Our combined artwork symbolizes our connection to the land. We each wanted a little part of our cultural heritage to shine through the artwork as we are children with a variety of cultural backgrounds predominately Lebanese, Turkish, Vietnamese and English. We thought it was very important to include the traditional custodians of our land the Dharug, Dharawal and Eora people. Our artwork was created on 100% cotton canvas, using fabric paint including colours traditionally used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as well as some of our favourite colours. We decided to use these materials as we thought they had an authentic feel to them. The title of our artwork is AMAROO which is the Aboriginal word (in some Aboriginal languages) meaning ‘a beautiful place’, because we believe we live in a beautiful country that is unique and special in so many ways. As an art club, we collaborate to create and make artwork.
We believe our artwork relates to reconciliation because we created our artwork together. The entire artwork signifies our unity, values, beliefs and celebrates our differences. We created individual patches that portray our personal interpretation of reconciliation, our link with our cultural background, heritage, the land and Aboriginal people. We sewed each artwork together to create a larger art piece to solidify our understanding of reconciliation and the unity of our country. Our artwork relates the theme Where’s your Country as we created images of specific areas of the land such as Uluru, The Great Barrier Reef and The Royal National Park. We also painted images that are iconic to our specific cultural background such as Big Ben and a Mosque.
When we discussed our artwork we wanted to represent our cultural and spiritual relationship to the land and pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their custodial, cultural and spiritual relationship with the land.