The True History of Ned Kelly and Burka Woman: Breast Trek

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Breast Trek

This one is about Burka Women heading to Australia...

the land of cupcakes with cherries on top, or sand dunes with cherries on top...

or the land where the body is less covered in public...

less covered in the sun despite the lack of ozone...

all these things were in my mind as I painted Breast Trek.

I finished up wondering about the stats regarding number of Iraqi women with breast cancer compared with Australian women.

In Australia, one in nine women will be diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 85.

In the Middle East, there are no statistics that I can research,

as breast cancer is still largely seen as shameful and taboo in the fundamentalist Islamic world.

SOLD

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THE PAINTINGS....

You'll find on this site my 2004 Ned and Burka series: "A True Story and a Love Story"

followed by the paintings from my second series: "Mask", C3 gallery, Abbotsford Convent, Nov '08.

Then over 50 paintings from the 2010 "In Habit"show, Lab X gallery, St Kilda.

And then the "Beyond the Burka"paintings which were exhibited in March 2011 at the Arthur gallery, Ballarat.

The "Ned and Burka - old and new works" show was held in April 2013, at The Goat Gallery, Natimuk, Victoria.

To view this true history of over 120 paintings in its narrative form, it's best to go back to the first post, Dec 1st 2009: "In the beginning..."

* You can learn more about me and my recent work, which includes photo stories of Ned and Burka, or if you would like to view the Ned and Burka oil paintings which are still available to purchase, click here: www.marsdrum.com

Donning the Burqa after Sept 11th 2001...

I began to wear a burqa out on the streets, to festivals, exhibition openings, rallies, parties....

I could see that the Australian media frenzy surrounding the 9/11 event was breeding instant anti-Islamic sentiment amongst the Australian public, and by wearing the burqa, I wanted to expose this new breed of racism. The women who had always worn burqas in Melbourne were suddenly confined to indoors, not due to their own law, but forced to do so to protect themselves from a growing seething hatred of anything to do with “Islam” from people who believed themselves to be “real Australians”.

At first, I found wearing the burqa in inner Melbourne so soon after the collapse of the Twin Towers to be rather a dangerous experience. At Brunswick Street festival 2001, I had all sorts of white trash mainstream media victims addressing me aggressively, fists clenched. Strange men approaching me on the street, demanding that I "take that thing off immediately" and " Get the hell outa here"...one stupid bloke told me he wanted to hit me for being out in the public after what had happened in the USA. I had a couple of my male friends walking behind me at that festival to step up in my defence when the situation got too heated. Strange girls that day would offer advice to me like: "You should go home" or "That's not funny, you wearing that out on the street"...

My photo was discovered in the Mx.

I used this particular image of Howard to share an eye with Hitler, as it was the face that he pulled for the main newspapers during his fake Children Overboard media story for the election campaign... his face surrounded by ocean...

This is me at a refugee rally at Maribyrnong Detention Centre, 2005.

I wore my burqa on and off for the next few years. It was surprisingly liberating to wear the burqa...to be anonymous... shapeless... no-one measuring me up and down, including myself...

It was also addictive.

Weaning myself off the burqa was confusing, as I had no idea what to wear anymore! I'd had a thing about collecting and wearing vintage uniforms in the decades before donning the burqa... dental nurse, tram conductor, air hostess, airforce officer, nun, checkout chick...the burqa put an end to all that... it was time to move on, but my sense of direction was confused, what does one wear beyond the burqa?