In 2016, Garrawa and Yanyuwa artist Miriam Charlie drew widespread critical acclaim for her groundbreaking photographic series My Country No Home, which first exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in inner-city Melbourne. The series, which portrayed the squalid living conditions in her community of Borroloola, 100 kilometres southeast of Darwin, contradicted then Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s assertion that living remotely was a ‘lifestyle choice’ and instead offered an honest portrayal of community forced to live in third-world conditions.
In the year before her exhibition launch and after learning that her grandmother’s home was infested with white ants, Charlie began documenting cases of housing neglect and disrepair. What began as a process of collecting evidence to hand to the government contractors responsible for the upkeep of properties quickly evolved into an ambitious artistic project. At the time, Charlie said she titled the work My Country No Home‘because we have a Country but no home: people are living in tin shacks, in matchbox-sized houses. Even traditional owners here don’t own houses. I wanted to take these photos to show the world how my people are living. The project is not to shame them.’ While Aboriginal people are continually accused of exploiting and disrespecting the public housing system, Charlie’s photographs portrayed the exact opposite: a community of proud men and women let down by a system that had forgotten them, and in many cases had left them without basic amenities such as sanitation, running water and electricity. My Country No Home represented perhaps the first time that the broader Australian Population was offered a glimpse into housing conditions in remote communities through the eyes of an Aboriginal person. By reclaiming authorship over this narrative, Charlie and those featured in her photos subverted the ill-informed and discriminatory generalisations that have sought to undermine the autonomy and humanity of people living out bush.
In Li Bardawu (The Houses), 2019, Charlie revisits this subject, only this time using an instant camera, similar to those introduced to her by the many linguists and teachers who came to Borroloola during her youth. Charlie – who works independently because Borroloola’s art centre has closed – has limited access to the resources and high-tech equipment usually required to produce photographic work, but Polaroid cameras have provided her with the opportunity to push her practice, experimenting in new and unconventional ways. Whereas My Country No Home resulted in large-scale photographs taken outside people’s properties, Li Bardawu (The Houses) depicts more intimate and candid moments inside the domestic space. The instantaneous nature of Polaroid film has allowed Charlie to not only to capture the many details that often go unseen, but also to evoke the sentimentality of the family photo album – although, rather than tracing joyous and tender family moments, Charlie’s ‘album’ depicts experiences of government neglect and degradation.
Ultimately, Charlie’s work is both as artist and activist, and it is through her photography that she demands more for her community and ultimately hopes to gain the attention of government. The intimacy of these Polaroid photos – reminiscent of our own family photographs – humanises those featured in them and reframes the experience of life in a remote community through the lens of compassion, dignity and respect.