RYAN ANDREW LEE - Artist Statement

'Wonnarua' is a contemplative moving image installation work that aims to provoke discussion around themes of Indigenous ways of living in juxtaposition with Western Settler-state system's unsustainable, damaging ways of using stolen lands. In today's current global state of environmental (and cultural, communal and spiritual) emergency, the need to embrace traditional Indigenous knowledge is now more crucial than ever before. The traditional custodians of these lands have sustainably looked after country for 90,000+ years, yet in the short 251 years since European arrival these lands have been abused and sold for profit while First Peoples and culture along with their vast knowledge for country and sustainable land management methods have been suppressed and put to the side. 

The video diptych juxtaposes living portraits of five Aboriginal people from the Wonnarua Nation with drone shots of the vast Muswellbrook coal mines, which are situated in the heart of the Wonnarua Nation. The frame in which the video work sits is an 1820's antique Victorian era influenced design which correlates with the exact time period that European settlers first reached Muswellbrook, Wonnarua Country.  The symbolic frame also metaphorically acknowledges the paradox of living in and between the two worlds and addresses a subtle hypocrisy; the act of critiquing Western systems although at the same time living and breathing them. 

This work advocates for inquiry into the events, and resulting cultural, environmental and spiritual impacts that have taken place in this country since colonisation began in Australia. The work is a push for cultural embracement, reconciliation, and change; for government and corporate systems to stop, listen, learn and implement the vast knowledge of First Nations people in the re-thinking of today's current systems that are clearly not working, in order for everyone to move forward inclusively, together as one. 

 RYAN ANDREW LEE - Artist Statement

'Wonnarua' is a contemplative moving image installation work that aims to provoke discussion around themes of Indigenous ways of living in juxtaposition with Western Settler-state system's unsustainable, damaging ways of using stolen lands. In today's current global state of environmental (and cultural, communal and spiritual) emergency, the need to embrace traditional Indigenous knowledge is now more crucial than ever before. The traditional custodians of these lands have sustainably looked after country for 90,000+ years, yet in the short 251 years since European arrival these lands have been abused and sold for profit while First Peoples and culture along with their vast knowledge for country and sustainable land management methods have been suppressed and put to the side. 

The video diptych juxtaposes living portraits of five Aboriginal people from the Wonnarua Nation with drone shots of the vast Muswellbrook coal mines, which are situated in the heart of the Wonnarua Nation. The frame in which the video work sits is an 1820's antique Victorian era influenced design which correlates with the exact time period that European settlers first reached Muswellbrook, Wonnarua Country.  The symbolic frame also metaphorically acknowledges the paradox of living in and between the two worlds and addresses a subtle hypocrisy; the act of critiquing Western systems although at the same time living and breathing them. 

This work advocates for inquiry into the events, and resulting cultural, environmental and spiritual impacts that have taken place in this country since colonisation began in Australia. The work is a push for cultural embracement, reconciliation, and change; for government and corporate systems to stop, listen, learn and implement the vast knowledge of First Nations people in the re-thinking of today's current systems that are clearly not working, in order for everyone to move forward inclusively, together as one.