A Dickensian Sideshow
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Karla Dickens
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Hole in my pocket (detail) 2019
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21 NOVEMBER 2020 – 21 FEBRUARY 2021
20 NOVEMBER 2021 – 30 JANUARY 2022
A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Installation view: Lismore Regional Gallery Photo: Michelle Eabry
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Foreword Karla Dickens is one of the most exciting and thought-provoking artists working in Australia today. Breathing new life, and new meaning, into found objects, Dickens beckons audiences through a gentle nostalgia, to then confront with a potent political message. As organisations located in Bundjalung and Wiradjuri Nations, Lismore Regional Gallery and Orange Regional Gallery represent the artist’s current home, and the lands of her ancestors. We are proud to partner on this project, with each iteration reflecting local stories connected to the artist’s broad themes. For Lismore, it is the early 20th century story of Con Colleano, a locally born man of Aboriginal, African/West Indian and Irish heritage, who, in a sign of the times passed himself as Spanish to become an internationally renowned circus performer. Known as “The Wizard of the Wire”, Colleano performed to great acclaim on the European and American vaudeville circuits with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, becoming one of the most highly paid circus performers of his time. Working closely with the community of Orange NSW, Dickens has gathered archival photography, memorabilia and stories relating to the various travelling tent troupes that moved across Wiradjuri land. In responding to this rich material, Dickens’ reminds us that the arena in which these boxers ‘performed’ was a complex and multi-faceted crucible, in which boxers were both celebrated and exploited. This catalogue is the culmination of Dickens’s three-part project including A Dickensian Country Show, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, 2020; A Dickensian Circus, Biennale of Sydney, 2020; and A Dickensian Sideshow in Lismore and Orange across 2020–22. Through the different iterations of the project Dickens explores the role of Indigenous peoples playing the role of ‘entertainer’ for primarily white audiences. In this context, it is the artist claiming the narrative — and inviting us to better understand the pride, and the pain of the entertainer. Our institutions would like to express our deep gratitude to Karla for entrusting us with this project and commend her for her courageous artistic vision.
Brett Adlington Director, Lismore Regional Gallery
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Brad Hammond Director, Orange Regional Gallery
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Installation view: Lismore Regional Gallery Title YEAR Photo: Michelle (detail) Eabry
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
21 November 2020 – 21 February 2021 Lismore Regional Gallery 20 November 2021 – 30 January 2022 Orange Regional Gallery
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Installation view: Lismore Regional Gallery Photo: Michelle Eabry
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
A Dickensian Sideshow Karla Dickens A bit on the side “Yes please” Choking on life’s square colourless box? One daily chore after the next 25 Unrepairable souls wearing respectable shoes “Just keep swimming” “Just keep swimming” If your lucky you will drown in paid bills Pointless political poo Tangled in heartless heroism Dragging your shackles the carnival shakes in Trucks, ute’s, well worn tyres grip your groin Bewitched by beaten faces advertising glamour You sigh a long deep breath through dirty eyes Just keep swimming Just keep swimming Sweet sweat drips from hurting anticipation As you prepare your Sunday best Licking hair into place Hope sets up a dusty camp Painstakingly hammering together a crusty façade Smiling mirages tacked together with broken dreams Creating optical illusions that the blind can see “Yes please” Ready to beg borrow and steal you slip on your heals After digging in sallow graves for shiny coins You ache to be taken for a cheap bumpy ride Your pockets now rattle with creamy dreams For a tickle, a gawk and a hearty squeal Washed down by a greasy dog “Take my money now” Handing over hard earned cash The unbreakable grace your break The tents comes down, fold up quickly disappear Leaving you with a crooked smile and empty pockets Memories linger until the next dust storm rolls in A bit on the side “Yes please”
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A Dickensian Sideshow
A rough ride 2019 mixed media, 120 × 120cm
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Karla Dickens
Sweet treats and rotten teeth 2019 mixed media, 120 Ă— 120cm
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Lions, tigers and endangered bears 2019 mixed media, Diptych 120 Ă— 240cm
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Karla Dickens
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Installation view: Lismore Regional Gallery Photo: Denise Alison
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Karla Dickens
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Con Colleano (c.1935). Photo: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Life is a Circus Djon Mundine OAM
