced record. O’Chin’s paintings include fragments of permits such as those required by First Nations people to legally work away from the missions, to enter Cherbourg designated ‘whites only’ areas, and the government permission required of First Nations folk to marry.  O’Chin also presents a digital work that re-imagines traditional structures of telling stories - lore and law. This work invites the patrons’ lived experiences of viewing these stark examples of O’Chin’s lived experiences to also become present. 

Perrin Ellis examines sound as historical material. This installation is built upon archived sound recordings of the sugarcane fields and factories of central Queensland. The exhibition is a recording of Ellis’ own research, as a newcomer to Australia, into the place where they were made. The installation - organised as a participatory historical display- includes objects contextualised by first person didactic material. But the “objects” are sounds, and the “history” is the narrative of Ellis’ listening to and investigating them. As a work engaged with history, this work moves between artistic and historical modes. As a first-person account, it reverses the rhetorical voice of authority often used in museum display. As a work of creative non-fiction, pretending to archive sound in a way that is in fact physically impossible, it exists at the border of fiction and non-fiction. Visitors will be encouraged to participate, add to, and even correct the exhibition. The installation invites the archive to be considered as a part of ongoing research, not the end result of research already done.

In this way Sugar Ghosts x Inmates opens spaces for multiple stories, told in multiple voices, in multiple modes (including conversation). It turns the usual structure of cultural knowledge, and our ideas of what makes sustainable heritage, around on itself to find a new way to relate both to visitors and to people in the past whilst illuminating The Old Lock Up site as a living archive itself.

Image credit: Warwick Gow

ARTISTS

Hope O’Chin | @hopeochin

Dr Hope O’Chin (Neill) is a Kabi Kabi/Wakka Wakka/Koa/GuguYalanji educator and artist, who has worked in education from the 1980’s and as a professional artist from 1991. She has developed and presented artworks through her studio art practice for over 40 exhibitions across local, national and international venues and forums. Born into the dormitory systems on the Aboriginal Settlement of Cherbourg, her dedication to education and art, and all of its forms, evolved out of the intensities of attitudes and values that prevailed in the historic treatment of Cherbourg residents, and other Indigenous Australians. During her career as a senior executive in Queensland education, Dr O'Chin has been responsible for curriculum, staffing and resourcing to 250 state schools in the Peninsular region, and was a consultant to the Director-General, Education Queensland, and Minister for Education.

Perrin Ellis | @perrin.ellis

Perrin Ellis is senior lecturer in interactive media at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, where she is acting program director of the Master of Design program and convenor of the Interaction Design major. She is a narrative artist and interface designer; she has worked with libraries, museums and galleries on their collections and exhibitions, most recently the Museum of Brisbane and the State Library of Queensland, where she was the 2019 Mittelheuser scholar-in-residence. Her own projects have shown in galleries, streets, symposia and festivals throughout the U.S., Europe, and Australia.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
This initiative is supported through the Creative Industries Investment Program (CIIP) and is jointly funded by ArtsCoast through Sunshine Coast Council’s Arts and Heritage Levy and the Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) in partnership with the Queensland Government.