(Re)voicing Dalrymple Mountgarrett Briggs

<p dir="ltr"><b>WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that this thesis may contain references of deceased persons and content which may cause distress. </b></p><p dir="ltr">This studio and ancestral Country/place investigation project aims to produce a new narrative of my ancestral grandmother, Dalrymple Mountgarrett Briggs (c.1812-1864) investigating a blended cultural identity and articulating a new conceptualisation of Tasmanian Aboriginal identity. The inquiry is informed by my own experiential and creative response to the complex, multi-faceted socio-historical interplay of personal perspective, family experience, historical narratives, and the materiality of place, memory and Country.</p><p><br></p><p dir="ltr">In pursuing this investigation, I explore how knowledge of the life of Dalrymple Mountgarrett Briggs (thought to be the first child born to a FIrst Tasmanian mother and an English sealer) - derived from my own lived experience, and from colonial archives, literature and art - shapes constructs of my Aboriginal identity, and how this can be critically expressed through a narrative of text and visual creative practice.</p><p dir="ltr">In this project, I have used an innovative conceptual framework of organic intuitive inquiry informed by the metaphor of weaving and the interdisciplinary use of bricolage, drawing upon the work of selected artists. I utilised found non-traditional natural materials associated with Country and place, including shells, seaweed, lichen, ivy and feathers, to produce the work. Importantly, the particular materials I am drawn to are not the exact species that were used by my First Tasmanian ancestors, and continue to be used by Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural practitioners and artists today. Instead, they are <i>related </i>objects; that exist <i>alongside</i> more traditional material. Using assemblage, collage, montage, and created still-life photographic images, the resulting ephemeral work evokes the hidden and unrevealed constructs of Dalrymple's identity.</p><p dir="ltr">The goal is to more critically understand the forces at play in constructing the mixed cultural tapestry of Dalrymple's life, her sense of agency, and her adaption/survival in the dramatically changing world of Van Diemen's Land. In doing so, I seek to creatively disrupt dominant constructs and assumptions of what constitutes an authentic Aboriginal identity and to re-weave a counter narrative. I do this not to prescribe ways of being for other Tasmanian Aboriginal people, but to investigate the ontology of my own cultural and creative being.</p><p dir="ltr">The artist-led practice explored within this self-as-investigator project was instrumental in elaborating my mixed-heritage identity through three key findings:</p><p dir="ltr">1) an interrelationship between the ephemerality of the materiality, Otherness, invisibility and cultural camouflage of Dalrymple and her descendants;</p><p dir="ltr">2) an interrelationship between the subsequent uncamouflage/reveal and contested discourse associated with the personal construction and ownership of contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginal identity, and</p><p dir="ltr">3) the conceptualisation of a counter-narrative, with new terminology acknowledging that contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginal identity is experienced as both the weft and warp of mixed heritage.</p><p dir="ltr">I conclude that the complexities of cultural practice and an 'interwoven' identity are more authentically placed in a reflective third space (see Bhabha 2004) beyond binary constructs. This space offers opportunities to celebrate differences and diversity that attest to our personal lived experience, rather than reiterating strategically essentialised ideas (see Spivak 1995) of Tasmanian Aboriginality that dominate current conception and expression. My work in this project contributes critical and creative discourse on this complex issue by shaping a counter-narrative of the construction of contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginal identity, and offers an important contribution to the rapidly evolving framework of truth-telling in Australia and other colonial settings. </p>