Indian Cowboys / Cowboy Indians

Video Installation
Dimensions Variable




“Whoever the last true cowboy in America turns out to be,
he’s likely to be an Indian.”

A quote by William Least Heat-Moon (originally William Trogdon),
from Blue Highways: A Journey into America



Statement about the work by Jenny Fraser:


This work is a communication to my old people.

When pondering their image, I noticed that the photographs had been doctored to lighten skin.

This pains me.

It seems that they were too black.

They worked on cattle properties, far away from their homelands.

I wish to try to let them know what their old stomping ground is like now…

dressing-up in the photo booth is something that people do for fun.

It’s not real, but it is the photography of the day in a theme park inspired playground.

Pictured here is my art family, lenticular-style, a movement, a resistance…

I am left to wonder how real the portrait sittings were for my old people?

Did they find it fun?

What would they dress as now? The Indian or the Cowboy or the Cowboy Indian?



Detail view (family photographs)
Detail view; Video Installation at ICAN (Indonesia Contemporary Artists Network), Jogjakarta

Road Kill

These works are part of a wider series titled 'hit the road' which are all based on roadkill of native animals on lands in the Bundjalung Nation that encompass a diversity of terrain to include rainforest and coast. The photographs highlight the distinct beauty of our animals, even in their death, and are also symbolic of how native people are treated by wider society in Australia - widely ignored and denied after impact, just like road kill.

With regard to the power of communication between people, the Super Highways and other road networks of Australia now could be likened to the ancient songlines of old, but with such devastion caused by our thoroughfare, what song are we offering to the victims? A death march? Clearly the minds of progress do not have much consideration for the movements and habits of our animals.

see the previous works : 'Hit the Road' 2005

http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/oldschool/feathers/index.htm

and the essay:

http://www.conundrumonline.org/Issue_3/Feathers_Float.htm