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel As the images unwind, like the circles that you find In the windmills of your mind! Noel Harrison, 1968¹
Artist Karla Dickens (Wiradjuri) was born the year preceding the release of the song quoted above. Her birth year was that of the important 1967 referendum in Australia that constitutionally recognised Aboriginal people as human beings and not a plant or animal. The film of the year at the Academy Awards was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner — black people had arrived at the national dinner table it would seem. Unfortunately, nothing really progressed immediately or for some time from that vote. The major cult film of 1968 was The Night of the Living Dead, in which it falls to an African-American to protect a group of hopeless ‘white’ Americans from gangs of zombie ‘white’ people who roam the land murdering the black and white good citizens alike. When the police finally arrive to save everyone, they fatally shoot (of course) the relieved black hero who comes forward to welcome them. We are still talking of two separate seating arrangements and experiences in this circus of life. The word ‘circus’ comes from a Greek or Latin word meaning ‘circle’ or ‘ring’. Allegedly performances were made by the Greek goddess Circe to honour her father Helios; the sun god. The Roman Circus’ were about exotic ‘wild’ beasts but also about combat, staged gladiatorial fights, and tension as much as excitement. Theatrical life or death feats of
strength or balance; and life and death struggles are part of the show. Every circus had a Strong Man, a Bearded Lady, a Fat Lady, a Half-Woman/Half-Man, an Indian Rubber Man, a Clown, an Acrobat, possibly a ‘Wolf man’, and a Wild Man from Borneo. The first and only time I visited Coney Island in New York (September 2002, on the first anniversary of the 911 terrorist attacks), we were surprised to see Freak Show alley, and the desperation of the cheating, rigged-game, card sharps who nearly cleaned out myself and the artists I was travelling with. A circus could be defined as a company of performers; it’s about object manipulation, and stunt-orientated artists. Most probably however the best performance art event occurred when a small number of Aboriginal activists (Michael Anderson, Billy Craigie, Tony Corey and Bertie Williams) erected a ‘tent embassy’ with picnic chairs and beach umbrella on the front lawn of Australian Parliament House in Canberra (a city of rings and perhaps the greatest circus in the land) in 1972. The police arrested them and took away the tent but when they found it was not illegal, the tent was re-erected. A tug of war went on with increasing press coverage for over six months. Aboriginal time and life is conceptually circular as against western linear time. The first Aboriginal ceremony recorded by English colonists was by David Collins in 1793 near the present-day Conservatorium of Music in Sydney. The dance performances took place within an elliptical-shaped ‘circle’ called a ‘Yoo-Lang’.
¹ Windmills of Your Mind lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, BMG Rights Management 1968 Songwriters: Marilyn Bergman / Michel Legrand / Alan Bergman; performed by Noel Harrison
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Town bike on the road 2020 mixed media, 64 × 64cm
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Karla Dickens
Eight in one night 2020 mixed media, 64 × 64cm
A special cock or two 2020 mixed media, 64 × 64cm
Guessing game 2020 mixed media, 64 × 64cm
Bucked 2020 mixed media, 64 × 64cm
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Installation view: Lismore Regional Gallery Photo: Michelle Eabry
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Knockout racism (detail) 2020 mixed media, 64 Ă— 64cm
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A Dickensian Sideshow
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Bobby Williams sparring CWD Negative Collection, Orange & District Historical Society
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Side Stepping the White Show Jeanine Leane
When I was a child in the 1960s I used to go with my mother to country shows. Back behind the agricultural displays of prize bulls and stud rams, sheep dog trials, farm produce, trestle tables groaning with the weight of scones and cakes, pickles and jams from farmer’s wives who tried to bake each other off every year were the sideshows and tents, where dancing and boxing took place. My mother loved the dancing. She had been a dancer herself. I am descended from women who were dance pianists and self-taught musicians who travelled to country halls all around the Riverina to play for dances and soldier’s send-offs through the late thirties and forties.
Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens’ latest exhibition, A Dickensian Sideshow takes viewers off the main screen of colonial representations of Aboriginal peoples to walk us down the shadowy, liminal corridors of the circus and sideshow alleys. In this exhibit we step to the side of mainstream white settler society, off the grid of gentile middle class pretence of respectability, down a narrow passage into the arena of all things forbidden, scorned, shunned and marginalised. We side-step outside of the square of the semblance of the organised world colonialism attempts to present and maintain, into the circular world of tent-boxers, travelling side shows, leg-shows and circuses.
