Exhibitions
taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country | Dave mangenner Gough
Biography
Dave mangenner Gough is a proud Trawlwoolway man who descends from bunganna (chief), Manalargenna’s oldest daughter, Woretemoeteyenner of North East Tasmania.
mangenner is an artist and curator. He is a storyteller, playwright, producer, director, narrator and performer with large-scale performances, exhibitions and installations.
His craft has spanned locally, nationally and internationally, with works in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), Canberra; Le Havre Natural History Museum, France; Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Forte Kochi; and Egin Residency in Northern Wales (Snowdonia National Park) with the National Theatre of Wales.
mangenner is an Alumni with the Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership program through the National Gallery of Australia.
Artist statement
leewuree taymi ningina / firestick never given, 2022
After a search of the objects in the Melbourne Museum’s collection from Aboriginal Tasmania, a listing was found: ‘Part of a bark torch found in a cave in Nubeena, Tasman Peninsula’.
To me that was very surprising, as I was never aware of its existence in collections, and I’ve been making leewuree (firesticks) for years. My relationship with them is strong.
They for me are immensely powerful. They carry in them the intent with which I make them and for their purpose and reason.
Light smoke, prayer, the connections from the stripping of the bark and collecting the leaves and making, using and controlling its use in the flame and smoke, and walking Country strong.
The connection to Ancestors and Country.
The part of firestick taken, stolen by a person with the collector’s hungry scramble to collect anything from our culture.
Somehow it ended up in the Melbourne Museum. Wrongly itemised with hardly any information of how and when it ended up there.
‘Found in a cave in Nubeena’. Yet it’s held in the Museum as a collectable piece.
The caves and rock shelters in our country are imprinted with the smoke from thousands of firesticks passed through the hands of our Ancestors.
The firesticks I made and used are in their place in the caves for now and may be removed, taken, stolen in their physical form in the future.
But their spirit is and always will be there.
This part of the burnt firestick wasn’t given.
It was stolen.
In the physical form but it’s still imprinted in Country.
When you walk Country with your leewuree (firestick) it’s imprinted, and that can never be taken or stolen.