There has been a large amount of positive, emotional, and encouraging emails surrounding the Canning Stock Route Project. One of which we’d like to share…
“I visited the Canning Stock Route exhibition at the Convention Centre this morning, and must tell you how impressed I am by it and wish to thank you, and all those who have contributed to it, very much. It is such a comprehensive and integrated collection. As I said to one of the staff there, I think this is the most significant collection of aboriginal art I have ever seen. But it is much more than that. It is a very special union of stories that conveys, it seems to me, some equally special capacities of these aboriginal people. They allowed me to connect with our common humanity including the mistakes, and misunderstandings. The injustices and abuses of power are plain to see, and I can only be amazed by the grace which carries this amazing collection of work.
Although I am an Australian citizen I did not grow up in Australia and there’s been a kind of something missing with not really knowing Australia’s ‘first people’. In becoming Australian you naturally look for the stories of the country and its earliest people. These have been hard to come by in any direct sort of way. I have met very few aboriginal people anywhere.
I’ve often had the sense that a great many Australians dont know what they dont know and possibly also live a kind of identity of absence or unknowing. This exhibition goes some way to a better ‘knowing’ of what it means to be Australian. I feel changed by this experience. Thank you all, for the paintings, the stories including the films, and the absolutely superb lighting, as well as the interactive screens. Just bloody fantastic!!
-Valerie Preston”
Photography by Michelle Taylor (2011)
