Mum Shirl | Black Saint of Redfern

MUM SHIRL | BLACK SAINT OF REDFERN HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS & PAINTINGS FROM “THE KEEPING PLACE” OF GORDON & ELAINE SYRON PRESENTED BY COOEE ART GALLERY IN CONJUNCTION WITH NAIDOC WEEK | 4 - 27 JULY 2019

COOEE ART GALLERY

Mum Shirl | Black Saint of Redfern 4 - 27 July 2019 . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cooee Art Gallery warns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that this exhibition contains images of people who are now deceased. Cooee Art Gallery does not wish to upset or cause distress to those living relatives and community members. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Historical paintings & photographs from ‘The Keeping Place Museum’ of Gordon & Elaine Syron.

The exhibition includes paintings by Gordon Syron, considered ‘the father of contemporary Aboriginal art’ and photographs by his wife, Elaine Pelot-Syron, social documentary photographer. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cover (front & back) Image Elaine Pelot-Syron | Leading the March [detail] | c.1990 archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper | 75 x 50 cm Inner Front Cover Image Elaine Pelot-Syron | I Won’t Do Your Dirty Deeds | 1981 archival pigment prints on cotton rag papaer | 140 x 99.5 cm Inner Back Cover Image Gordon Syron | Where The Wild Flower’s Once Grew [detail] oil on canvas | 213 x 122 cm

Elaine Pelot-Syron | A Portrait of Mum Shirl at the Aboriginal Legal Service opening | 1984 archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper | 116 x 93 cm

Mum Shirl | Black Saint of Redfern Bronwyn Bancroft

Aboriginal Artist and Activist | Co-Founder of Boomalli Aboriginal Arts

‘Sally Morgan and I were exhibiting at Cooee Gallery, which was situated in Paddington, Sydney at the time.

the table top! This was an exhilarating but a bit unorthodox. Three women on a table top.

The years was 1991 and Adrian Newstead was the owner of the gallery with his wife Anne and Joe Croft was affiliated with the Gallery at that time.

Mum Shirl spoke splendidly as always and this moment is a treasured memory in my life.’

I had invited Mum Shirl to open the exhibition as I held her in the highest of esteem. She had been drinking tea and yarning in the kitchen of my shop for years. ‘Designer Aboriginals’ was situated in Rozelle and established in 1985.

The show was titled ‘Some Aboriginal Women’. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship for Sally Morgan and myself.

Mum Shirl somehow managed to get on top of a table in the gallery. It was not large.

Mum wanted the attention of the Gallery attendees and she got it.

Her Amazing presence and commanding voice stopped them in their tracks.

Mum invited both Sally and I to join her on

16th April 2019

Mum Shirl was a second Mother to me. I wanted to learn more about the Aboriginal community and she took me on.

- Elaine Pelot Syron

Elaine Pelot-Syron | Black Saint of Redfern | 1981 archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper | 37 x 49 cm

Elaine Pelot-Syron Artist Statement

I immigrated from America at a time where the Civil Rights Movement was growing, integration between blacks and whites were happening, and the Vietnam War was still on.

As a History & English high school teacher, I saw such a distortion -a huge gap from 1971 to 2019 in Australian history- Aboriginal people were just missing - as the land was cleared and colonized and the urban movement of Land Rights was ignored.

After seven years of teaching and marking the HSC, I resigned to spend more time documenting the people of Redfern and Aboriginal people struggling to take their rightful place in Australian History.

One day I took my brother Kent to meet Mum Shirl, in the hope that he would understand my dedication to my photography and my commitment to fight for equal rights for Aboriginal people.

Some years later I asked his response on that meeting and he wrote for me: In 1981, Elaine took me to meet Mum Shirl in Redfern. At age 60 plus and surrounded by the children she was raising - against all odds - she performed small miracles every day. After meeting

Mum Shirl I now believe in miracles. I know her spirit lives on in Redfern—and far beyond.

Mum Shirl was a second Mother to me. I wanted to learn more about the Aboriginal community and she took me on.

I met Mum Shirl in 1977. Ande Reese, now Andrea Kindred, introduced me to Bobbi Sykes - Dr Roberta Sykes - and to Mum Shirl. Later when I remarried in 1980, Bobbi was my witness at our small wedding in our Kings Cross home.

