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The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
480 sheeps' heads in jars: Dark Mofo opens with another gory provocation
In the dimly-lit basement of a former furniture store in Hobart CBD, 480 embalmed sheep's heads in specimen jars are arranged on industrial shelving units: 24 racks, each four shelves high and with five jars per shelf, in a neat grid. The fastidiousness of the presentation sits at odds with the inherent violence of the material; so do the expressions on most of the sheep's faces, which range from serene to uncanny smiles. As if to dispel any false sense of quietude, the room's lighting periodically switches to nightmarish red. This is We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep, an installation by Trawulwuy artist Nathan Maynard, part of this year's Dark Mofo festival – the first after the often controversial festival took a year off in favour of a 'period of renewal'. Maynard's exhibition was the first announcement for the festival's return, and it drew some scepticism from members of the local Tasmanian Aboriginal community at the time. When it was announced via a teaser post featuring the quote 'What did you do with the bodies? – George Augustus Robinson, 1830', Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage officer Fiona Hamilton criticised Dark Mofo's 'gory fascination with the pain of our people'. Academic Greg Lehman, a descendant of the Trawulwuy people of north-east Tasmania, compared the 'ugly and tone-deaf' marketing of the project to the festival's widely criticised 2021 commission by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, who called for the donation of blood by First Nations people, in which to soak a union jack flag. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning The festival cancelled Sierra's work and apologised for the commission and their marketing of it, but its appetite for confronting – and gory – work is unabated. Visitors enter the space via a nondescript doorway on Collins Street marked by a red cross; an invigilator at the entrance warns them that the artwork 'may or may not be confronting'. There's no explanatory text or artist statement, and the artist agreed to only one interview, with the Indigenous-run paper Koori Mail – and on Thursday evening, the festival's opening night, visitors navigated the installation with varying levels of bemusement. Some entered the basement, saw the grisly cargo, and turned around and exited; others got their phones out and took pictures. When questioned by attenders, an invigilator at the room's entrance gamely attempted to encapsulate the dark history that inspired the work, and the ongoing issues that motivated Maynard to create it. 'We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep' is a quote from the journals of George Augustus Robinson, Tasmania's 'Chief Protector of Aborigines' from 1839 to 1849. Robinson was recounting an anecdote told to him with 'perfect indifference' by a perpetrator of one of the state's worst massacres: on 10 February 1828, four convict shepherds ambushed a group of Aboriginals at Cape Grim, in the island's north-west, shooting and driving about 30 of them off a 60-metre cliff, supposedly in retaliation for the destruction of about the same number of sheep. In his journal, Robinson wrote that he had issued the perpetrators a warning. The Cape Grim massacre is one of many that took place in Lutruwita/Tasmania during a state-orchestrated genocidal campaign against the island's First Peoples known as the Black War (1824-1832). Generally, there were no formal or legal consequences for white perpetrators. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Maynard told the Koori Mail last month that the massacre was 'just one example in this country of where white people valued sheep more than black human life'. In a statement to Guardian Australia, Dark Mofo's cultural adviser, Caleb Nichols-Mansell, said the work 'encourages a deeper investigation of the history, our shared pasts and an honest interrogation around these topics and themes that we typically avoid within arts and cultural settings'. The presentation of the sheep's heads in specimen jars points to a different kind of racist violence from the same era: the theft and trade of First Nations human remains, which occurred throughout Australia. These remains entered the private collections of white settlers and officials or were sold to museums and scientific institutions. The campaign for their repatriation has been running since the 1970s. Meanwhile, just 200 metres from the basement where Maynard's installation is held stands a statue of former governor Sir John Franklin, who is known to have collected the skulls of Aboriginal people. For visitors unaware of this context, the only clue is an audio track that plays in the corridor leading to the basement, featuring two voices – one Maynard's – expressing condemnation, anger and distress over the historical and continuing treatment of ancestral remains. It's hard to hear these voices clearly, but among the lines that cut through is the indelible exhortation: 'Imagine it was your mother or your grandmother who was collecting dust in a museum basement!' Maynard told the Koori Mail he hoped the installation would educate non-Indigenous people on Tasmania's violent past. It remains to be seen whether the work's enigmatic presentation will have the desired effect.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
