Louise Daniels

Hearth

"Hearth continues my creative interpretation of the traditional life of my ancestor, Woretemoeteryenner, and the colonial times she and her people endured.

The shells have fallen from middens in the dunes at Little Musselroe Bay in Tebrakunna, our Country. Many still contain ash from the fires of the Old Ones, and plant matter holds it together.

Our women and girls were taken from that bay by the sealers who plundered Bass Strait early in the nineteenth century. Many were cruel. Our men were shot as they gathered at their campfires, and their blood flowed red into that white sand.

My self-portraits portray human emotions I could have shared with Woretemoeteryenner. The charcoal, from a campfire in Tebrakunna, is worked in the negative. This represents the having and the removal - the loss - which was a constant theme of her life. Black gave way to white. Woretemoeteryenner colonised."