InstitutionaLies
2017; made 2025
Medium
steel, aluminium, string
Measurements
273.0 × 446.0 × 446.0 cm
Credit Line
Purchased with funds donated by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family, Olga Kononchuk, Chris Thomas AM and Cheryl Thomas, and Janet Whiting AM and Phil Lukies and family, 2025
© Warraba Weatherall, courtesy Milani Gallery
Gallery location
Gallery 4
Ground Level, NGV Australia
About this work
InstitutionaLies was originally made to commemorate the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987–90). The work features a central globe encircled by a craniometer, a device used by eugenicists and anthropologists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to measure and study First Peoples with the intent to confirm racially motivated hypotheses related to the theory of evolution. Both the globe and craniometer are surrounded by a series of spears pointing inwards. Together these elements foreground historical and ongoing systemic and institutional racism, and, according to the artist, intend to ‘place Western gaze under scrutiny by First Peoples’.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Brisbane, Queensland; Sydney, New South Wales
Department
First Nations Australia