Kevin Gilbert (1933-1993) Burrambinga Books and Art

As the first Aboriginal fine art printmaker Kevin Gilbert’s works offered for sale are not only historic, but becoming increasingly rare – a true treasure for collectors.

Kevin Gilbert, was born on the bank of Bila Kalara (Lachlan River) at Condobolin in the Wiradjuri Nation, holds an important place in the modern history of First Nations Australia, worthy to be represented in public or private the collections. Kevin was truly a renaissance man, with an indomitable spirit. From an early life of struggle, he emerged as Australia’s first Aboriginal fine art printmaker and playwright, a poet, publisher and editor, a community worker, a prominent activist in the quest for rights of First Nations Peoples.

Kevin Gilbert received several awards for his art and writings, including the Human Rights Award for Literature in 1988, which he refused. In 1992 he received a Visions of Australia award for his ‘artistic contribution to the nation’. His life and works remain a source of inspiration for First Nations people, artists, community workers and politicians alike.

He believed that a source of creativity comes from the land, “I believe if there is to be an Australian culture, it cannot be an imported ersatz culture. Cultures and the people are developed from the land…. Culture has to be developed from the heart, from the depths of human integrity, from the depths of human passion, from the depths of human creativity….”

Artist Vernon Ah Kee summarised well his artistic works: What we know for sure, Because a White Man’ll Never Do It is an iconic book, Colonising Species an iconic artwork, Kill the Legend is an iconic poem, Cherry Pickers is an iconic play, Kevin Gilbert is responsible for iconic works in four disciplines. That is Kevin Gilbert. They’re iconic because he did them before anyone else did anything like it. He came along at least four decades before his time.

In his own words:

“As a Black artist with all the contemptible misery and heart burnings of a poet, I suffered sitting in white dominated classrooms of rural Australia while white teachers lasciviously railed about ‘naked’ Aboriginals, who were described as heathen, too ignorant to know the basic manner of impregnating females, ‘whistle-cock’ sub-incisions, murderous, cannibals, no law or government, minute cerebral indices etc., only to be latterly ‘saved’ by the ‘glorious’ forefather pioneers who attempted to ‘smooth the dying pillow’ of the ‘pitiful remnants’.

“Asking questions, demanding answers and making refutations, we were inevitably sent from the classrooms to go out and sweep the yards, pick up scraps, clean the toilets, for, to conform with the late 1940s and 50s white dream of ‘assimilation’, we had to be made to prove we were incapable of any higher educational potential, save that of achieving fourth class primary level. And we had to conform to work patterns. White Australia, like its corrupt confrere white South Africa and America, wanted Black houseboys to service their peculiar life styles.

“I attained a fourth class primary education level before leaving school at fourteen. Only in prison did I finally have access to reading materials. I attended an art class to try and paint a recurrent image in my mind of an old Aboriginal sitting at the entrance of a cave filled with painted images, while looking out and down over a wide valley filled with eagles. Of course I couldn’t afford oil paints, so I started with lino prints, and was most pleased with the imagery and body involvement of utilising that medium to protest the continual victimisation and genocide against Blacks. I was lucky enough to be able to scrounge some old lino from the prison workshops, inks from the prison printing shop, and had the good fortune of being in the printing section when a reasonably humane guard was in charge and graciously turned a blind eye to my extravagant use of inks, printing paper and to the fact that I virtually tucked myself away in a quiet corner of the workshop each day and did my own thing. Initially, I had to have my poems and prints smuggled from the prison. Exhibitions of my work brought a focus of attention from the printmaking world, when the works were exhibited at the Robin Hood Gallery and the Arts Council Gallery in Sydney. The exhibitions confirmed my resolve to use my poems, writing and art to open up the question of the continuing denial and injustice against Aboriginals, in an effort to bring the reality of the white Australian inhumanity into the open.

“Several decades have elapsed since then. Aboriginal artists, from whatever discipline, still have to achieve from behind the eight-ball. In 1971 attempted to establish a ‘National School of Aboriginal Arts’ where there could be developed the necessary access to training, and more importantly, equipment and psychological support for artists, especially writers. But such a practical and necessary institution still remains a vague hope in the eyes of Black Australia.

“I am presently engaged in restoring and editioning my first series of lino prints, which are to be purchased by the National Art Gallery. In between rolling the inks, I try to raise sensibilities on the need for a Sovereign Treaty between Blacks in Australia and whites. I know that the instrument of justice, human rights, dignity, must be stated in the most unequivocal terms and be enshrined within the protection of an international covenant. Any other legislation, where the thieves are the judges and the politicians, can always repeal at will.

“Until there is a sovereign treaty under international law, art, conscience, honour are meaningless for the majority of white Australia, who, as an old revered friend of mine, Xavier Herbert, said: “Australia shall remain … not a Nation, but a community of thieves.…” ”

© Kevin Gilbert in ‘The Struggle Continues’, Artlink, vol 10, no 1 – 2

The works have been professionally valued.