COLOURING-IN BLACKTOWN: A LESSON IN IMPERMANENCE

Darug artists and knowledge holders Leanne Mulgo Watson and Erin Wilkins collaborate with artist and architect Peter Rush to present Songlines & Sightlines - Colouring-in Blacktown. This collaborative project was shown in The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre during May and June 2021 tells of a long, deep and ongoing story belonging to Blacktown. 

While the project itself may have ended, the sense of reality this work brings long remains. Greeted by two receptionists from the arts centre, I’m guided into a room filled with many sketches colours with vibrant whiteboard markers on once empty white walls. Kids and guardians sit in the middle of the room chatting quietly. 

‘Songlines & Sightlines’ invites the public to draw on the wall alongside Peter Rush’s illustrations of the urban Blacktown landscape. There are mini graffiti tags of names and postcodes placed alongside drawings of stick figure families; all signs of the youngsters who have made their mark on the work. It’s a humorous yet sweet contrast to the seriousness of the art, the two aspects working curiously well with one another. 

The telling of Blacktown’s history and development is shown through Rush's focus on the imagery of the local architecture, featuring illustrations of iconic sites such as Blacktown Native Institute (pre-demolition) and the front of Westpoint shopping centre. Aside from the drawings of citizens wandering the Blacktown scene, other signs of life are indicated by the use of human and animal footprints as well as symbols depicting groups gathering. 

Erin Wilkins and Leanne Mulgo Watson elaborate on the meaning of cultural symbols during  their interview: “Songlines connect our dreaming stories ‘and us’ they connect everything. Those songlines have been recreated through the use of footprints. Through the use of animals and the silhouettes, that are all moving but not only are they moving in one direction: it’s a timelines and a place, location through Darug and specifically though the Blacktown area as time travels, so does our movements, so does our time, so does our songline.”

(Image credit: @tfidss)

It becomes clear that interpretations of Blacktown differ between Indigenous and non-indigenous artists on this project. Wilkins and Mulgo Watson showcase a spiritual and personal side of Blacktown, drawing from Indigenous history and symbolism in the area, and Rush meets them with a dense grey landscape showing scenes of fences and tall lifeless buildings. 

Peter Rush also mentions the difference in perspective this in his own interview: 

“This opportunity to draw with Leanne and Erin and sort of connect this ordinary life that we have with the sort of history, the real history of our country and blacktown.”

He continues, “You can connect the two things together, there’s my  drawings of this urban mess and there’s this representation of the history and there are the songlines of our country - something that we - I KNOW we don’t think about. I know we struggle to sort of connect.”

(Photo credit: @blacktownarts)

While we know that Western Sydney continues to grow, locals here are slowly being left with remnants of a home they once grew up with. 

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Blacktown last year doing a lot of drawings in the past year and even drawings I’ve done a few months ago... those places have changed.” Peter states. 

Observing the markings and drawings in the room made me reflect on my own capacity to love and connect to a place you can no longer recognise. When you’re left with only memories, it can be hard to accept that time has passed you by without so much as a second's notice.

However, Erin provides a different outlook on the impermanence of place:

“Even though there’s modern day developments and Blacktown is very built up, it’s probably one of the most built up areas and still growing. Our people and our animals and stories are still here. They hold connections to the country even underneath a building that’s been erected. It’s to show that we’re still here.

Just because there’s a building and there’s a street and there’s traffic lights and there’s shops doesn’t mean we’re not here and doesn’t mean that our country isn’t still important to us and to maintain that custodial responsibility to care for country regardless of what's here is important.”

While Blacktown and surrounding neighborhoods begin to shed their old skin for something more new, Songlines and Sightlines impart with us the knowledge that life is ongoing and ever changing and yet, despite it all, we continue to adapt to the world that surrounds us.