What is theirs is ours now (I do not claim to own) 2018

In this diptych, d harding has deployed Reckitt’s Blue — a laundry whitener that was popular during the colonial period – to comment on their personal history and the impact of settlement on First Nations peoples.

The artwork demonstrates the complex ways in which harding has used the pigment. For the left-hand panel, they worked the colour into the linen support with a hand broom, an act that pays homage to their matrilineal kin who were forced into domestic servitude by European settlers. For the right-hand panel, the artist used the most expensive paintbrush they could find to stain the surface with pigment, using the same motions as they made with the broom. Their final gesture was to spit ochre from their Country across the work in a single horizontal band, in part an allusion to the rock-painting techniques of their forebears. This physical act was both an aesthetic decision and a conceptual one, marking a metaphorical shift from these laden histories towards a new phase in their practice.