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Julie has exhibited her sculptural work in numerous exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally. She has been awarded several prizes, scholarships and residencies. She is represented by Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne. Many of Julie's works explore the colonial narratives of Australia's The effect is to retrieve from the anonymity of historical texts, objects and images the details of a past that would have otherwise been left depersonalised, unspoken and untouched.

Her following comments address her exhibition Heartland, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, September 2001

"In Winter 2001 I created a series of artworks about movement through time and space.
They were slightly nostalgic works, tinged with some sadness about the impossibility of a return to my culture as it once was before Europeans arrived in Tasmania. At the same time they were exploratory in medium and showed an embrace of the materials that remain mine culturally to work with and through which to express myself.
The resulting pieces were expressions of much physical joy of the return to my maternal homeland and the satisfaction of being able to find and work with local materials in a fluid way that resulted in an entire exhibition of interconnected stories.
These works converted the gallery space into a kind of doorway into other worlds.

The art provided a viewer the means to see and negotiate something akin to what I experienced in north east Tasmania. This was was more than one space and more than one time occurring simultaneously. I felt the past, present, future converge in shimmering congruence in that country. The art works were my versions of portals to times and practices past and to old ways of living that the residency period enabled me to gain some understanding of.

These works were all made ensite during a Wilderness Residency at Eddystone Lighthouse in North East Tasmania as granted by Arts Tasmania. I lived alone in a lighthouse cottage and created the works over some months. The materials were collected at Lake St Clair in central Tasmania, on the Midlands Highway during road widening works and from coastal areas of the north east corner of Tasmania.

One name by which the north east of Tasmania is traditionally is Tebrikunna. Tebrikunna is my traditional homeland on my mother’s side of the family. The original name of my people are the Trawwoolway people. We survived, ironically, due to our women, some two hundred years ago, being kidnapped by sealers and whalers from the UK, USA and New Zealand. These women were kept moving back and forth across the Bass Strait Islands to Mainland Australia, further afield to King George’s Sound and even across to Mauritius. This mobility kept some of our people out of the reach of the VDL and colonial government’s net, a net that most Tasmanian Aboriginal people experienced by the 1830s when captured, removed from mainland Tasmania and taken to Flinders Island where most succumbed to respiratory illnesses.

These artworks were taken to Melbourne, across Bass Strait, inside and on top of my car! and installed at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, 141 Flinders Lane Melbourne for my solo exhibition "Heartland" during September 2001. I then travelled overseas for twelve months from September 2001 to undertake three artist residencies."

Julie Gough

view more images and text about Heartlands

view other works by Julie Gough