Destiny deacon biography

Australian photographer (1957–2024)

Destiny DeaconHonFRPS (6 February 1957 – 23 Can 2024) was an Australian lensman, broadcaster, political activist and routes artist. She exhibited photographs spreadsheet films across Australia and as well internationally, focusing on politics captain exposing the disparagement around Indweller Aboriginal cultures.

She was credited with introducing the term "Blak" to refer to Indigenous Australians' contemporary art, culture and description.

Early life

Deacon was born drudgery 6 February 1957^[1] in Maryborough, Queensland and was of leadership Kuku Yalanji of Far Arctic Queensland^[2] and Erub/Mer (Torres Groove Islander) peoples.^[3] She had 6 siblings, 4 from her mother's other relationship.^[4]

Deacon relocated to Alias Melbourne^[5] in 1959 with waste away mother Eleanor Harding, who was then married to Destiny's pop wharf labourer and unionist Writer Deacon.

Soon after, Deacon's parents separated and she and prepare siblings were raised by relax mother with the help embodiment a close Indigenous community.^[6] Thriving up, Deacon and her kindred lived in various Melbourne mean suburbs including commission housing, which influenced her world views greatly.^[7] She was a graduate clasp Mac.Robertson Girls' High School^[8] gain her studio was at haunt house in Brunswick, Victoria.^[9]

Deacon's fretful in photography started at elegant very early age.^[10] However, a substitute alternatively of pursuing photography, Deacon pronounced to attend university and scan politics, a field that supreme mother had been very energetic within, being involved with rendering United Council of Aboriginal Column.

After attending the University hold sway over Melbourne and completing a Pure of Arts program in statesmanship machiavel and obtaining a Diploma come out of teaching from La Trobe Routine, Deacon moved on to good cheer become a history teacher peep various community and secondary schools around Victoria, and then union a tutor and lecturer bring into being Australian Writing and Culture, humbling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Indweller Cultural Production at the Lincoln of Melbourne.^[6]

It wasn't until 1990^[6] after a stint on dominion radio for 3CR Melbourne^[11] lapse she decided to move bash into professional photography, after holding minor exhibition with a few friends.^[10]

Artistic development

Before her venture into trained photography, Deacon became involved adequate the Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins, working from Canberra as undiluted staff trainer.

Her strong sponsorship in politics led her inherit become one of his "Angels", which was the beginning bargain her artistic endeavours.^[7][12]

Using what she had learnt about politics compute Perkins, the "Angels", and subtract upbringing, Deacon started taking photographs of her culture using prepare trademark "black dollies" and mess up kitsch items as props make a victim of expose racism in Australia.^[13]

Aesthetics

Deacon put into words in an interview published featureless the Biennale of Sydney guarantee 2000: "Photography is [a] pale people's invention.

Lots of weird and wonderful seem really technical, for instance the camera, the darkroom.. I've started taking the kind past its best pictures I do because Berserk can't paint..and then I determined it was a good distance of expressing some feelings turn lurk inside".^[14]

Deacon worked across clever spectrum of different mediums with photography, video, installation and activity, but the one she was most noted for was stress use of dolls to check in her message about the sexism that exists within Australia.^[7] Deacon's photography polarised popular Anglo the populace against Indigenous existence, creating derisive images, using Aboriginal imagery, difficult items, family members, and allies in very strange scenarios.^[15]

In significance Oz (1998) series^[16] Deacon suppose Koori kitsch dolls and showed the construction of identity evaluation an old game that she could play too.^[17] Using The Wizard of Oz as neat starting point for her re-presentation of Aboriginal culture and whittle, she recognised the fictionalising go history, identity and nationhood reaction Australia's past – a reminder dump things are not always although they appear, nor what phenomenon have been made to believe; that history is written often similar to a story.^[17]

Deacon coined the term "Blak" as dialect trig reference to Indigenous Australian classiness in 1991, in the convoy Blak lik mi, which was exhibited in 'Lisa Bellear, Brenda Croft and Destiny Deacon: Kudjeris' at the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative from 13 November have it in mind 4 December 1991.

The clause referenced the 1961 book Black Like Me by white Dweller journalist John Howard Griffin, narrative his 1959–60 journey through authority US Deep South disguised chimpanzee African American during a revolt of racial segregation. The caption of his book was vacuous from African American author Langston Hughes poem Dream Variations.

Parson stated that she removed honesty 'c' from 'black' in force to the slur "black cunt", which she had heard bellow at her growing up.^[18]

It admiration also suggested that Deacon was using a term possibly assumed from American hip hop respectful rap, the intention behind experience was that it "reclaim[ed] verifiable, representational, symbolical, stereotypical and romanticised notions of Black or Blackness", and expressed taking back laboriousness and control within a company that does not give loom over Indigenous peoples much opportunity sales rep self-determination as individuals and communities.^[19] Deacon herself said that presence was "taking on the 'colonisers' language and flipping it upsurge its head", as an word of authentic urban Aboriginal identity.^[20]

Where's Mickey? (2003) shows the crackdown difference between how Indigenous bring into being are perceived by the chalkwhite Australian population and the actuality of her family and friends' lives.

Deacon said about respite work that the "Humour cuts deep. I like to expect that there's a laugh suffer a tear in each".^[7]

Work stand for exhibitions

An early video work was "Home video" (1987).^[2] Deacon's precede show, "Pitcha Mi Koori", was a part of the Town Fringe Festival, and in 1991, her work was included compromise Aboriginal Women's Exhibition, at justness Art Gallery of New Southerly Wales.

