Blak In-Justice exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art is 'a wake-up call'

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican in early May, he took with him, by way of gift for the new Catholic Church head, a painting by Ngarrindjeri artist Amanda Westley.
"I wonder if the Pope knew that we're 36 per cent of the prison population when he received that painting," Barkindji artist Kent Morris says.
I've driven though a miserable autumn day in Melbourne to Heide Gallery in the city's leafy eastern suburbs to meet Morris, the curator and director of the First Nations-led not-for-profit organisation, The Torch project.
As we chat, he's walking me through his latest curation, the incredible exhibition Blak In-Justice: Incarceration and Resilience.
"Our artwork and culture is somehow revered on the international stage and high enough for an exchange at that level, but yet, we're the most incarcerated people on the planet."
Since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Indigenous incarceration rates have more than doubled, and deaths in custody have continued to rise.
"I think generally, as a nation, it's just seen as something that's, well, it is what it is," Morris says.
"It's a huge stain on this nation."
Morris is warm, smiles easily. But it's clear this exhibition is close to his heart.
When I ask him what's inspired it, his response is: "Sheer frustration."
Morris is incensed by the over-representation of Indigenous people in our legal system.
But, he adds, Blak In-Justice has also provided an opportunity to bring together works by First Nations artists who have created political art engaging with the problem.
"It's a call of concern ... but it's also a call for action," he says.
That action is to turn around a brutal series of statistics. Morris highlights some:
Indigenous people are 4 per cent of the population, yet 36 per cent of the national adult prison population. Indigenous men are 17 times more likely to go to prison than non-Indigenous men. Indigenous women are 27 times more likely to be incarcerated.
As we walk down the corridor leading into the exhibition, my eyes fix on a quote plastered across the archway. It's from the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart.
"We are not an innately criminal people," reads part of it.
Blak In-Justice presents works by the who's who of Australian First Peoples artists — Richard Bell, Reko Rennie, Gordon Bennett, Jimmie Pike, Destiny Deacon — alongside works by participants in The Torch program, which brings art teaching and support to currently incarcerated or recently released First Peoples in Victoria.
The first room of the Blak In-Justice exhibition presents the full force of the problem.
The walls are painted a dusty blue — symbolic of both the blue stone of the earth, representing Country, and the bluestone walls of Loddon, of Pentridge, common to our prisons and former prisons in Victoria.
"The exhibition's grounded in Country," Morris explains. "Even the bluestone walls — that's rock from the Country as well. And those prisons are built on our Country too."
Set against the walls are visceral works from well-known Indigenous artists. The bright hues of Reko Rennie's Three Little Pigs (2024), depicting three white police officers against a red background holding down a faceless Indigenous figure in yellow, a police officer's knee in the restrained man's back. The red scars and hanging ropes of Gordon Bennett's Bloodlines (1993).
A striking work, Blood Tears (2023) by Judy Watson is at one end of the room, made up of long red strips of plastic, punched out with the names of Aboriginal people who have died in custody, in Braille.
The works are in-your-face, political, satirical, shocking, starkly depicting police brutality and the systemic problems of the justice system Indigenous people are up against.
Some of it is hard to look at, but that — Morris says — is the point.
"This is hard-hitting. But it's all truth-telling, you know? It's shared and lived experiences." He says this gravely, before his eyes fire up, his gears shift. "I mean, here," Morris says, steering me towards the next room, "Well, this is the solution that we've created for ourselves."
The next part of the exhibition opens out in walls painted in soft ochre, the themes and colours presented in the works displayed against them offering a vastly different experience to that of the room before.
Playfully painted emus appear in frames with candy-bright backgrounds, splendid blue wrens and pelicans against a black-and-white diamond pattern.
In the centre, carved wooden pelicans gather in a circle. Morris tells me proudly that this work by Torch participant Daniel Church, Pelican Mudjin (Family), 2022, was acquired as part of the National Gallery of Victoria's permanent collection.
Morris says the support The Torch provides to connect or reconnect artists with art practice, Country and culture gives them strength and purpose.
And, importantly, the money the participants make from their art (100 per cent of the artwork price goes to the artist) enables them to support their families and imagine a life for themselves beyond prison.
"[It means] you're not just on the outside of society. You're actually included, and you have a part to play, and you have a story to tell."
As we walk through Blak In-Justice, Morris's stories send us zig-zagging across the room — stories of those in The Torch who have gone on to major art awards, like ceramicist Raymond Young, or who have come back to teach or otherwise work as part of the program, like Stacey Edwards.
"It's not just based around being an artist," Morris says. "This really is about people removing the shackles and finding their pathway. People are going into employment, education, training and employment, a whole range of areas."
Morris says every year artists come up to him to say, "This saved my life. This program saved my life."
He wants to see that fact getting broader recognition and support.
"Solutions [to Indigenous over-representation in prisons] won't come from the non-Indigenous community, but they really need the support of the non-Indigenous community.
The Torch's success story is told not only in the stats (the recidivism rates of participants is more than half that of non-participants), but in these human stories, many of whose voices are part of the exhibition, through video documentary, panels accompanying their works and in large quotes on the walls.
For Morris, it's not surprising the program has had such success because it's been developed for Indigenous people, by Indigenous people. Although The Torch began in 2011, it was built on the back of more than 40 years of activism and listening to community.
"Solutions will only come from our community because we're the ones who have the most at stake," he says. "We care the most, and we believe and have hope. And this is one extraordinary example."
Blak In-Justice: Incarceration and Resilience is at Heide Museum of Modern Art (Naarm/Melbourne) until July 20, 2025.