Artist statement: Our lives are built upon the layers of carbonised and un-carbonised human waste. I treat this waste as foreign fossils and time capsules; they are continually collected and catalogued.
From the earth's darkness these fossils enter the enlarger’s negative carrier to be printed, revealing hidden details that bring the past to light. This intervention and assemblage transforms these fossils into relics, revealing the sacredness and integrity of form as the primordial logos of our experience.
The original artwork by David Malangi: ‘Mortuary feasts of Gurrmirringu, the great ancestral hunter’ (1963) was copied by the Reserve Bank of Australia in 1966 without the artist's consent, prompting the first Aboriginal copyright dispute. A year later he was awarded 1,000 dollars, a medallion and a fishing kit.
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