A Look Inside Vernon Ah Kee's New Exhibition Not An Animal Or A Plant

If you've ever doubted that racism still exists in Australia, have a look at the toilet doors in Vernon Ah Kee's exhibition Not an Animal or a Plant, currently at the National Art School Gallery as part of Sydney Festival. Scrawled with violent, racist and misogynist graffiti, they are found objects, which Ah Kee took from a disused toilet on Cockatoo Island during the 2008 Biennale and transformed into a work titled Born In This Skin.

"They take the breath away," Ah Kee says. "They're up-front in a way that's disturbing yet refreshing…Given that this country has been good at subtlety in terms of expressing racism."

Ah-Kee's show, which is a survey covering the past 12 years, compels us to see racism "not as an historical error", but as part of life. "Many people would wilfully set themselves aside from Australia's treatment of Aboriginals and see it as history," he says. "But it's the life I live and the life we all live. Our children and grandchildren will live it, too."

Born in January 1967 in Far North Queensland, Ah Kee came into the world as "property of the state". It wasn't until later that year, following a May 27 referendum, that the Federal Government recognised Indigenous Australians as people. 2017 is both Ah Kee's 50th birthday and the referendum's 50th anniversary.

Vernon Ah Kee's I See Deadly People (2012)

Walking into Not an Animal or a Plant, the first works you see are oversized, charcoal portraits, beautifully drawn and charged with emotion. Looking into the eyes of Ah-Kee's great-grandfather George Sibley, it's impossible to disregard his humanity. Yet, as Ah Kee says, "Politics and atrocities have relegated [our] status to less than human or always to become human."

Text-based works Rush to judgement (2016) and Waltzing Matilda (2016) place us face-to-face with racist, yet commonly used, phrases, such as "pure-bred Aussie" and "love it or fuck off", printed in bold, confronting lettering. "What's disturbing is how normalised and popular these are," Ah Kee says. "'Pure-bred Aussie' is available in tourist shops all over the country … As someone who works with text, you can't resist it."

Text is used, too, in Authors of Devastation (2016), a stunning installation of custom-made surfboards painted with rainforest shield designs and, more personally, in Many Lies (2004/2016), with verse painted on a 2.4 x 2.7-metre canvas. Ah Kee writes, "I tried to burn the words away, but only burned myself, and now I have deep scars on my skin, and the enduring ache of memory."

Not an Animal or a Plant is now showing at the National Art School Gallery, Forbes Street, Darlinghurst until March 11. Find more details here. 

Top image: Vernon Ah-Kee's Annie Ah-Sam (2008). Shot by George Sibley.