U.K. Authorities Probing Possible Putin ‘Sabotage' After Heathrow Airport Fire
British counter-terrorism police are investigating possible sabotage following a huge blaze near London's Heathrow Airport, according to multiple reports. The Thursday evening fire at an electrical substation in Hayes, near the airport west of the English capital, wiped out power at the busy travel hub and also knocked out its back-up energy system, causing travel chaos. Thousands of buildings nearby were also left without power, and 150 people had to be evacuated from surrounding homes. Flames also caught hold of a transformer containing over 6,600 gallons of cooling fluid. The fire is still burning and the airport, the fifth busiest in the world, is expected to be closed until at least midnight Friday. Firefighters said the cause of the blaze was not immediately known, but specialist cops in the U.K. are not ruling out bad actors, like Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Times reported that counter-terrorism detectives from London's Metropolitan Police were hastily deployed to probe whether sabotage might have played a part. The paper's chief reporter, Fiona Hamilton, name-checked Russia in a message on X. 'Counter terrorism police put on Heathrow fire investigation to establish whether or not it is foul play,' she wrote. 'Any major incident like this is immediately escalated, particularly given threat of sabotage by Russia. Sources say precautionary and CT police often deployed like this.' The BBC reported that the Met Police said there was 'currently no indication of foul play' but officers were keeping an 'open mind at this time.' It is standard practice for several departments, including counter terrorism police, to investigate large scale incidents. Even still, British tabloids were more forthright in their finger pointing at the Kremlin. The Mail Online, the Daily Mail's online offering, asked in their headline: 'Is Russia behind Heathrow Airport closure?' The publication quoted security expert Will Geddes, director and founder of the International Corporate Protection Group, who said: 'The Russians are looking at everything. They're looking at our fibre optics under the sea, they're looking at our nuclear power stations, we know hostile reconnaissance is going on right now. 'So for this to be taken down so easily and cause such an impact, one has got to say if I was Russia, that's where I would focus my attentions as well.' Bob Seely, a Russia expert and former Conservative politician in the U.K., said it was 'likely' an accident, but added that Russia could not be ruled out. 'We should be building resilience into our critical national infrastructure, especially given the rise in Russian sabotage operations in Europe,' he told the Mail. It comes after Richard Moore, head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service known as MI6, in November accused Russia of waging a 'staggeringly reckless campaign' of sabotage in Europe. During a speech in Paris, Moore said Putin and his acolytes were attempting 'to sow fear about the consequences of aiding Ukraine.' And indeed, the incident attack comes after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged ongoing support to Ukraine. Last week, he hosted an online meeting between Western leaders dubbed the 'coalition of the willing,' those who are intent on seeing a Russia-Ukraine peace deal prevail. This preceded a meeting between European Union and U.K. delegates to discuss 'ways to dial up pressure on Russia.' At the beginning of March, British and Ukrainian officials also signed the U.K.-Ukraine Bilateral agreement, paving the way for an almost $3 billion loan to bolster Ukrainian defense capabilities. More recently, The Telegraph reported that the U.K. could send fighter jets to Ukraine to help protect its troops against ongoing aggression from Russia. The Prime Minister has already promised to put British troops on the ground if President Donald Trump is able to successfully negotiate a peace deal. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, said after an EU Summit on Friday that politicians on the continent have an 'obsession' with militarizing Europe. 'Their eyes, at least in public, reveal a fixation on militarizing Europe regardless of the consequences,' he said cryptically, according to TASS. 'The militarization of Europe is a very, very dangerous trend. It certainly does not bring us any closer to an easing of tensions or to the restoration of mutual trust; rather, it undermines security in Europe,' Peskov added.
