Title
Jimmy Little - State Funeral Kwementyaye Perkins
2000
Artist
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Details
- Place where the work was made
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Sydney
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New South Wales
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Australia
- Date
- 2000
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- gelatin silver photograph
- Edition
- 1/20
- Dimensions
- 30.4 x 50.5 cm image/sheet
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the Photography Collection Benefactors' Program 2002
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 109.2002
- Copyright
- © Mervyn Bishop
- Artist information
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Mervyn Bishop
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
‘Whenever I went to a community for a special assignment I’d take a lot more general documentary pictures of what was going on. In this way I was, if only for myself, making a record.’ Mervyn Bishop 1990 1
Mervyn Bishop was born in Brewarrina, New South Wales, and developed an interest in photography at a young age. In 1963 he was offered a photography cadetship at the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ and during this period completed the Photography Certificate Course at Sydney Technical College, one of the first Aboriginal students to attend and graduate. He also became Australia’s first Aboriginal press photographer and in 1971 was awarded News Photographer of the Year. He worked for the ‘Herald’ until 1974, then at the newly formed Department of Aboriginal Affairs in Canberra as staff photographer.
Bishop’s retrospective exhibition, ‘In dreams: Mervyn Bishop, thirty years of photography 1960–1990’, was held in 1991 at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, later touring Australia (1991–93) and England (1994). In 2000 he was given the Red Ochre Award by the Australia Council and in 2004 collaborated with William Yang to produce a theatrical memoir of his life, ‘Flash blak’.
‘Jimmy Little – State Funeral Kwementyaye Perkins’ was taken at the funeral of influential Aboriginal activist and pioneering spokesman for Indigenous affairs Charles Perkins (1936–2000) at Sydney Town Hall and continues Bishop’s important chronicling of Aboriginal life. The image is evocative in its commemorative and symbolic register, using pictorial absence in its sensitive record of the passing of a respected Indigenous leader. The elevated point of view, abstracted and formally balanced elements, imbue the image with an elegiac harmony.
1. Moffatt T ed 1991, ‘In dreams: Mervyn Bishop, thirty years of photography 1960–1990’, Australian Centre for Photography, Paddington p 9
© Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, 2007
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Places
Where the work was made
Sydney
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Exhibition history
Shown in 3 exhibitions
A Dubbo Day with Jimmy and other reconciliation images, Stills Gallery, Paddington, 25 Jul 2001–25 Aug 2001
The photograph and Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 21 Mar 2015–08 Jun 2015
The photograph and Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, 04 Jul 2015–11 Oct 2015
Mervyn Bishop, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 24 Jun 2017–08 Oct 2017
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Bibliography
Referenced in 2 publications
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Judy Annear, The photograph and Australia, Sydney, Jun 2015, 107 (colour illus.).
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Bronwyn Clark-Coolee, Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection, 'Time - memory - people', pg.246-265, Sydney, 2007, 248, 263 (illus.).
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