In the paintings of Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey, armies of tough kangaroos and other native animals, such as possums, goannas, crocodiles and snakes, represent Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Invasive species such as cane toads and camels, meanwhile, “represent the ugliness of invasive peoples to our lands, country and culture”.
The 61-year-old’s art is funnier than that might suggest and startling in its rowdy satire. Politicians are pigs in his paintings, which tend to be visual commentaries on land rights, deaths in custody and environmental degradation. English, to Hookey, is the colonisers’ language, and he takes liberties on his canvases with playful puns and misspellings: “terrorists” become “terra-ists”, invoking the colonial myth that Australia was an unspoiled terra nullius, or land belonging to no one.
