NY Times, Jan. 24, 2021
Two Artists, Continents Apart, and a Shared Language of Struggle
By Dawn Chan
In the small, sun-scorched town of Cloncurry, Australia, the artist
Gordon Hookey grew up very much aware of Madison Square Garden. “It was
in the psyche of most Aboriginal people, because of boxing,” says
Hookey, 59, who belongs to the Waanyi people. “In the early days, boxing
was a means for young Aboriginal men — an opportunity for achievement
against the background of racism and inequalities.”
Nearly 10,000 miles away in New York, the artist Gary Simmons, 56, grew
up as an avid athlete and sports fan, often attending games at Madison
Square Garden. Simmons, who is Black, has frequently made art that
explores sports as a form of choreography, but also as a cultural arena
in which Black athletes faced racism and broke barriers. A 2014 painting
by Simmons, “Fight Night,” portrays the Garden’s famous marquee,
rendered in the half-erased, eerie white outlines that have become a
signature element of his work.
ImageGordon Hookey’s “Ready to Rumble” (2020) in his
solo show, “Sacred Nation, Scared Nation” at Fort Gansevoort
gallery in Manhattan.
Gordon Hookey’s “Ready to Rumble” (2020) in his solo show, “Sacred
Nation, Scared Nation” at Fort Gansevoort gallery in
Manhattan.Credit...Gordon Hookey and Fort Gansevoort
The two artists recently came together to work on“Sacred Nation, Scared
Nation,”
<https://www.fortgansevoort.com/online-exhibitions/gordon-hookey#tab:thumbnails>//at
Fort Gansevoort in Manhattan — a solo exhibition of 13 paintings by
Hookey, organized in collaboration with Simmons and on view through Feb.
20. They were introduced by Adam Shopkorn, an owner of Fort Gansevoort,
in part because he noticed that Madison Square Garden was just one of
many interests the two artists had in common. Just last year, Hookey
made his own painting set in the Garden. Titled “Ready to Rumble,” it
depicts a cartoonlike coronavirus and an orange with a blond Trumpian
mane, their fists raised, in a boxing ring.
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Now based in Los Angeles, Simmons remembers thinking, “Wow, this is
incredible how two guys on two different continents can have these
similar interests and approach.”
Though Hookey’s work is only beginning to be shown more widely in the
United States, it has been included in venues like Documenta 14 in
Kassel, Germany and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
His irreverent paintings pull no punches, whether he’s exploring
contemporary politics or the global legacy of colonialism.
Image
The Los Angeles-based artist Gary Simmons, left, helped organize Gordon
Hookey’s exhibition “Sacred Nation, Scared Nation.” Affinities emerged
between them: humor, love of sports and the legacy of colonialism.
The Los Angeles-based artist Gary Simmons, left, helped organize Gordon
Hookey’s exhibition “Sacred Nation, Scared Nation.” Affinities emerged
between them: humor, love of sports and the legacy of colonialism.
Credit...Clifford Prince King for The New York Times; Rhett Hammerton
for The New York Times
At first glance, Hookey’s bold palette and his paintings’ raucous,
overlapping elements might seem to share little with the haunting,
pared-down approach in a painting like Simmons’s “Fight Night.” But the
two men’s work both feature disarming humor, prominently placed words
and phrases and an understanding that sports can be unifying and
divisive: a venue in which spectators might form quick bonds with fellow
fans, and yethurl all sorts of racist abuse
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/sports/soccer-racism-england-bulgaria.html>at
athletes on an opposing team.
Charged imagery doesn’t deter Hookey. Over a Zoom conversation with him,
Simmons and Shopkorn, the three discussed the hooded Klan members in
Hookey’s paintings, rendered as athletes or spectators at games.
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Simmons deploys Klan imagery as well. He spoke of the dangers of using
such symbolism, noting that “it can become almost heavy-handed at
times.” But he recalled the American painterPhilip Guston’s own hooded
figures
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/arts/design/philip-guston-shows-open-letter.html>—
a focus of recent controversy — pointing out, “I think that Guston’s a
master at that, and I think Gordon is the same.”
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Hookey’s “sense of satire allows people to not feel indicted, but part
of the conversation,” Simmons added.
Thought bubbles extending from some of Hookey’s soccer players contain
racial slurs directed at Aboriginal athletes. Such slurs, he explained
are “very similar to the N-word in many ways.” Butin these paintings
<https://www.fortgansevoort.com/online-exhibitions/gordon-hookey#tab:thumbnails>,
Hookey spells out these epithets in full. He even renders the bodies of
athletes (like a children’s TV show might) in the shape of the slurs’
first letters.
When Hookey and Simmons converse, their exchanges seem permeated by a
broader awareness of the bridges connecting Aboriginal Australians’ and
Black Americans’ ongoing struggle for equality and social justice.
These are bridges that have been built and maintained by two communities
over decades. According to the historian Rhonda Y. Williams in her
book“Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century
<https://www.amazon.com/Concrete-Demands-Political-Movements-Twentieth/dp/0415801435>/,”/
<https://www.amazon.com/Concrete-Demands-Political-Movements-Twentieth/dp/0415801435>//Black
American servicemen, in the 1960s, passed on music and political
information to Aboriginal people.//In 1970, a group of Aboriginal
activists spent time in the United States studying race relations The
following year, still others established the Brisbane chapter of the
Black Panther Party.
