Still Sacred and Golden
Dr Deanne Gilson

Still Sacred and Golden is an exhibition of new works by Dr Deanne Gilson, a proud Wadawurrung woman and an emerging Elder from Ballarat. Still Sacred and Golden celebrates plants and cultural practices through contemporary women’s business.

I do this … through kitsch objects of First Nations peoples that were inappropriate and quite hurtful to see.Dr Deanne Gilson, 2022

Deanne is an award-winning multimedia visual artist, with a practice spanning 39 years. Deanne recently completed her PhD at Deakin University, looking at the objectification of Aboriginal women by the male and female colonial gaze and how this has affected Aboriginal women and traditional women’s business. Deanne’s recent artworks examine the disruption of family, culture, language and traditional women’s practices through the process of colonisation, and how this continues to impact Aboriginal women.

I am looking at the objects of our daily lives and as a First Nations artist responding to the objectified and yet showing us as still here, and our culture is still sacred to us. The flowers are all about honouring the beauty of Country and our women with the knowledge held in the baskets I will be painting. The gold references two things for me, the gold fields in which I live and that our knowledge is golden and important and worth more than gold. My ancestors had no use of gold itself it is just a metaphor… The true gold isn’t the gold from the gold fields, it’s us! Dr Deanne Gilson, 2022

PURCHASE ARTWORKS

Exhibition Catalogue

Click to download the exhibition catalogue