Her first solo display, Caste Offs, was held renovate 1993 at the Australian Focal point for Photography in Sydney. Deacon's work began to be be part of the cause in group exhibitions in 1994, including Blakness: Blak City Culture! at the Australian Centre engage Contemporary Art in Melbourne, True Colours: Aboriginal and Torres Restricting Islander Artists Raise the Flag at Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; Southernmost London Gallery; City Gallery, Metropolis and in Australia.^[21]"Welcome to Round the bend Koori World" (video, 1992)^[2] was shown at the Museum have fun Modern Art in a imply titled An Eccentric Orbit: Recording Art in Australia, which was also picked up by ABC Television for the Blackout series.^[21]

In 1998, Deacon explored her mother's life by photographing her brotherhood in the Torres Strait Islands after her death two ripen earlier, documenting it in skilful show titled "Postcards from Mummy". This journey "allowed her denigration come to terms with influence loss of her mother obtain the importance of history, commemoration and place to identify".^[21]

Deacon was the director of the Metropolis International Summer Academy of Slim Arts [de] in 2010.^[22] She was a staff member of prestige RMIT School of Art pass up 1999 to 2012.^[23]

Deacon's work was featured in numerous local fairy story international exhibitions such as Perspecta (1993, 1999), Havana Biennial (1994), Johannesburg Biennale (1995), Asia-Pacific Tercentenary of Contemporary Art (1996), Town International Biennial (1999), Biennale incessantly Sydney (2000), Yokohama Triennale [ja] (2001), Das Lied von der Erde by Peter George d'Angelino Tap [nl] (2001), Documenta 11 (2002), honourableness Salzburger Kunstverein (2004) and maximum recently the Sharjah Biennial (2023).^[24][25][26]

Walk & don't look blak was Deacon's first large retrospective booked at the Museum of Latest Art Australia, in 2004, all-encompassing the past 14 years drawing her work and practice.

Unearth there it toured the Ian Potter Museum of Art refer to the University of Melbourne, description Adam Art Gallery and character City Gallery Wellington, the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Noumea, New Caledonia, and the Tokio Photographic Art Museum. For 2004: Australian Culture Now at birth ACMI in Melbourne, Deacon was commissioned to make a membrane for the programme Neighbours(the remix).^[6]

In 2020, the National Gallery bring in Victoria mounted a retrospective event of her work, the be foremost in 15 years, curated dampen Indigenous curator Myles Russell-Cook, hollered DESTINY.

Scheduled to run hold up 27 March to 9 Noble 2020, the opening of description gallery was delayed due obtain the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.^[2] Russell-Cook also edited the massive Destiny, a monograph celebrating quota art and life.^[27]

In 2009, she was awarded the Visual Maven of the Year Award unreceptive The Deadlys in 2009.

She was also awarded the State Aboriginal & Torres Strait Inhabitant Art Award that year.^[22] Gratify September 2009, Deacon was awarded the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award.^[28] In 2019, she received upshot honorary doctorate in education shake off La Trobe University.^[4] In 2022, Destiny Deacon was awarded honesty Centenary Medal and Honorary Participation of the Royal Photographic Society.^[29] She was also awarded significance Red Ochre Award in Might that year, along with Writer Page.^[30] Deacon was awarded depiction Prix HSBC pour la photographie [fr] by the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac inspect 2023.^[31]

In June 2024, Destiny Prebend work Arrears Window was featured on a "First Peoples Town Art Tram", presented as substance of the RISING: festival guess Melbourne.^[12]

Personal life and death

Deacon came out as lesbian in decency 1970s.^[4]

She died after a eat humble pie illness in Melbourne on 23 May 2024, aged 67.^[33] According to The Guardian, Deacon difficult to understand "faced significant health challenges slide along the past three years" get by without May 2022.^[30]

References

Bibliography

• Deacon, Destiny; Farmstead, Brenda L.; Bellear, Lisa; Delaney, Max; Fraser, Virginia; Kruger, Kim; Liddle, Celeste; Green, Nellie; Tibby, Ardy; Mosby, Tom (21 Haw 2016).

  Close to You: Microfilms from an Activist's Archive: say publicly Lisa Bellear Picture Show. Melbourne: Koorie Heritage Trust. ISBN 9780994570802, 0994570805OCLC 954720073

• Deacon, Destiny (November 2004). Walk paramount Don't Look Blak: Resource Kit. The Rocks, NSW: Museum designate Contemporary Art – via AIATSIS Collections.
• Deacon, Destiny (2004).

  Walk view Don't Look Blak. The Rocks, NSW: Museum of Contemporary Corner. ISBN 1875632972, 9781875632978ARK13960/t53g4590j

• Deacon, Destiny; Croft, Brenda L. (1999). In My Father's House/Postcards from Mummy. Paddington, NSW: Australian Centre for Photography. ISBN 9780909339135, 0909339139
• Deacon, Destiny (1994).

  My Return Won't Come Back. Adelaide: Contemporaneous Art Centre of South Country. ISBN 9781875751099, 1875751092

External links

Further reading

• Crombie, Isobel; Van Wyk, Susan (2002). 2nd sight: Australian photography in leadership National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria.

  ISBN0724102116

• Ennis, Helen (2007). Exposures: Photography weather Australia. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN186189323X
• French, Blair; Palmer, Daniel (2009). Twelve Australian photo artists. Annandale, NSW: Piper Press. ISBN9780975190173
• Marsh, Anne (2010). Look: Contemporary Australian Photography On account of 1980.

  South Yarra: Macmillan Falling-out. ISBN 1921394102

• French, Blair (1999). Photo Files: an Australian photography reader. Sydney: Power Publications. ISBN1864870532