LEGAL FICTION

Legal Fiction examines how a white Australian nation was deliberately constructed, and not an incidental result of colonisation. It traces how the fiction of an empty continent became a political and medical project to protect the new white population.

Legal Fiction examines how a white Australian nation did not simply emerge as an incidental result of colonial takeover; it was a strategically cultivated production. Centred on the legal doctrine of terra nullius, the project traces how the fiction of an empty continent became the basis for a medical and political project that developed into a social obsession throughout the 20th century, deliberately constructed and maintained to protect the new white population arriving.

By weaving interconnected sequences, each with a distinct visual language, the work highlights and challenges the now deeply entrenched societal values, symbols and power structures born from British colonisation of the country. Using stark, black and white images to literally and metaphorically shine a light on the dominant whiteness in Australian society and represent the sense of entitlement and white supremacy often present in Australian public and social spaces.

The project also uses archival material to expose the disturbing obsession of medical and social scientists throughout the 20th century to “protect” the white race in Australia. The vivid red imagery of native vegetation depicts the colonial view that their strange, new environment was another opponent to overcome, particularly in tropical regions where they feared “racial degeneration”.

Together, these visual languages move between the contemporary and the historical, the visible and the hidden, using photography, archival material and constructed imagery to reveal the interconnected legal, scientific and social fictions upon which Australia as we know it today was built. The project examines how the same colonial system that denied the sovereignty of Indigenous nations simultaneously depended upon their knowledge, labour and dispossession.

The fiction of a white nation was not naturally inherited, but deliberately created and maintained.