Mum recognized that I did not know much about the huge land called Australia and I became her student. I loved listening to her and began taping her and she loved it that I wanted to tape her and set the story straight - about false reporting in the newspapers and tv, about applying same stereotyped opinions to urban and remote communities, poverty, living conditions and so many other areas of abusive reporting. She said the government lies in so many ways to cover up the past and present mistreatment of her people.

Mum Shirl told me about how Aboriginal people had great warriors who fought to their death against the taking of their land. She described the Frontier Wars. She said there were great Aboriginal heroes

and heroines - the Black Trackers; the Matriarchs who held whole tribes together after their men were massacred. Mum told me in detail how the Aboriginal Protection Act tore families apart and created generations of stolen children and said she was fighting against the results of awful treatment from the missions which were holocaust camps and how one day at a time Mum felt hope for the future.

Mum always loved the Aboriginal artists, the dancers, the performing artists, and the storytellers. Her heroes were verbal ones and visual art was a way of keeping a true history and culture.

I was one of her favorite artists because of my 1978 painting Judgement By His Peers - a story about the injustice of the court system - and she renamed it The Real Australian Story.

Keeping the culture was her priority and Land Rights was the way to do it. I began to understand the chant at the local protests, marches to Parliament House and to Sydney Town Hall of: What do we want? Land Rights. When do we want it? Now. Mum Shirl was raised by her grandparents in the bush, she could not read or write but that is another story.

When Mum got sick she would keep going. She would often not be ready when I arrived and was told she was still asleep as the police came and got her in the middle of the night to settle some dispute which was violent.

I began to feel a small part of the huge Land Rights Movement which involved all of Australia. The 1967 Referendum gave Aboriginal people not just the vote but the ability to own land and it was difficult to understand how before that time Aboriginal people were just part of the flora and fauna of this country, as if they were animals.

One of her well-known quotes was: We’ve got a bunch of galahs in our Parliament - they’re a bunch

birds squawking at each other, we’ve got a Hawke and we’ve even got a Peacock strutting around.

I cannot remember the rest of that quote as sometimes she would speak on and on as if she were standing at church pulpit.

We traveled a lot together to prisons, to children courts, to hospitals, to Darlinghurst old gaol, and then a courtroom, where murder trials were held. Now Darlinghurst is a Police Station.

We travelled to Canberra where we stayed all night in a tiny stonewalled and floor room, in the bottom of a nunnery. We travelled to Alice Springs, Newcastle, Wollongong, Bathurst and more than once to the bush in the early evening where there were hidden two-up games attended by whites and Aboriginal people. I was never allowed out of the car and always asked how are you going to get home? and she just laughed and said don’t worry the police will bring me to my door.

We travelled to Tea Tree in Northern Territory where we stayed in the living room of an art advisor at the time in the late 1980s. Tea Tree was a dry, noalcohol community and it was my first experience upon entering it.

I picked up Mum Shirl from a huge variety of places, schools, meetings in homes, and Sydney Town Hall.

We attended church together in Redfern, where she admitted in a booming voice I’m a mad Roman Catholic.

I have kept some of my history books from the 1970s where they describe the Aborigine as primitive, naked, with a spear, a boomerang, and a nulla-nulla.

Also that the Aborigine was not civilized and had no written language, no religion, no farming skills and polygamy was prevalent.

Overpage | Elaine Pelot-Syron | Meeting on Redfern Street | 1980 archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper | 145 x 42 cm

Elaine Pelot-Syron | Leading the March | c.1990 archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper | 75 x 50 cm

Elaine Pelot-Syron | Land Rights at Town Hall archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper | 45 x 32 cm

Elaine Pelot-Syron | Mum Shirl and Joe Croft archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper | 57 x 38 cm

Elaine Pelot-Syron | This Is My Biggest Fight Ever Against Drugs and Alcohol - Poster archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper | 60 x 41 cm

Danny Gilber t Shirley Smith

I met Shirley Smith (Mum Shirl) in 1982 when, with our children, Kathleen and I started attending mass at St Vincent’s Catholic Church in Redfern.

On entering St Vincent’s on a Sunday morning, we were struck by two inspirational and towering personalities – Shirley and Ted Kennedy. As with Catholic liturgical practice,Ted was the officiating Priest and the man in charge.

When I say “in charge”, Ted was not really in charge. He was ever ready to encourage and provide space for the participation of others in the mass. Shirley never held back in filling that space. She would bring us up to date with stories of individual suffering and need.

