Lot 121

Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne

River of Corn, Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa, 12 - 27 January 2001 (another example)
Wild Times Call, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 2001
Fiona Foley: Wild Times Call, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 13 March - 6 April 2022 (another example)

"The photographs were first exhibited in 2001 at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in the USA. In the catalogue from the Florida exhibition, Djon Mundine describes how, for white colonialists, photography became "a vehicle for recording new and exotic lands and informing the 'unexotic' Europe of the strange landscape, flora, fauna, and people. In the case of the postcard print fashion from around 1900; to entice tourists to cruise to [exotic] places ... Ultimately and blatantly however, photography became another tool of colonialism, to label, control, dehumanise and disempower their subjects who could only reply in defiant gaze at the lens controlled by someone else."

"Foley's photographs comment on the history of the photography of indigenous peoples from colonised lands. "For Indigenous people the camera's central role has been in transforming but really stereotyping, our cultures." In more recent times, "Indigenous people have moved behind the camera, firstly replacing the documenter, then creatively reinterpreting their photographic history." (excerpt, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery exhibition statement)

© Fiona Foley/Copyright Agency, 2025