About the room
This gallery addresses British invasion and its untold consequences for First Peoples across Australia. It reveals the Australian Wars that followed the landing of Lieutenant Cook at Kamay (Botany Bay) in 1770, when Cook raised the British flag for the Crown. Early French and British drawings of named First Peoples of ‘New South Wales’ establish their existing presence on their newly colonised lands and waterways.
The coloniser narratives of ‘discovery’ and myths of a ‘peaceful settlement’ are counterbalanced in contemporary paintings concerning history by artists Gordon Bennett, Brook Andrew and Christopher Pease. Their works, made in response to colonial sources, challenge the false yet pervasive narratives of terra nulliusand the idea that this land was ‘settled’ with little or no contest or violence.
During the 1880s and 1890s, Mickey of Ulladulla (New South Wales), Oscar of Cooktown (Queensland) and inmates of Fannie Bay Gaol (Northern Territory) made drawings that recorded their cultural practices and bore witness to the impact of colonisation. Mickey pictured the daily life of his people in the colony, while Oscar depicted the murderous exploits of the Queensland Native Police. The Fannie Bay drawings were hailed as the ‘Dawn of Art’ when they were displayed in the 1888–89 Melbourne Centennial Exhibition. This was the first time that works by Indigenous artists were exhibited and acknowledged as art in Australia.