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Julie Shiels, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University

How artists Judy Watson and Helen Johnson are stripping back Australia's 'white blanket of forgetfulness'

Installation view, Judy Watson & Helen Johnson: the red thread of history, loose ends. National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2022

In his 1980 Boyer Lecture, art historian Bernard Smith said a “white blanket of forgetfulness” had been thrown over the horrors of Australia’s colonial past.

Renowned Australian artists, Waanyi woman Judy Watson and second-generation Anglo immigrant Helen Johnson, have individually spent decades exposing these secrets by translating archival material into paintings, prints and installations.

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