Death mask

Death Mask, inkjet printed papier mâché, 2019

Cast on a mould of my face, this mask is composed of newspaper clippings about massacres drawn from such newspapers as The Mount Alexander Mail (Vic), Queensland Figaro (Brisbane), Telegraph (Brisbane), Geelong Advertiser (Vic), Brisbane Courier, Kalgoorlie Miner (WA), and Kyneton Observer (Vic) from 1840 to 1902, downloaded from Trove November 2019. They show the extent of the massacres across Australia and how commonly they were reported and discussed over decades. The geographic and temporal extent of the massacres are being documented in the Colonial Frontier Massacre Digital Map Project (https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/) led by Prof Lyndall Ryan at the University of Newcastle’s Centre for the 21st Century Humanities.