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Teena McCarthy
bio:
McCarthy has exhibited extensively over the past seven years. Selective exhibitions include , A solo show ‘Down by the river Darling’, at Manly Art Gallery and Museum (2019). ‘Ceremony’ A solo exhibition at Art Atrium (2018). ‘Four Women: (I do belong) Double’, curated by Djon Mundine OAM, at Lismore Regional Art Gallery (2017). ‘Realising Mothers’ co-curators Sandy Edwards and Zorica Purlitja at Kudos Galleries, UNSW Art & Design (2017).Her photograph ‘Kopi in the Mourning’ (2018) was awarded the inaugural King & Wood Mallesons Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (Parliament House).She was published in the August edition (2019) of Artist Profile, titled ‘Death of a River: the work of Teena McCarthy’ by Djon Mundine. ‘Winning by a Country Mile’, Susan Skelly. The Robb Report, Autumn 2019 edition.
statement:
Teena McCarthy is a visual artist and poet who works predominantly in painting, photography and performance art. She graduated in 2014 from UNSW Art & Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction.McCarthy is an Italian/Barkindji woman who is a descendant of The Stolen Generations. Her work documents her family’s displacement and Aboriginal Australian’s loss of Culture and their ‘hidden’ history. While acknowledging the intergenerational pain of post colonialism, McCarthy uses wit, humour and pathos to explore her own identity. Synchronicity also comes into play in McCarthy’s experimental painting, often determining its outcome and informing its own materiality.
When are the Bush Marys coming? | 2017
When are the Bush Marys coming?. @ Convent Chapel St Laurence Church
Installation at St Laurence Church: photography, cloth, silk satin, string, flowers ‘When are the Bush Marys coming?’ was a phrase coined by the colonisers and outback stationers of western New South Wales. The station men, while waiting for the Aboriginal women, domestic servants to arrive, used this expression. In my photographic ‘self portraits’, installation and performance, I will honour the Holy Mother Mary, the Bush Mary and the divine fertility creation spirit, Mother Earth. The Bush Marys would cook, clean and mind the children, while hidden in the landscape of outback Australia. By way of my Italian/Barkindji heritage, I have re-created my own ‘Holy Trinity’. Performance at the Convent Garden: including kangaroo skin, coolamon (a traditional Aboriginal carving from a tree trunk used for carrying babies, hunting tools, bush foods etc.), antique doll, lace blanket It is my intention, in this live performance, to no longer obfuscate the truth of the Bush Mary servant. She is the non-virgin, used for the carnal She has no voice She is her body She comes out of the bush Out of the dark Into the light She returns back to the bush Into the darkness She is the ‘Holy Ghost’. This work is in loving memory of my Barkindji ‘nanna’ Kath Mary McCarthy, also in honour of my mother Elina Erina McCarthy. Performance: 11am and 3pm every day
bio:
Graduating in 2014 from University of NSW Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction, McCarthy has exhibited extensively for the past seven years. For Artlands Dubbo16, she was the featured artist in Old Lands – New Marks, curated by Djon Mundine OAM for Western Plains Cultural Centre. McCarthy was selected finalist in The NSW Parliament Aboriginal Art Prize 2014 and 2015. Her commissions include the cover of UNSW Law Faculty’s Reconciliation Action Plan (2015). In 2011, McCarthy curated iNTervention Intervention an exhibition about The Northern Territory Emergency Response Act. After recently showing in a group show Summer Sojourns 17 at Art Atrium, Bondi, her work is now available from this gallery.
statement:
I use the self-portrait as a ‘Bush Mary’ to honour my Italian mother, my Barkindji Aboriginal grandmother, and the divine fertility spirit Mother Earth, herein, called the ‘Holy Trinity’. The work references the late 19th century Victorian photographic trope of the ‘Hidden mothers’; and hence, used as a metaphor for the Aboriginal women who worked as domestic servants on outback stations in and across Australia. In Northern NSW, these women were known as the ‘Bush Mary’s’. While hidden in the outback landscape, the ‘Bush Mary’s’ would cook, clean and mind the children of the colonists. My work intends to make the once hidden, visible again.
