Untitled (Bible)

The Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist, Michael Riley, was born at Talbragar Aboriginal Reserve, on the outskirts of Dubbo, New South Wales. He moved to Sydney as a teenager and took up photography after attending a workshop at Tin Sheds Gallery, at the University of Sydney, in 1982. Riley featured in the landmark NADOC ’86 exhibition of Aboriginal and Islander photographers in Sydney, and in 1987, with a group of contemporaries, he founded Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, a venture that marked a turning point in the self empowerment and promotion of First Nations artists and their stories.

Untitled (Bible), 1998, from the Flybown series, shows the development of Riley’s practice from his early black-and-white portraits to large-scale cinematic colour photographs, influenced by his earlier documentary film Empire, 1997. Key imagery and iconography are layered with meaning and personal experience to capture the beauty and decay of the Australian landscape. Here, a Holy Bible floats face down in murky floodwaters, symbolically evoking the purification from sin and the whitewashing of Aboriginal culture following European contact. Simply composed, this timeless and poetic image conceptualises difficult aspects of our shared history, offering it up for reflection and, ultimately, redemption. Riley passed away during the height of his career in 2004, aged forty-four.

Celia Dottore, Project Manager, Tarnanthi