Stolen (Stretched Canvas)

Artist Name: Lee Hampton – Koori Kicks Art
Size: 1850x1245mm

Story:
Even today Aboriginal children are forcefully removed from their families.

This artwork represents those children.

At the top of the artwork, there are a number of Aboriginal communities, each circle represents a different Aboriginal community.

Although they are separate communities, they all share the same bond of living off the land, handing down their stories and culture from one generation to another.
Between these communities are the swirling tracks that connect each to the next.

Their people roam freely among their surroundings.

The ochre background represents the land in which these kids were born onto, only to be moved to concrete jungles.

At the center of the artwork is the white man. He brings with him, his religion and his beliefs in what he believes is good for the black man.

They reach out like a cancer to the black communities, taking the children, and so the process begins to convert these kids into white man. As they reach the center of the white man ways, they are brainwashed to forget their traditions, their 50000 year old history and stories, taught the way of the white man, and white mans God.

Once the metamorphosis is complete, they are sent out into the white communities to live as white children.

Stolen is their care free, land living ways, replaced with white man religion and structured upbringing.

The white section down the bottom represents their new structured life style.

They now don’t belong in either world, as they are no longer black fellas, nor are they white fellas.

The intricate net of white ever so fragile, may appear to bond their new communities, yet could break at any given moment.

Stolen from a world they know, to be cast into a white man world that will never really accept them.