Shock of the New
The Tennant Creek Brio transform mining maps, dead TVs, and frontier wreckage into new cultural claims—rejecting imposed “otherness” and forcing the settler gaze into confrontation. If their art is a shock, who’s really being unsettled?
“Hell is others.” It’s probably not the best way to introduce an artist collective founded on the idea that strength comes from working together, that the harmonious whole is greater than the individual parts. But “hell” and its various connotations does relate to the work of the Tennant Creek Brio and to the Italian word “brio” itself, which signifies “fire” as both a destructive and creative force. “Hell” might relate to contemporary life at Tennant Creek, or at least how it’s generally depicted in mainstream reports as a broken-down town best passed through on the way to and from Alice Springs or the so-called Devil’s Marbles nearby.
Related
The Tennant Creek Brio transform mining maps, dead TVs, and frontier wreckage into new cultural claims—rejecting imposed “otherness” and forcing the settler gaze into confrontation. If their art is a shock, who’s really being unsettled?
Helen Johnson’s The Birth of an Institution (2022) is a visceral vision of colonial power—an exposed white woman gives birth, not to a child but to the dome of the State Library of Victoria. Encircled by cold-eyed onlookers, she embodies both subjugation and complicity, raising urgent questions about the institutions we inherit.
