Darren Blackman
Darren Blackman is a Gooreng Gooreng/Gangulu First Nations man from his paternal heritage. Maternally his ancestry and cultural links derive from the Northern Islands of Vanuatu - Espiritu Santo, Pentecost, Malo and Obah islands where his Great Grandparents were stolen from, to work as indentured labour on sugar cane plantations of Southeast Queensland and Northern New South Wales.
Blackman is a multidisciplinary visual and musical artist. Visually his works are bold, dynamic, and thoughtfully active. Predominantly text work, he responds to the Western construct that has oppressed both sides of his ancestorial linage by disassembling colonial ideology. Blackman values the importance of language culturally and observes the manner in how the English language is delivered subversively by people of influence. Via the use of text, he plays and purposely butchers the King’s language, claiming it as his own by pushing the subjectivity of words.
Artist statement
My Grandfather was born in a cane field on the Sunshine Coast. His father was just a youth taken from Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu, while his mother, as a teenager, was snatched from the ocean, swimming off the reef while her family watched from the shore. Both stolen, and brought to Bunda (Bundaberg), the country of my paternal Grandmother's people, to labour on stolen land.
History, written through a lens of entitlement does not value evidence that contradicts a narrative of settler conquest. Blackbirding, as it was commonly known, was a form of government endorsed piracy, kidnapping, and human trafficking of children and adults. Two Queensland cities, Townsville, and Mackay are named after men directly involved in the blackbirding trade, whose kanaka (Melanesian) labour, supported the sugar industry.
The smoking robe represents the opulence of those in power that create policy, control the blackbirding, and sugar trade. The text Stolen, derives from the original work on canvas, and repeated throughout. From a distance it resembles a repeated pattern on yellowy, golden fabric wrapping those entitled enough to afford, in others trauma and oppression.