National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | National Indigenous Art Triennial 07

The title of a solo exhibition held in Brisbane in early 2007, ‘a complicated fall’, refers to the comment by the state coroner, who referred to Mulrundji Doomagee’s death on Palm Island as being caused by ‘a complicated fall’. This was a surprising finding considering the physical damage [‘four broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and a liver almost split in half’] that the man had suffered during his ordeal in the Palm Island jail. ‘A complicated fall’ could also refer to a fall from grace, a fall of government, etc. Other works in the exhibition referred more specifically to recent events on Palm Island and or used familiar motifs within my body of work (e.g. shells, ribs, plants and maps). While I was making many of the works in this exhibition I was listening to ABC Radio National. At this time there were many news updates about events on Palm Island. Part of my response to this was an internal grieving that I was aware of when I was pushing and scrubbing the raw pigments into the canvas. Blue is the colour of