Treahna Hamm & Lin (Burrinja) Onus

Yorta Yorta prints from the La Trobe University Art Collection

Presented on our newly renovated Shepparton campus are prints by two artists pivotal to the revival and communication of Yorta Yorta cultural practices. These works by Treahna Hamm and Lin Onus draw on both Indigenous and European modes of representation in celebration of the enduring presence of their people.

Hamm, who lives near her ancestral lands of the Murray River near Yarrawonga, simultaneously represents her physical and spiritual connection to Country. Ancient middens, canoe trees, the changing path of the river and the animals that reside there, meet with spirit figures and totems. This joyful celebration of living culture is quiet activism. Its presence dispels the once accepted narrative that the 'tide of history had washed away' Yorta Yorta people's connection to their land.

Onus, whose father was a well-known Koori activist and whose mother was a member of the communist party, is, perhaps unsurprisingly, less subtle in his activism. His often-fractured images reclaim kitsch representations of Aboriginal people and combine them with graphic cultural linework. Onus, who expressed his desire to create 'a bridge between cultures, technology and ideas’, made clear the challenges of existing in two worlds. He often used the motif of a jigsaw, or split apart his imagery as we see here, to express the driving need to piece his culture back together after the disruptions of colonialism.

Image:  Treahna Hamm, Soul Freak, 1996. La Trobe University Art Collection.