The Aunties and my mother stopped performing just before I was born in the early 1960s. My childhood was rich with stories from those times. My mother continued to go to shows to watch the dancing which in the early 60s was usually Irish, Scottish or tap dancing. My mother, my Aunties and me as a child were left in no doubt via the opinions of the middle-class people that they all worked for that sideshow alley was ‘crass-working class entertainment’. But for many Aboriginal people, like my family, this corridor off to the side of mainstream white society was a place where we felt at home and accepted among the carnival crew who travelled with the shows up and down the Eastern seaboard of Australia. Sideshows and tents operated as alternative mobile theatres, where the very characteristics that deemed exclusion from the mainstream were embraced, accentuated and celebrated as part of an elaborate disguise, illusion, transformation and performance.
Sideshows and circuses were regarded as mysterious, exotic, nomadic and spatially as well as socially outside the mainstream. Part of their extraordinary character was that they were multiracial spaces both in the composition of their acts and in their audiences with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal performers combining with entertainers from China, Africa and America. Most performers are now invisible to historians and many are lost to the official historical record. But anecdote and oral her/ histories defy official records, as Dickens’ exhibition evidences through its exploration of Aboriginal performers in tents, sideshows, legshows and circuses.
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A Dickensian Sideshow takes as its starting point, Lismore born Con Colleano a worldfamous Aboriginal tightrope walker known as the Wizard of the Wire. Colleano was of mixed Aboriginal, Irish and West-Indian descent. He passed himself off as Spanish and performed to
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A Dickensian Sideshow
From left: Pound for pound #2 2019 mixed media, 196 × 41 × 41cm Pound for pound #4 2019 mixed media, 198 × 41 × 41cm Pound for pound #7 2019 mixed media, 168 × 41 × 41cm Pound for pound #9 2019 mixed media, 172 × 41 × 41cm Pound for pound #10 2019 mixed media, 160 × 41 × 41cm
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Karla Dickens
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Installation view: 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres featuring A Dickensian Country Show by Karla Dickens, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Photo: Saul Steed
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A Dickensian Country Show | A Dickensian Circus
Karla Dickens
A Dickensian Country Show and A Dickensian Circus Andrew Baker
A Dickensian Country Show | 29 February – 8 June 2020 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres, Art Gallery of South Australia A Dickensian Circus | 14 March – 8 June 2020 22nd Biennale of Sydney: NIRIN Art Gallery of New South Wales Over a number of years, Karla Dickens amassed what she classifies as “the memories, whispers and materials” from which her A Dickensian Circus and A Dickensian Country Show were formed. She used this strange assortment of intangible and substantial ingredients to distil what she calls “an essence of the lives, tales and polarities of Aboriginal circus performers from the past”. For more than a year, Dickens transformed countless discarded everyday items into multifaceted memorials for bygone sideshow, circus and boxing-tent performers of Indigenous descent. This mix of sculptural and pictorial offerings peeks behind the glittering facades of “the show”, to unearth underlying narratives of tender and melancholy co-existence among performers and harrowing interactions with audiences. Crafted from vintage fabrics and assorted bric-abrac, these delirious and unsettling collages and constructions embrace and pay homage to the quaint, handmade glamour and razzle-dazzle of travelling show people from earlier times. Poking fun and using jester-like ridicule, they also contemplate the human and animal distress which inhabits the shadows of such spectacles. Karla’s starting point for this project was Con Colleano, a world famous part-Aboriginal tightrope walker known as “The Wizard of the
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Wire” and “The Toreador of the Wire”, who emanated from Karla’s home town Lismore, NSW. Born Cornelius Sullivan of mixed Irish, African-West Indian and Aboriginal descent in 1899, Colleano performed to great acclaim locally and on the European and American vaudeville circuits up until 1960. Using the Italian-sounding surname Collino, young Con and his family travelled throughout New South Wales and Queensland performing with various circuses. In his early performing years, Sullivan and his family were promoted as “The Royal Hawaiian Troupe”, an exotic title which explained away their dark complexions. Con later used the Spanish-sounding stage name Colleano, which was considered at the time to be more acceptable than being Indigenous Australian. Along the way, Karla also discovered numerous stories of Aboriginal men and women whose comedy, song and dance routines were promoted as “Polynesian”, “Hawaiian” or something “other” than what they really were. These works celebrate the unheralded Indigenous performers of times gone by, whose extraordinary talents and skills have entertained Australians from the country’s beginnings until the present day.
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A Dickensian Sideshow
Karla Dickens
Karla Dickens, A Dickensian Circus, 2020. Installation view for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020), Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photo: Zan Wimberley
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