Natasha Walsh
‘I Blak with white bespott by totems ænd Country y whyt with flannel flower honour our stories: Ancestours’, 2023-24
oil on copper
27.5 x 30 cm / 44.5 x 46.5 x 3.5 cm (framed)
Sitters: Brenda L Croft and Prue Hazelgrove, with Aunty Matilda House (Ngambri People)
Reference: unknown 17th century painter, Double portrait of two women with face patches (c.1650)
Included in The National 4: Australian Art Now
Sitters: Brenda L Croft and Prue Hazelgrove, with Aunty Matilda House (Ngambri People)
Reference: unknown 17th century painter, Double portrait of two women with face patches (c.1650)
Included in The National 4: Australian Art Now
Brenda Croft is an Australian Indigenous artist, curator, and academic known for her work in photography, video, and installation art. When we began the process of selecting a work from...
Brenda Croft is an Australian Indigenous artist, curator, and academic known for her work in photography, video, and installation art.
When we began the process of selecting a work from art history to reimagine, Brenda sent me this obscure painting that had come up in the news at the time. We were both drawn to the oddness of the work, unusual even for the time it was created. Two women sit side by side, mirroring each other: one Anglo-European covered in black silk patches and the other a woman of color covered in white silk patches.
Silk patches began as a form of cosmetic concealment to disguise scars; however, they quickly became more elaborate, ranging from the shape of stars to a horse and carriage. The placement of the patches also took on new meaning; for instance, patches near the mouth signified flirtatiousness.
At the top of the painting reads the text: 'I black with white bespott y white w
ith blacke this evil proceeds from thy proud hart then take her: Devil.’
The work is thought to be based on a wood print, from which the features of the woman on the left seem heavily influenced. It's a puritanical painting intended to shame women for their cosmetic extravagances. The patching at the time was attributed to the influence of 'Barbarous Nations,' which is perhaps why the figure on the left speaks.
Brenda spoke about how it would provide us the opportunity to celebrate her collaboration with her studio technician, Prue Hazelgrove. More broadly, it allowed us to reimagine the shame-infused message of the original as a celebration of women in leadership and the positive influence of matrilineal lines of knowledge and culture.
Brenda holds out one of their tin types to the viewer, a photo of the First Nations leader/Auntie Matilda Ngambri. Brenda wears her totem, the sugar bag bee, and Prue wears the flannel flower, which was a special plant to her mother and grandmother. The text etched about now reads ‘I Blak with white bespott by totems ænd Country y whyt with flannel flower honour our stories: Ancestours’.
When we began the process of selecting a work from art history to reimagine, Brenda sent me this obscure painting that had come up in the news at the time. We were both drawn to the oddness of the work, unusual even for the time it was created. Two women sit side by side, mirroring each other: one Anglo-European covered in black silk patches and the other a woman of color covered in white silk patches.
Silk patches began as a form of cosmetic concealment to disguise scars; however, they quickly became more elaborate, ranging from the shape of stars to a horse and carriage. The placement of the patches also took on new meaning; for instance, patches near the mouth signified flirtatiousness.
At the top of the painting reads the text: 'I black with white bespott y white w
ith blacke this evil proceeds from thy proud hart then take her: Devil.’
The work is thought to be based on a wood print, from which the features of the woman on the left seem heavily influenced. It's a puritanical painting intended to shame women for their cosmetic extravagances. The patching at the time was attributed to the influence of 'Barbarous Nations,' which is perhaps why the figure on the left speaks.
Brenda spoke about how it would provide us the opportunity to celebrate her collaboration with her studio technician, Prue Hazelgrove. More broadly, it allowed us to reimagine the shame-infused message of the original as a celebration of women in leadership and the positive influence of matrilineal lines of knowledge and culture.
Brenda holds out one of their tin types to the viewer, a photo of the First Nations leader/Auntie Matilda Ngambri. Brenda wears her totem, the sugar bag bee, and Prue wears the flannel flower, which was a special plant to her mother and grandmother. The text etched about now reads ‘I Blak with white bespott by totems ænd Country y whyt with flannel flower honour our stories: Ancestours’.
