Image and Meaning - Jason Hampton

I was just going to read out a brief story that summarises what my work's about and how I've been inspired to do my work. And to begin my speech I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners, the Kaurna people and to thank the Adelaide Arts Festival for organising this and for their warm support and assistance.

Firstly I'd like to give you a brief background of myself. I'm from the Northern Territory and my family's country starting from my Grandfather's side is Ngalakarn country, and on my Grandmother's side is Gurindji country. My family was assimilated by the Government's Stolen Generation process. I am currently working on my Master's project based on cross-cultural communication and Aboriginal health. I propose to use Multimedia as a means to find new ways of improving the communication between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. I've been working with Aboriginal renal patients to help develop better educational material that can be used to describe how the kidney functions and the material that is currently being used to educate Aboriginal people is not really that flash.

Therefore I've created my own Aboriginal X-Ray style images of how the kidney functions. And one of the images at the South Australian Museum here, it's up on display, and an Aboriginal concept. I combined hand drawn images with a program called Adobe Photoshop. This is a process that has potential to provide a new avenue to communicating and reaching people at new levels through the language of art. I've been working on this concept for a period of five years. I believe it is now in a class of its own and during my studies, and with my involvement in art, I have found the discrimination against our people a major concern within education as well.

The politicalisation of my work has been a natural part of my development and as a contemporary Aboriginal artist, the discrimination against our people for our knowledge and culture has made me want to fight back through my art. My work is about being strong for my people, country and culture and I am stating very clearly that Aboriginal art and culture play a very important role in advancement in technology and pride in Australia's future.

My work provides a brief insight for ways in which Aboriginal art and culture are incorporated through modern technology. Aboriginal people have been banished from the scientific and technological world for too long. We've been taught that this is the white man's place, made to feel that we are incapable of keeping up with the pace of modern change. We've be taught to become dependent on white people to do all our work because they are really brainy. We are disempowered, put out of work and made to feel no good about getting work in a white man's world. We need to take back ownership of our own art, our knowledge systems and cultural resources and be given the opportunity to modulate technological adaptation more effectively to adapt our people. I've drawn images of Australian animals and the images have been drawn so they reflect Aboriginal meaning to maintain connection to our culture through a new medium. That roughly summarises what I wanted to say.

© Jason Hampton 2002