Koonibba roosters 1906 to 2016 (detail)

Grant Hobson travelled to Ceduna on the far west coast of South Australia to create this photographic work, in collaboration with the oldest Aboriginal football club in Australia. For Hobson, the Koonibba Football Club is a powerful symbol of a community's survival and resistance in a harsh social and political environment. Koonibba roosters 1906 to 2016 (2016) represents this struggle across generations through an assemblage of photographs of current and past football players. Placed in a row above photographs of the 2016 team, Hobson has reproduced eight images from a 1939 Harvard, Adelaide Universities Anthropological Expedition. The photos were taken for ethnographic documentation and research, but Hobson noticed that many individuals wore the distinctive guernsey of the Koonibba Football Club under their jackets. By presenting the current team alongside players from 1939, Hobson celebrates an athletic institution that over the course of its 110-year history has been a source of pride and social cohesion. Grant Hobson acknowledges the support from the South Australian Museum to provide access to the Norman Barnett Tindale Collection and to ANGYSN Screenprinters and Phillip Campbell Design. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.