The first thing that strikes visitors at the latest exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) is the purple; it blankets the walls, ceiling and even the windows.
This is the brainchild of multi-disciplinary artist Roberta Joy Rich, who has brought her exhibition, The Purple Shall Govern, from Melbourne to Perth.
“The purple is inspired by a significant anti-apartheid protest moment that occurred in Cape Town on September 2, 1989,” Rich said.
Known as the Purple Rain protest, it came about when police filled water cannons with purple dye, which was intended to mark the protesters so they could be identified and arrested later.
“But in a kind of ironic turn of events, the protesters managed to commandeer the water cannon and spray the buildings surrounding, and the National Party headquarters became purple,” Rich said.
“And in this moment of chaos at this protest, everybody became purple.
“I just loved this idea of purple extinguishing these really damaging race categories that have existed in that context.”
Political and personal
Rich said she wanted her art to “create installations that evoke deep thinking about political and social issues”.
The first piece that people see as they come into the purple hall is deeply personal; her aunt’s old identity card (marked with a “K” for Kleurling, the Afrikaans word for “coloured”) and an old “dompas” (“stupid pass”), the internal passport that all black people had to carry during the apartheid years.
“I really want people to first come into contact with the residues and traces of these archives and government legislation before [they] experience the other works in the exhibition, to set up this thinking about permissions about entering space and who is entitled to space,” Rich said.
The pieces that follow also invite viewers to consider the connections between South Africa’s apartheid history and Australia’s treatment of Indigenous people.
On one television screen is archival news footage of Nelson Mandela’s visit to Australia in October 1990, when he met with then-prime minister Bob Hawke and others.
The footage has been edited to invite other perspectives on Mandela, now regarded as an international statesman, by muting certain voices.
“The work, which is called Pigs Might Fly Too, features Aboriginal activists including Michael Mansell and Dr Gary Foley, who talk about Mandela’s visit and his silence on the Aboriginal fight for land rights and the black rights movement of this place,” Rich said.
“The work essentially is a reframing of a public broadcast where the only voices we hear in this screen come from the black folk of nation states Australia and South Africa.
“Foley, in this work, literally describes Bob Hawke and Nelson Mandela rubbing shoulders amongst each other, when prior to Mandela’s release, he was being referred to as a terrorist.
“This work explores what accountability and solidarity look like, because South Africa’s apartheid ended through a mass global international boycott against apartheid.”
Australia’s own ‘pass laws’
On another screen, more explicit links are drawn between Australian and South African history in a piece called Though Buried, They Echo.
Old news footage shows six men who championed racial segregation and discrimination, including Hendrik Verwoerd (often described as the architect of apartheid) and former Labor leader Arthur Calwell, who championed the White Australia policy in the 1950s.
Also featured is Sir Joh Bjelke Peterson, the infamous Queensland premier who declared a state of emergency to prevent protests against the Springboks’ tour of Australia in 1971.
“I wanted to join the links between South Africa’s colonial history and Australia’s, and we see them in this monitor that’s buried within the wall amongst all the scaffolding and structural elements, but we can’t hear them,” Rich said.
“Though these men are buried within our historical past, they still echo within the laws and the ways in which we experience Australia today.”
Rich said she considered the relevance to WA when transferring the exhibition and noted that the area where PICA stands is within the former Perth Prohibited Area, from which Aboriginal people were banned unless they held a pass allowing them to enter.
That law existed in WA decades before South African apartheid.
In preparing the show, Rich consulted with Whadjuk Noongar elder Aunty Sandra Harben to form a deeper understanding of the connections between her work and Boorloo (Perth).
“The connections that exist within the South Africa laws – with the pass laws where you had to have a passport on you as a black person to be able to enter public spaces – this was something she could also share about the certificate of exemption and how that existed within her family,” Rich said.
“We were able to share laughs and reflect on the kind of resilience that our families have experienced through facing these oppressive laws, but also share quite heavy conversation and connect in that way, which feels special.”
When past meets present
Rich hopes viewers will be inspired to reflect on the events that happened in South Africa and Australia in the past as well as the global events of today.
“It feels very timely that this exhibition is on at this present time of a No vote, post-referendum,” she said.
“I do hope that this exhibition can draw some very critical thinking, for people to be able to enter in and have their own relationship to these histories, but also a deeper reflection on what it means to occupy space.
“Some people will come in and it’s a moment for learning and insight and reflection, whereas other people will come and I hope have a sense of affirmation that this history of apartheid in Australia also existed as well.
“Even what’s happening globally, in places like Myanmar, West Papua and Palestine, it feels like there’s a lot of very relevant, converging experiences that are happening for people who are under oppressive apartheid laws right now.”
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