The art and passion of Kevin Gilbert celebrated at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre

Kevin Gilbert (1933–1993) was a visionary First Nations artist who spent the final decades of his life living in the Canberra area. Every generation needs to be reminded of his legacy and this discreet exhibition at Tuggeranong does precisely that.

A Wiradjuri man, Gilbert was born on the banks of the Kalara/Lachlan River just outside Condobolin in NSW. He was orphaned at the age of seven, left school when he was about 14 and married seven years later. Three years later he was convicted of his wife’s murder, for which he received a life sentence.

From these somewhat unpromising beginnings, Gilbert was to become an Aboriginal statesman, poet, playwright, author and artist.

In 1965, while still in Long Bay jail, he carved his first linocuts, that have been interpreted as the beginnings of Aboriginal printmaking in Australia.

He relates the experience in the following terms: “Carved with tools I’d made from a spoon, gem blades, nails on a piece of old brittle lino off the prison floor, I wanted to show the natural pride and completeness of the Aboriginal artist, the cave, the art, the landscape”.

His first linocut print was his My father’s studio, 1965, and is included in this exhibition.

These earliest linocuts were printed using the back of a spoon on scavenged scraps of paper, cloth and cardboard. The prints were smuggled out of prison and were exhibited to considerable acclaim on the outside.

Also while incarcerated, Gilbert wrote a play in 1968, The Cherry Pickers, that was smuggled out written on toilet paper and performed on the outside. When he was released in 1971, Gilbert established the Kalari Aboriginal Art Gallery near Taree, NSW.

It is not clear the exact number of linoblocks that he carved in prison, although 16 of them are included in this exhibition. Although the blocks were carved in the 60s, most were not editioned until about 1990, at Studio One in Canberra, at the time of growing recognition of Aboriginal art.

Key prints in this exhibition, including Christmas Eve in the Land of the Dispossessed, 1968, and Lineal Legend, 1965, were both printed in 1990. Gilbert commented about them: “The injustice of having my land, Wiradjuri land, stolen from us … the tens of decades of massacre, oppression, abuse of our human rights”.

Possibly, Gilbert’s most iconic image is the colour linocut Colonising species of 1989. He wrote about this work: “I carved Colonising Species, symbolising the white European swan, the indigenous black swan, both representing a society, a people, a history, and the land, the people being devoured by the people of Britain and ethnics under the authority of the Crown. The blood symbolising the fact that after 200 years of oppression and war against us, the Indigene, peace, justice, human rights, a Treaty still has not eventuated for us”.

Sadly, Gilbert’s work, in its message, remains as powerful and urgent today as it was more than three-and-a-half decades ago, when it was first created.

Some of the other outstanding prints in the exhibition includes Gooyah Hunters, 1968, and Boothung & Mirrigarng, 1969.

Gilbert was committed to an activist art that engaged with society. He observed: “Our art is political. Art has always been an extremely powerful communicator of the human factor in all of its inglorious, as well as its glorious manifestations”.

Gilbert has always stood at the forefront of the Aboriginal movement; in 1972 he was instrumental in establishing the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and subsequently was an outspoken advocate of the Sovereign Treaty with the Aboriginal People.

Although much of Gilbert’s rhetoric was confrontational and the imagery in his prints was uncompromising, as a person, I found that he possessed great compassion and empathy with all oppressed peoples.

A year before his death, he commented: “Culture has to be developed from the heart, from the depths of human integrity, the depths of human passion, the depths of human creativity and I believe that if there ever is to be a sound, overall culture for this land, it has to involve everyone and it must evolve or be based upon those fine aspects of the human family — integrity, justice, vision, creativity, life, honour …”.

While on one hand, Gilbert in his art protested at the inequality in Australian society, on the other he stressed the need to attain reconciliation. This exhibition is beautifully curated by the artist’s widow, Ellie Gilbert.

True: Kevin Gilbert (1933–1993) is at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre, 137 Reed Street North, Greenway, from 13 June to 9 August, open Tuesday to Friday, from 10 am to 5 pm, and Saturdays from 10 am to 4 pm. Admission is free.