The First, First Families — 27 August to 1 October 2022

A curator’s archive.
27 August to 1 October 2022

Exhibition Reader – The First, First Families. A Curator’s Archive. An Exhibition Reader. > Download as pdf

CONVERSATION I
Jonathan Jones (Artist, Historian) in conversation with Ace Bourke
Saturday 3 September, 2 – 3 pm
The Cross Art Projects
Listen here: https://m.mixcloud.com/thecrossartprojects/jonathan-jones-artist-historian-in-conversation-with-ace-bourke/

CONVERSATION II
Dr Keith Vincent Smith (Writer, Historian, Curator) in conversation with Ace Bourke
Saturday 17 September, 2 — 3 pm
The Cross Art Projects
Listen here: https://www.mixcloud.com/thecrossartprojects/dr-keith-vincent-smith-writer-historian-curator-in-conversation-with-ace-bourke/

The exhibition The First, First Families contains many of the earliest views of Sydney and representations of Aboriginal people from 1788: Australia’s true ‘first families’. As a site of invasion and ongoing resistance, Sydney has always been a contested place.

As a curator, Ace Bourke has in several major exhibitions, explored the entwined narratives of his own colonial family history, Aboriginal history and his experiences as a curator of contemporary Aboriginal art.

In The First, First Families you will see etchings from the earliest published journals based on artwork by leading artists such as Thomas Watling, Nicholas-Martin Petit from the Baudin expedition and Joseph Lycett—published for a European audience fascinated by our Pacific region. Other works relate to Bourke’s family including natural history illustrations by sisters Helena and Harriet Scott made in the second half of the 19th century.

When Bourke staged Flesh & Blood: Stories of Sydney 1778–1998 (1998) at the Museum of Sydney, Augustus Earle’s famous portrait of Bungaree was the exhibition’s hero
image. Bungaree’s story was featured as he circumnavigated Australia with Bourke’s great great-great uncle, hydrographer Phillip Parker King.

A wealthy collector who owned a painting by Conrad Martens depicting the family home of Bourke’s relation David Scott Mitchell, in Cumberland Place, The Rocks, refused a loan request. She wrote saying, his use of Bungaree was ‘an insult to Sydney’s leading families’. The title of this exhibition is thus a correction of her error.

Bourke explains, ‘On my maternal side I am descended from Governor King and on my paternal side, Governor Bourke. Their lives were well documented and illustrated, which gives me a more personal perspective and interest in Australian history. Both had major responsibilities and influence in relation to Aboriginal people.

‘When I was staging Flesh & Blood, I realised that I, and the general public, had no idea how much new knowledge about Aboriginal history was emerging. Keith Vincent Smith had written the biographies of Bennelong and Bungaree. Generations of Bungaree’s family history were being documented and descendants identified. Linguists were piecing together Aboriginal languages. Academics and historians were working with Aboriginal contributors and their family histories and memories. Aboriginal subjects previously presumed to be anonymous, were now being identified, “hiding in plain sight”.

For example, people were aware of Thomas Watling’s striking etchings of the last known initiation ceremony in Sydney in 1793, illustrated in David Collins’ journal (and in this exhibition). But few people actually read the journal where the ceremony is described in detail, and where initiate Nanberry and his uncle/guardian Colebee are identified.

This new information and Keith Vincent Smith’s research, was presented in the co-curated EORA: Mapping Aboriginal Sydney 1770–1850 at the State Library of NSW in 2006.’

A reviewer of Bourke’s curatorial work described his exhibitions as ‘exorcising his colonial family history’. Bourke replies, ‘The exhibitions are actually my “truth telling”—reconstructions to reveal the real first families and interrogate and face the reality of colonisation and the brutal concept of terra nullius.’

First Nations artists and historians have highlighted how Aboriginal people dedicated their lives to looking after the land, providing healthy diets, bounty and sustainable practices vastly superior to that of the Europeans and the convicts of the First Fleet.

Bourke collected and researched the early etchings from various journals from 1788 onwards. This exhibition, The First, First Families, is this collection. Many are not only historically important but wonderful art works in their own right. Bourke has concentrated on images with family associations: from the general to the specific, images of the First Fleet and the first representations of Aboriginal people, to family portraits and now lost family houses.

Bourke honours the invaluable collaboration of Jonathan Jones, Keith Vincent Smith, Belinda Bourke and so many other colleagues.

This exhibition takes place on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay respects to the traditional custodians, promising to continue to listen and learn.

The First, First Families: A Curator’s Archive, The Cross Art Projects, 2022

Dr Keith Vincent Smith (Writer, Historian, Curator) in conversation with Ace Bourke

Top to Bottom: Port Jackson/ View in Port Jackson, c. 1789. Entrance to Port Jackson, c. 1879. A Stone Axe. A Basket of the Bark of a Tree. A wooden Sword. c. 1789. View of the Settlement on Sydney Cove, Port Jackson 20th August, 1788. View of Port Jackson in New Suoth (sic) Wales, c.1790.

The First, First Families: A Curator’s Archive (installation shot), The Cross Art Projects, 2022

Yoo-long Erah-ba-diang, 1795

Yoo-long Erah-ba-diang, 1795 (Detail)

The First, First Families: A Curator’s Archive (installation shot), The Cross Art Projects, 2022

Portrait of Philip Gidley King, 1886 & Norfolk Island, c.1802

Foreground right: Nouvelle-Hollande. Y-Erran-Gou-La-Ga, 1811 (Detail).

Top: Subiaco, 1924. Bottom: Old Government House, 1924.

The First, First Families: A Curator’s Archive (installation shot), The Cross Art Projects, 2022

Centre top to bottom: Newcastle by Joseph Lycett, 1824. North view of Sidney by Joseph Lycett, 1825. Elizabeth Farm/ The Residence of John McArthur Esq by Joseph Lycett, 1825. Right: Explanation of a View of Sydney, Exhibiting in the Panorama, Leicester Square, c. 1829.

L to R: Catocala fusca etc, c.1893. Ophideres Atkinsoni etc, c.1893. Coequosa tringularis, c 1890.

Thomas Medland (1755-1822) after Richard Cleveley (1747-1809). Copper engraving, 230 x 145mm. From Arthur Phillip, The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, London. Published June 17, 1789 by John Stockdale.

One of the earliest images of the colony worked from sketches by an unnamed artist.

Nouvelle-Hollande. Cour-Rou-Bari-Gal.  J. Barthelemy Rogers after Nicholas-Martin Petit 1811.
Hand coloured engraving, 320 x 250mm. Plate XV111 from Francois Peron’s journal
Plate X1X from Francois Peron’s journal.

Sydney Cove / Warrane: View of the Settlement on Sydney Cove, Port Jackson 20th August, 1788. Drawn by Edward Dayes, from a sketch by John Hunter. Engraver unknown.  Engraving, 200 x 250mm

Published in John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island. Published Oct 18, 1792 by J. Stockdale, London

Subiaco. William Hardy Wilson (1881- 1955).

From Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania (Sydney, 1924). Consisting of 50 collotype reproductions of his drawings executed by Max Jaffe in Vienna. 325 x 250mm

This house, originally named The Vineyard, was built by John Verge by 1836 for my great great great grandparents Hannibal and Anna Maria Macarthur, and described as “the finest house in the colony”. Near present day Parramatta, now demolished.