More recently, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists staged
Black Lives Matter protests in Australia in solidarity with the U.S.
movement. For many, George Floyd’s death last year was also a painful
reminder of injustices closer to home: At least434 Indigenous
Australians have died in police custody since
1991,<https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2018/aug/28/deaths-inside-indigenous-australian-deaths-in-custody>according
todata released last summer.
<https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/06/aboriginal-deaths-in-custody-434-have-died-since-1991-new-data-shows>
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“I could go through a whole list of things like that that connect and
tie us together,” Hookey says. “There’s a group of people in New South
Wales that were influenced by the freedom rides of the Deep South. We’ve
enacted certain things like that, just so that Aboriginal people could
go and swim in local swimming pools.”
Image
Gordon Hookey’s “I Am a Man,” from 2007. He says he
uses words and wordplay in his paintings as a form of resistance.
Gordon Hookey’s “I Am a Man,” from 2007. He says he uses words and
wordplay in his paintings as a form of resistance.Credit...Gordon Hookey
and Fort Gansevoort
Hookey is by no means the only Aboriginal artist to make work about
being Black and to contemplate what blackness might mean in an
Australian historical context. ProppaNow, a collective of Aboriginal
artists to which Hookey belongs, staged an art show in 2014 called “The
Black Line.” Its title referred to a nearly 200-mile human chain formed
in 1830 by white soldiers and settlers that moved slowly south through
Tasmanian terrain to force Aboriginal people off their land.
Hookey makes it clear that he uses words and wordplay in his paintings
as a form of resistance. “One of my clichés is that English is my second
language,” he said. “I don’t know my first because the invaders, the
colonizers, had taken my first language away from me, therefore the only
language that I have access to is the colonizers’ language.”
Image
Gordon Hookey’s “Pelvis Deadly,” from 2005.
Gordon Hookey’s “Pelvis Deadly,” from 2005.Credit...Gordon Hookey and
Fort Gansevoort
He continued: “I largely see that I have a license to use this English
language any which way I like. I often make up my own words, misspell
the words, or break it up into syllables,” Sometimes that turns up as a
twist on a pop-culture icon’s name, as with “Pelvis Deadly” (2005),
which Hookey says is his rendering of a Black Elvis. At other times he
seems to fixate on single letters of the alphabet — like the letter Z in
“The re re rediscovery of Aotearoa” (2006). The painting plays with the
words New Zealand, proclaiming: “A NEW LAND FULL OF ZEES/A LAND THAT HAS
A ZEAL THAT IS NEW.”
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“The English language, especially in Australia, was part of that system
to kind of assimilate people in that apparatus of colonial oppression,”
said Hendrik Folkerts, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art
Institute of Chicago. “So Gordon changing that language and making it
his own, in many ways, is also claiming a position of agency and autonomy.”
Image
Gary Simmons’s “Fight Night” (2014) depicts Madison Square Garden’s
famous marquee in half-erased, eerie white outlines.
Gary Simmons’s “Fight Night” (2014) depicts Madison Square Garden’s
famous marquee in half-erased, eerie white outlines.Credit...Gary
Simmons and Metro Pictures
Though Simmons’s role in Hookey’s current show underscores affinities
that emerged with ease between them*,*it is also evident that Hookey is
serious about bridging connections to people in various communities
worldwide. Hookey speaks of drawing inspiration from “Native American
movements,” saying he feels that “with Native Americans there is an
understanding that does not have to be explained,” because of
similarities in their cultural experiences. He has also spent time
meeting with Palestinians at the Shufat refugee camp in Jerusalem, later
creating the canvas “Victor, Solidarity, Peace and Freedom” (2017). On
view at Fort Gansevoort, the artwork imagines the Palestinian soccer
team winning the World Cup.
“Murriland!” (2017), an ongoing series of paintings that includes work
he exhibited at Documenta 14*,*was inspired by the painterTshibumba
Kanda-Matulu’s epic depictions of Congolese history.
<https://cafebabel.com/en/article/painting-congolese-history-tshibumba-kanda-matulu-5ae004d0f723b35a145dbdd9/>A
painting from that series, “Murriland! #2,” even explores the cultural
bridges between Aboriginal and Chinese people. (He has Cantonese
ancestry on his great-grandfather’s side). Here, his punning sense of
humor emerges yet again: He depicts Chinese and Aboriginal delegates
engaged in “cordial” relations — by drinking cordial together.
“He’s not pious,” said Vivian Ziherl, a curator and founder of art and
research group Frontier Imaginaries.“He’s always been an artist that
never compromised, never censored himself,” Ziherl said, adding that he
brings a “particular excoriating black humor” to his work.
Hookey says he sometimes watches people looking at his art. “If I see a
little wry smile on their face, or a chuckle, I know that the work has
done its job.”
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“I’m trying to show this ugly, horrible, terrible reality in maybe a
beautiful or a funny way,” he continued. “Humor for me has been a device
to seduce people into the harsh political realities of my people.*”*
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