John Prince Siddon: All Mixed Up

All Mixed Up is a major solo exhibition featuring newly commissioned paintings, sculpture and installation from John Prince Siddon, first exhibited by Fremantle Arts Centre in Perth, Western Australia, and curated by Emilia Galatis.

A Walmajarri man based in Fitzroy Crossing in the West Kimberley, Prince spent his early years working on cattle stations until losing a leg in a riding accident.

His art combines diverse influences drawn from television, the traditional Kimberley craft of boab nut carving, desert iconography and the epic characters of Narrangkarni (Dreamtime).

Surreal and kaleidoscopic at first glance, these works offer an incisive commentary on the political and social issues of today, and on Western Australia’s dark and mostly undocumented history.

A man of many pasts; elusively literal, joyfully macabre, fantastically sombre, terribly concerned. Where fantasy is lore, myth stems from reality, and reality is a studio in the heart of Fitzroy Crossing, 400 km east of Broome, in the remote West Kimberley region of Western Australia.

For Prince, myth can be loosely described as First Nation’s concepts of Narrangkarni (Dreamtime), which are fixed, through systems of lore, and reality is a combination of contemporary TV, media, radio (the outside world) and Fitzroy Crossing community life (the inside world).

This dog-eat-dog world we live in; life, death, morality, mortality, incineration, judgment, reformation, rebirth – Prince always puts you somewhere on the edge, in viewing his work you’re usually left somewhere between elation and anxiety.

Mangkaja Arts is a significant Kimberley organisation with roots firmly entrenched in advocacy and opportunity for the multiple language groups of the Fitzroy Valley region.

Supporting a minimum of four different language groups including Bunuba and Gooniyandi of Martuwarra (river country), and Walmajarri and Wangkajunga from the jilji, (sand-hill Desert Country).

Originally from the Great Sandy Desert, Walmajarri people were displaced and relocated through systems of colonisation, resulting in being used as unpaid labour on cattle stations across the region. Prince is a Walmajarri man whose father, Pompey Siddon, was one of the founding members of Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency.

The organisation was incorporated in 1993, however, prior to this, Mangkaja (a Walmajarri word for shelter or gathering together) was operating from a small building near the highway. Led by the local men, Mangkaja provided a place where people could study and paint their personal stories, bush trips and histories.

Many stockmen were laid off upon the introduction of Equal Wages legislation and were forced to the fringes of Fitzroy Crossing. Displaced from traditional homelands the many culturally different groups forged new ways of working together.

Like many men from the Kimberley, Prince spent his early years working on cattle stations, until he lost his leg in a horse-riding accident. After the accident, the doctors said he would never walk again. Determined to recover, he has been walking ever since, often remarking how he proved the doctors wrong. After the accident, he discovered art.

Deliberately avoiding explicit narration of specific Narrangkarni, the concepts and principals embedded in his work contextualise these ancient principals for the modern world.

In this way, Walmajarri cosmology can be seen as a grand morality tale for the times we find ourselves in; visions of a future that respect and integrate Indigenous practices, healing our past.

The clues are there within his technicolour occult where desert iconography surfaces, often encrypted, and in uncanny places.

All Mixed Up encourages you to play Prince’s universal tarot; take an icon, take an image; every time you will see something new. Deciphering these fragmented realities demands repeat visits, and even then things continue to recalibrate, new things emerge and old things fade away.

“Go back and read it properly”, he told me once. That I did, realising I had missed a whole point within a four word text.

The man vomiting a snake, the man from Snowy River, a kangaroo ocean mirage, spider union jack, wheelchairs, boat people, footless people, cockroaches, Scomo, lizards wielding spears; the list goes on.

All Mixed Up, 2019 is the literal mixing of icons – culturally diverse Australia, Kimberley communities, and our current political situation – for the most part his message is light, yet sinister. The giant HMAS Sydney with its pointed canon protruding from Ned Kelly’s pants confirms this.

Fear, 2019 and Escape, 2019 also talk to this. Yes, the animals are all going to die in the fire, yes, it’s about life and death, but when we think of Indigenous land management strategies, this work is also about renewal and regeneration.

It is about ancient principles and ways of being that we, the settler/coloniser, have tried to destroy; knowledge and practices which now make perfect sense in the face of catastrophic devastation.

Painfully serious, familiar yet unfamiliar, the lightness and the darkness, allured yet confused – as I unravel these works, I feel more twisted.

Right now, we find ourselves at a political turning point, as people we are changing, yet our shifting consciousness, our new awareness is being resisted by the political leaders of our Country. All Mixed Up offers a unique and critical voice to these challenging times, a time of intellectual revolution, a time when the dominant narratives are being questioned.

Prince’s work, in many ways, reflects the absurdity of our time. For many Australians, the true history of our country has never been taught. Indigenous art has always ran parallel to history books, documenting a history of our nation and a history of Country which continues to be under the custodianship of Indigenous peoples.

The 1967 referendum was not that long ago. Many artists have told me over the years that they feel the Kimberley was forged off the back of slave labor and that the wealth of the state can be tied to the Indigenous workforce that built it and were never remunerated.

Today, the push for water and other resources can be seen as an extension of that disparity, Aboriginal people are still forced to compromise on decisions that impact the health of their Country, their communities and their cultural selfhood.

The consequences of Equal Wages legislation from 1968 saw the introduction of a new set of horrific circumstances. A senior artist in Kununurra remarked to me recently: “When we all got laid off, they left us on the fringes in camps and told us not to worry, that the government would look after us… that’s where we have been ever since”. Many of these issues remain unresolved; it’s hard to fully understand the layers of complexity in what is essentially a continued frontier experience.

Many of these issues remain unresolved; it’s hard to fully understand the layers of complexity in what is essentially a continued frontier experience.

These are our brutal narratives to own, they are the history of our nation, whether people like it or not.

Prince is part of a long tradition of Kimberley men who see truth telling, communicating their personal history and lived experiences as a matter of urgency. In the works of Rover Thomas, Ben Ward, Mervyn Street, David Downs or Tommy Ngarralja May for example, paintings of the Narrangkarni cannot be separated from the politics of place, of recent history and contemporary reality.

Prince’s work is urgent – magnificently meshing two incongruent worlds into a mixed-up version of Australia. In his words: “We mixed up, true, let’s keep it that way!"

A story within a story, within a global story.

Prince is definitely wrestling with these concepts in the same way the green vines wrestle with his objects. He is concerned with the macro and the micro, his world and the world at large. His role and function as an artist has become more critical, more intense.

All Mixed Up is the synthesis of his life’s work and marks the beginning of the next phase of his career. There is a new clarity and intent, shining through the vines of parable and riddle.

Prince is overtly political, yet there is softness and compassion in his work, and in his life.

Prince’s studio is at a support facility where his wife Susan resides. Occasionally the resident aged care pet, a pink and grey cockatoo makes an appearance in his work.

All Mixed Up challenges traditional and conservative notions of Indigenous painting; it disrupts our notions of Australian contemporary art. Creating links between space, time and history, All Mixed Up takes a critical look at where we are, in reference to where we have been.