ARTWORK STORY
Gordon Syron Painted while in prison.“ This painting is unsigned because prison is such a lonely place. This painting is my prison window that I looked at for 10 years and I saw history through these bars that the redcoats brought to us; disease, rum, religion and death and destruction for my culture.
Gordon Syron is widely considered the father of the Urban Aboriginal art movement. He taught himself to paint during a decade serving time in gaol during the 1960s. This lithograph was his first experiment with printmaking.
Looking through the bars on the window of his gaol cell he could see a church and graveyard - potent symbols of Aboriginal dispossession and the death of culture - a recurrent theme in his painting. The metal bars have an inner and outer layer. Like a person who manages to retain their humanity and survive under terrible adversity they are soft on the outside but case-hardened down the centre. There is no escape other than through the imagination. A depressing thought - represented by the gravestone which has been substituted for the missing piece of bar.
ARTWORK STORY
Gordon Syron Painted while in prison.“ This painting is unsigned because prison is such a lonely place. This painting is my prison window that I looked at for 10 years and I saw history through these bars that the redcoats brought to us; disease, rum, religion and death and destruction for my culture.
Gordon Syron is widely considered the father of the Urban Aboriginal art movement. He taught himself to paint during a decade serving time in gaol during the 1960s. This lithograph was his first experiment with printmaking.
Looking through the bars on the window of his gaol cell he could see a church and graveyard - potent symbols of Aboriginal dispossession and the death of culture - a recurrent theme in his painting. The metal bars have an inner and outer layer. Like a person who manages to retain their humanity and survive under terrible adversity they are soft on the outside but case-hardened down the centre. There is no escape other than through the imagination. A depressing thought - represented by the gravestone which has been substituted for the missing piece of bar.
