A common narrative among European settlers was that the lands they occupied were empty and, therefore, free to claim. This assumption, imposed across many colonies, severed Indigenous peoples from places to which they held deep cultural and spiritual ties. Central Australia was no exception: the doctrine of ‘terra nullius’, used to justify British claims over Australia, treated the land as if it belonged to no one, disregarding the long histories of Aboriginal communities who had been living there for tens of thousands of years.
For this short documentary, the British artist Patrick Waterhouse collaborated with the Warlukurlangu art centre to revisit that history by intervening in official colonial documents and maps. Working for several years with Warlpiri artists from Yuendumu and Nyirripi, he invited them to respond to these archival materials through their own visual languages. The film captures the collaborative process, the conversations prompted by these documents and the striking works that emerge: pieces in which colonial cartography intersects with Indigenous knowledge and art.
Director: Patrick Waterhouse with the communities of Yuendumu and Nyirripi at the Warlukurlangu art centre The joys that follow rain – an animated Aboriginal artwork Scenes from Aboriginal Australian pottery chart the turn of the seasons Native cartography: a bold mapmaking project that challenges Western notions of place Looted artefacts are reborn as ‘ghosts’ in an artist’s protest against colonisation Why is this Kenyan artefact in storage at a German museum? Nomadic life is a warm, poignant memory for many Irish Travellers Transforming landscape painting into a portal through time On the run from COVID-19, an Indigenous family treks deep into the Amazon rainforest What the ‘Louvre of the desert’ reveals about the human story
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