Blak Douglas vs The Commonwealth

The Sydney-based Dhungatti artist Blak Douglas is the focus of a new documentary that explores the ways in which complex and confronting family histories inform and shape his practice.

Adam Douglas Hill, better known by his longstanding moniker Blak Douglas, is an Indigenous artist with strong connections to Western Sydney and the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern. This is important to preface, as the documentary’s provocative title, Blak Douglas vs The Commonwealth, focusses on the histories and experiences of Indigenous people from New South Wales. Western Sydney has one of the highest populations of Indigenous people in the country, and the inner-city suburb of Redfern for many decades was a vital hub for Indigenous people criss-crossing the state and moving from regional areas to the city.

The director of this unfunded, feature length documentary, Cristina Dio, understands the importance of these locales and histories. The opening scenes immediately place the viewer within the streets of Redfern, immersed in the energetic sights and sounds of a political rally taking place.

We are then introduced in the documentary to Blak Douglas in his studio, detailing his longstanding political views around post-colonial Australia and its impositions on the First Nations people of this continent. The scenes that follow, and that are throughout the documentary depicting the technical aspects of Douglas’ studio painting practice, are insightful as viewers can gain a better understanding of the unique influences that inform the work. His background in street art, stencils, and graphic design, provides a framework that sets his paintings apart visually from many other contemporary Indigenous artists whose work is exhibited in a museum context. The studio scenes that feature Douglas discussing his consistent use of sharp satire and black humour in his work communicates the depth of his practice. His symbolic references to everyday cleaning products ironically serves to casualise the confronting and traumatic histories of systemic racial eradication.

Douglas gained prominence in the art world for the work he made during what he calls his “flat bottom cloud era.” These works are stylistically bold and showcase an original synthesis of colour, technique, and sharp political commentary. The culmination of this painting era was Douglas winning the 2022 Archibald Prize for his work Moby Dickens, a striking depiction of fellow NSW Indigenous artist Karla Dickens standing in the murky floodwaters that ravaged Lismore in that same year.

The documentary gives much attention to examining the brutal and confronting histories of the stolen generations in NSW. A national history that is so inconceivable to us now, that it elicits a kind of cognitive dissonance in the minds of many Australians when we are faced with the harsh realities of our past policies and cultural norms. The artist’s own ancestral histories of dislocation and displacement are powerfully brought to the forefront in scenes that depict Douglas retracing his grandmother’s steps in the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls. Established in 1912 by the Aborigines Protection Board in a disused hospital, thousands of Indigenous girls from across the state were institutionalised there over the facility’s nearly sixty years of operation.

The documentary exceeds at communicating the realities of inter-generational trauma for Indigenous people. We hear Douglas speak of the hardships his father went through and the effect it had on his life, and ultimately Douglas’ life growing up. The scenes in which Douglas is researching historical archives relating to his grandmother being forcibly removed are moving, and confronting.

It is fitting that the documentary’s conclusion sees Douglas exhibiting his work at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the seat of political power and policy in our nation. Douglas rightly points out the often hollow and performative nature of exhibition openings and the speeches made by dignitaries and politicians at them.
Douglas is a contemporary artist who truly embodies and exemplifies the unique experiences of Indigenous people in NSW through his practice. Indigenous cultural groups in NSW were the first to bear the brunt of the immense British colonial project, and the first to experience rapid and violent systemic erasure.

The defiance and unresolved anger that Douglas expresses in the documentary and through his work is shared by many Indigenous people across our country when we are faced with the seemingly impossible task of reconciling the persecutions of the past with an inescapable feeling of powerlessness in our present lives.

Blak Douglas vs The Commonwealth is an impactful documentary that would greatly benefit audiences wanting a deeper understanding of Indigenous art through the life and work of an important Indigenous artist. Douglas subverts many of the stereotypical notions of what an Indigenous artist is or is concerned with.

Blak Douglas vs the Commonwealth would benefit the country if it could secure a mainstream release.

This review was originally published in Artist Profile, issue 67

SCREENING DATES 
7 July 2024 – Revelation Perth International Film Festival 
13 July 2024 – National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 
17 July 2024 – Melbourne Documentary Film Festival 
20 August – Darwin Festival