Trouble in Paradise

I have been haunted by this John Webber drawing of Captain Cook’s Interview with Natives in Adventure Bay c.1777, in the Admiralty Library as it anticipates so poetically later history and represents such a phenomenal tipping point. I have done some preliminary research and found out that Capt. Cook is in fact offering one of the Resolution and Adventure Medals to the Aborginal people. We can only imagine what the recipients might have thought of such a strange gift, it is oddly innocent and idealistic, yet bearing the image the head of George III it infers a more insidious imperialist intention. Bruny island, depicted in Webber's sketch as a kind of paradise, was of course later to be plundered, cleared of its ancient forests, using convict labour, to produce timber, plant apple orchards, vines, establish whaling, sheep and cattle stations and extract coal and oil. Native peoples were inevitably displaced. The series of preliminary designs all respond to this encounter/exchange in different ways and explore its moral dimension. Whilst the Renaisance thirst for new knowledge is a noble ambition. the subsequent need/temptation to exploit this knowledge for material gain is full of moral ambiguity and, in the worst case scenarios, morally indefensible. The apple growing echoes images of the Garden of Eden, hence I have included images of serpents and apples. Chains suggest anchorage, enslavement, forced boundaries and so on. The images are all encapsulated in the form of a notional lifejacket/ yoke shape. The need to save and be saved, seek atonement for the past, which is very much I feel a 21st century post colonial narrative. The lifesize prototype lifejacket invites the wearer to contemplate the scene. The negative shape/neck hole of the life jacket becomes a speech bubble.