Kevin Gilbert (1993-1993)

Kevin Gilbert was born on the bank of Bila Kalara, the Lachlan river, Condobolin, Wiradjuri Nation in central New South Wales.

He voiced an holistic vision for Australia which he expressed clearly in 1992:

“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 they occupy.

“Culture has to be developed from the heart, from the depths of human integrity, the depths of human passion, the depths of human creativity and I believe that, if there ever is to be a sound overall culture for this land, it has to involve everyone and it must involve everyone and it must evolve and be based upon those fine aspects of the human family – integrity, justice, vision, creativity, life, honour…”

Also 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 utilizing that medium to protest the continual victimization 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

Excerpts from wall text from Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, exhibition:

Kevin Gilbert was one of Aboriginal Australia’s most important cultural identities of the late 20th century. By the time he died in 1993, he had established himself as an artist, poet, author and political activist, his work playing a significant role in shaping Australian history during the most dynamic period in the long-term Aboriginal struggle for justice.

Gilbert left school at the age of 14 and became an itinerant seasonal worker until 1957 when he was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. He spent 14 years in the brutal New South Wales prison system of the 1950s and 1960s, an experience that, rather than breaking him, prompted him to strive to educate himself and to develop his artistic talents.

The prints represented in this collection are among his earliest works and are the first lino prints to be made by an Aboriginal artist. Gilbert made his own tools ‘from a spoon, fork, gem blades and nails’, carved ‘old brittle lino off the prison floor’ and printed images by rubbing the paper with the back of a spoon [footnote for these quotes? – see below New Tracks, Old Land]. One of the prints, Christmas Eve in the land of the dispossessed (1967), was said to have been Gilbert’s favourite. He wrote of it: ‘It was the Aboriginal family sitting out under a tree, the river underneath and the hills, and in the night time, of course, the Southern Cross in the sky. But, within that, there is stillness and isolation so, to me, I can feel the isolation within that.’

It was for these prints that Gilbert first gained attention and recognition, which in turn enabled him to develop his talents in writing poetry, essays and, in 1968, a play called The Cherry Pickers – the first play ever written by an Aboriginal person, and instrumental in starting a public campaign that resulted in Gilbert being released from prison on parole in 1971. He went on to become a nationally recognised artist, poet and playwright and, in 1973, an author with his acclaimed political tome Because a White Man’ll Never Do It. He also became a nationally known political activist and was heavily involved in the Black Movement that established the famous Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawns of Parliament House, Canberra in 1972.

Gilbert’s lino prints are significant because they represent the earliest of his creative works as he struggled to develop his artistic and political expression and style. As such, they are symbolic of one man’s triumph over adversity, confinement and oppression.

In 1992 he was awarded an esteemed Australian Artists Creative Fellowship. He died Canberra 1 April 1993.

His visionary works maintain relevance in the current era. As artist Vernon Ah Kee expressed:

“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.”