These were mostly stories about Indigenous

people but as Shirley so often said “I don’t care whether a person is black, white or brindled. If they need help they need help”.

She would inform us of her run-ins with prison authorities, magistrates, the medical profession, lawyers, social workers, educators and Catholic religious – mostly priests because she really loved nuns. She would also demand to be ferried across the city or across the state to visit prisons and attend to persons in need. Of course the driver was often Ted. If not Ted, it would be one of the many nuns or lay people whom Shirley gathered around herself over the years. Everyone who gave their time to Shirley knew to their core that here was a very special woman, someone whose love, courage and determination knew no limits. It was impossible to refuse her. She was fearsome, truculent and a joy to behold. A woman of magisterial presence and influence who played an important role in the establishment of

critical organisations like the Aboriginal Medical Service and the Aboriginal Legal Service.

From 1982, Kathleen and I came to know Shirley very well. As anyone who knew her at the time will testify, Shirley always had a house full of kids. From babies to adolescents, she took them all in. At this time, most but not all of them were the five Chillie kids who had been orphaned as small children. We got to know them well and Vernon spent many of his school holidays with us, as did Lawrence Lucas, whose mother Yvonne was a well-known figure around Redfern. My brother-in-law, Terry Salmon, and his wife, Jude, became very involved with Vernon and Lawrence as well, and Kathleen and Jude tutored Lawrence and Vernon for a good while. Some years after meeting Shirley, Ted asked me if I could do something to help Shirley find a house. So a fund was established and, through donations

from many generous people, we raised enough money to buy the house in Cavendish Street, Stanmore.

Shirley was, in her time, the most famous and well-known Indigenous figure in the inner-city and probably New South Wales more generally.

Her generosity and influence touched many people, me included. I have Shirley to thank for my introduction to Australia’s Indigenous world and to the commitment I have made to their friendship and their full participation as our First Peoples in the life of this country.

Top | Elaine Pelot-Syron | The Kids on Cavandish Street | 1983 archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper | 144 x 26 cm

Gordon Syron | Mum Shirl | 2000 oil on canvas | 183 x 270 cm

Gordon Syron

Artist Statement | A Tribute to the Queen of Australia Mum Shirl I was in Maximum Security Prison when Mum Shirl first visited me in 1973, twentyfive years ago. She had principles. I fought against Graft and Corruption and went to prison for it. Mum Shirl didn’t cut no ice. She didn’t care which uniform you had on, she didn’t cop it.

She was a strong woman and was fair. She was straight. She fought for reform. She was respected by the prison officers and by ‘One and All’. She was motivated by prisoner’s rights- Nobody else cared. People didn’t know what went through my head when I did this painting I felt close to her.

It brought back lots of memories. The last time l saw her in 1997-9 she was very ill.

Father Ted Kennedy gave her communion at her home. I was there. It was a strange journey that visit and the painting just continued the visit. I had to struggle with the way I remember her and then the way I saw her so sick.

NOBODY CAN REPLACE HER.*

By Gordon Syron 4 May 1998 *Mum Shirl had a State funeral at St Mary’s Cathedral. The above statement was handwritten by Gordon, which the Father’s placed underneath the portrait of Mum Shirl.

Gordon Syron | David Gulpilil | 1988 digital print on canvas | 140 x 94 cm

Gordon Syron | Bend in the River | 1997/2004 oil on canvas board | 93 x 68 cm

Gordon Syron | Balance of Power | 1998 oil paint on canvas | 44 x 60 cm

Gordon Syron | Judgement by his Peers | 2017 digital print on canvas | 108 x 82 cm

Gordon Syron | Judgement by his Peers AP | 2017 digital print on canvas | 108 x 82 cm

Gordon Syron | The Massacre - Clearing The Land of Flora & Fauna | 1998 oil paint on canvas | 150 x 100 cm

Gordon Syron | Your Move II | 2014 oil paint on canvas | 150 x 100 cm

COOEE ART GALLERY

G | COOEE ART GALLERY PADDINGTON A | 326 Oxford Street Paddington NSW 2021 P | 02 8057 6789 G | COOEE ART GALLERY BONDI A | 31 Lamrock Avenue Bondi NSW 2026 P | 02 9300 9233 E | info@cooeeart.com.au W | www.cooeeart.com.au