There was a period in Australian history that many of us are embarrassed by – the early 20th century when a so-called ‘White Australia Policy’ was instituted which discriminated against non-white immigrants. The original white settlers (English, Scottish, Irish plus German, Swiss, etc…) were worried about the number of non-white settlers.
But they made some little-known exceptions to this rule. They needed specialists to drive camels across the vast deserts, and these camel drivers came from places where camels live – not Northern Europe. One such exception was a bloke called Monga Khan.
Peter Drew, an artist, thought that Australians should know about Monga and he decided to build up Monga as an Australian folk hero. His art project involved putting up 1000 posters with a photo of Monga taken 100 years ago, emblazoned with a single word: ‘Aussie’.
Artists can make art in all sorts of ways, but a public poster creates a special relationship with the public, the audience. It’s a statement, a challenge to prejudice. The posters appeared across Australian cities with no explanation. This guy in a turban who lived a long time ago, he was being proclaimed an Aussie. Dale remembers walking through Melbourne and seeing the posters – it was clearly making an anti-discrimination point, but the particular image and the complete lack of explanation had him intrigued.
Sometimes an Unfollower doesn’t set out to rock the system, but their unique and individual self engaging with the world means they end up doing just that. An inadvertent Unfollower. Artists by doing their art can reflect back ideas to society that simply because they are quirky, individualistic, from left field, can become political and challenge the way things are.
These posters appeared at a time when, like many Western Democracies, Australia was going through it’s own internal debate about migration, how we treat asylum seekers, and how we treat the ‘other’ in society. The posters triggered the mind to go down a different path, and in that they are an act of Unfollowing.
Also see –
