The works in 'D Harding with Kate Harding'

D Harding
Blue ground/dissociative 2017
Reckitt's Blue and white ochre on linen
Private collection, Brisbane

D Harding grew up in the Queensland coal mining community of Moranbah – their father a miner and cattle farmer and their mother a skilled artisan. They relocated to Brisbane in 2004 and later attended the Queensland College of Art, where in 2019, they completed their Doctor of Visual Arts with a thesis entitled 'The language of space'. 

Harding's painterly and sculptural practice is driven by their deep connection with the experiences and histories of their family – in particular, their matrilineal heritage – and the important stories of what is now known as Carnarvon Gorge, a 32-kilometre-long canyon of sandstone cliffs and remnant rainforest that sits among the headwaters of various river systems in Queensland's Central Highlands. 

Reckitt’s Blue, a laundry whitening agent developed in the mid-nineteenth century and used domestically across the colonial frontier, also features in this early period of Harding’s artmaking. Made from powdered ultramarine and baking soda, this product was first used by the artist in 2015 as a pigment in reference to the domestic servant work undertaken by their grandmother and great-grandmother under the auspices of the Queensland Government’s Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897.

While referring to modernist monochrome painting, Harding also describes Blue ground/dissociative as a performative work. In the act of brushing crushed Reckitt’s Blue onto the canvas, the artist echoed the involuntary actions of their female ancestors. The day after its making, they returned to the canvas, marking its surface with a powerful splash of white ochre from their grandmother’s Country at Carnarvon Gorge.

The resulting painting is charged, tactile and somewhat alchemic, capturing within its layers suggestions of other matter from the floor on which it was made. In meeting the signified labour of Reckitt’s Blue with this action of resistance, Harding rejects its oppressive symbolism and works to reinstate the agency and potency of Country, both materially and metaphorically.

D Harding
Cloaks (mortua and mortuus) 2018
gum arabic and powdered pigment on cotton blanketing

Repression cloak (ceremony for a gay wedding) 2018
synthetic powdered pigment, ochre, gum arabic, abrasion and pressure on cotton blanketing and nails

Untitled cloak 2018
dry pigment and gum arabic on cotton blanketing and nails
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

These folded and stacked cloaks were all made while Harding was undertaking a residency in Stockholm through the laspis program in 2018. A concealing or protective garment, the cloak takes on a similar role in D's practice to the overpainting employed on canvases that contain stories that may not be shared with a general audience, such as Untitled (private painting H1), 2019. The artist's choice not to reveal the the content of such works makes a claim for cultural or personal safety. Here the Latin words in the title of Cloaks (mortua and mortuus) indicate that these are mortuary cloaks, while Repression cloak (ceremony for a gay wedding) – one of a series of works made following the affirmative result of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey – makes space for the complex emotions felt by those implicated in the ruling. 

D Harding
Emetic painting (International Rock Art Red and white) 2020
Acrylic binder, dry pigment and gum arabic on linen
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

In this substantial diptych, Harding presents the audience with a provocation. While in the past they have often used ochres from their families' Country to link process back to location – such as in The Leap/Watershed, 2017, which was recently acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Tate – here they cover the canvas in store-bought hematite, a red iron oxide. 

Through their own research and conversations with other First Nations artists in the context of international exhibitions, Harding has learned that rock-art sites across the globe use hematite and red ochre – a practice that spans cultures, places and time. While acknowledging the importance of specificity in relation to cultural practices and spaces, they propose International Rock Art Red as a new international standard colour: a new entity in the shared language of colour. 

D Harding
F2 (Mt Hetty fire viewed from Bandanna) 2020
wool felt made with Jan Oliver, gum arabic, hematite and nails
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

F2 (Mt Hetty fire viewed from Bandanna) was made by Harding with their colleague Jan Oliver's guidance as she taught them the process of felting three types of wool together. The resulting form bears an uncanny resemblance to a hide or animal skin, and its selvaged edge shares something of the topography surrounding Carnarvon Gorge – continued in the work, Emetic painting (International Rock Art Red and white), 2020. 

As with F1 (Saddler's contract), 2020, Harding's felts function as indexes of the body: an ongoing theme in the artist's work, evidenced in the early stencil-based wall paintings through to the glass works and recent breath works with ochre. 

Harding's materials and forms register the body through their scale, handling and mode of mark making. In indexing the body, the works acknowledge the presence of their maker and their families' ongoing connection to culture and Country. 

D Harding
F1 (Saddler's contract) 2020
wool felt made by Jan Oliver, gum arabic, yellow ochre, scorching and nails
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

In 2020, Harding commenced a new body of work focusing on felt. Drawing on the skills and knowledges of the community of makers around them – specifically Jan Oliver and Carol McGregor – Harding proposes these felts as a new cultural form akin to the possum skin cloak-making practices that once existed in Carnarvon Gorge and that have been reprised by Indigenous makers in south-eastern Australia. 

The felt of F1 (Saddler's contract) was gifted to Harding by Oliver and used by the artist for shelter and warmth while camping out on Country. The scorched circles indicate the resting place of a heated billy and frying pan. 

In preparation for this exhibition, D Harding observed: 'I am not the only artist in my family'. D's mother Kate Harding's presence in this exhibition attests to this statement. In conversation, their works evidence a strong continuing connection to culture and Country.  

Kate's making is propelled by a curiosity around materials and methods. Self-taught and taking pleasure in experimentation, she has developed a range of technical skills – wood carving, leather work, crochet, needlepoint, appliqué and quilt-making. Kate's studio is her home, and like many artists, she works in and around other commitments. Using tables and spaces as they become available, this home base facilitates her working across multiple projects at the same time. She explains:

Kate's early quilt-making was informed by American Amish and Scandinavian quilting traditions. This period is acknowledged in the exhibition through the inclusion of two quilts made on the occasion of D's birth and tenth birthday. For their public display, these quilts have been folded: a gesture often used by D in order to hold and protect personal or certain cultural information. 

In 2008, with the passing of her father, Kate created a significant quilt that depicted his story and relationships to family and Country. While made with store-bought fabrics and Western quilting methods, the work used licenced Indigenous-designed fabrics and was the first to directly address her family's cultural story in its conception and design. This shift has continued in Kate's quilt-making practice. 

On the occasion of Through a lens of visitation, D has invited their mother, Kate, to make a major body of work for exhibition. Five quilts and a cloak are presented in the gallery alongside her child's paintings, felt works and sculptural forms.

The exhibition has also provided a period of creative and professional development for Kate, who worked with a community of makers – including Jan Oliver, Mandy Quadrio and Carol McGregor – through late 2020 to develop further skills in dyeing textiles with ochres from her mother's Country. This process has created a new space in which Kate's quilt-making is fully self-determined and Indigenised, committed to recalling stories of family, culture and Country. 

Three quilts appear on the gallery walls celebrating the stories and presence of women. They indicate the significant influence of matrilineal voices on D's practice, which has focused on bringing forward these voices and stories. These quilts hold stories and knowledges specific to Kate's family and Country and relate to the colours and choices of materials used on the back panel of each work.

Beyond their familial relationship, Kate and D Harding have long been in conversation about making. Through their respective material practices, both identify that they are holding space for specific cultural knowledges while working in diaspora from Carnarvon Gorge. Home – where these works are made and lived with – is understood in an expanded way: as a relationship rather than a place, and as both Country and a way of existing when off Country.