Goonellabah-based artist Karla Dickens is an Indigenous woman and activist who fights for the environment, women’s and Aboriginal rights.

Her work is often confronting – tackling challenging issues of Australia’s oppression of Aboriginal people or domestic violence towards women.

Her latest work, now on exhibition at Lismore Regional Gallery, is part of the Partnershipping Project, where artists were asked to re-imagine a real boat. 

Read more: Art boats sail into Lismore Regional Gallery

Karla said she found her boat at the Lismore tip.

“It’s a little yacht which I got my mate Lee Arnold to paint on,” she said. 

“I put a rusty union jack over the boat and on top is an archaic game from the 80s.

“It represents the English colonisation of Australia and how when they first landed in Sydney Harbour, Aboriginal people weren’t sure if they were aliens or spirits. 

“It’s about how they leave the peoples of this country alienated and lost in space - it still impacts every indigenous person in the country.”

It’s not the first time Karla has worked with boats and sculptures. She made an overturned boat sculpture which is now in the National Maritime Museum.

“It had ‘unwelcome’ painted on the side and the oars were made into crosses,” she said.

“I’ve done a lot of research about Sydney Harbour – there are so many horrific stories about what happened with first contact.

“I needed to dig deep and find stories about this country’s history which have been whitewashed.

“My art has given me and amazing opportunity to look at identity and history and I mash those conflicts together to bring awareness about it to other people.”

To See not Not to See by Karla Dickens. Photo by Andrew Baker (www.andrew-baker.com)

Growing up

Karla grew up in Redfern, Sydney in a small family.

“I have German and Irish heritage from my mum and my dad is a Wiradjuri man,” she said.

“I grew up with a cross-cultural identity and I acknowledge that I have ties to the invaders as well as the First Peoples of this country. 

“I have ties to women that have been abused and the men who have been the abusers and I try to look at the whole story and all parts of me.”

As a young woman, Karla said she was an addict and “grew up fast” in Sydney.

“I came crashing down in my early 20s and went straight out of rehab into art school,” she said. “I’d always had a passion for art - I was just distracted for a while.”

Karla then moved to the Hunter Valley and built a house made of stone and found objects from the Cessnock tip. Her house reflected her passion for sculpture, as well as her training as a painter. 

The Northern Rivers

“I was looking for a place to settle down that wasn’t a major city and so I moved to the Northern Rivers,” she said.

“I came up here to have a child in a place that was safe to be a gay mother.”

Karla then got involved with opening Blackfellas Dreaming - an Aboriginal art gallery in Bangalow where she also displayed her own art.

Bringing up a child as a single mother kept her busy and Karla said her daughter has been her catalyst.

“She drives me to work as much as I do and made me take art more seriously,” she said.

Major exhibitions

These days, Karla’s work is well known and she has work in some of the major collecting institutions in Australia. 

She was part of an exhibition at Carriageworks in Sydney which looked at the Aboriginal Progressive Association.

“It was formed in 1924 formed to get Aboriginal rights happening rights happening – about the time the black panther movement happened in the US,” Karla said.

“In 1936, there was the first Day of Mourning – which was about Indigenous determination and changing the date of Australia Day and - they were fighting for what we are still fighting about now.

She also won a Parliament House Award for creating an artwork of an Australian flag with handstitched crosses which reflects on the Day of Mourning. The flag is now in Parliament House.

Art as protest

“I love that art can be a form of protest - my art had a stronger and bigger voice than I do and my flag found its way inside,” she said.

Karla now makes a living from her art and has a gallery representative in Brisbane who helps her sell her work. 

“I feel blessed that my art journey has evolved into how things are now,” she said.

 “For a long time my art was not saleable because was so honest and raw.

“I think artists are shamans when it comes to what’s happening in the world, exploring things in people’s minds and hearts.”

Storytelling

Karla said her work crosses many forms of media and she uses any material that helps her tell a story. 

“I love using found objects,” she said. 

“When I use ironing boards to talk about Indigenous women’s stories in this country, mainstream Australia doesn’t connect it with our women. 

“They also don’t connect a pickaxe with Aboriginal men.

“The stereotypical connection made is often with a weaving basket or a boomerang - but the First Peoples of this nation have a history of farming and working on this land.  

“Those everyday items I used are a part of our history of domestic servitude and that’s been a massive part of my family history.

“My great grandmother was a domestic and ended up dying traumatised.”

Karla said when she was growing up, some of the stories from her grandmother “were on the table” and a lot of them were not.

Silence

“The silence was a part of a point in time and history,” she said. 

“Now people love doing therapy and talking - but my grandparents just got on with it.

“You don’t bring up that stuff often – they were just worried about how to put food on the table.” 

”My family was displaced at that times in Australia – if you could pass as other than an Aboriginal person, that was good.

“Gran told me to say I was Italian and to stay out of the sun.”

She made a series of masks for the National Art Gallery collection which was an installation of assimilated warriors – well dressed men in suit jackets covered in emu feather with farm equipment and a dog muzzle.

She’s had work in the major exhibition Defying Empire and is currently creating art for the Sydney Bienalle next year, which will have its first Indigenous curator.

She’s also just finished making a film Mother’s Little Helpers with writer Bruce Pascoe that involved photography and sculpture installations.

With an amazing collection of art under her belt already, Karla is keen to keep doing what she does, challenging ideas about the status quo and bringing light to hidden histories.

For more information about Karla’s work, visit her website http://www.karladickens.com.au/