Julie Gough - Malahide

Malahide is large-scale sculpture by Julie Gough and is made from 108 pieces of coal, strung together over found antlers. The work takes its name from a colonial property, Malahide, in Fingal, Tasmania, a place that, like the sculpture’s materials, has born witness to Australia’s early contact history.

Gough is innately drawn to coal as a material, with both sides of her family involved in its mining, in Tasmania but also in Scotland. Extracted from cavernous places, the coal exposes truths that have been buried deeply under the earth. The deer antlers become representative of hunt trophies adorned on walls in houses and the forced removal of Aboriginal people from their Country by colonists.

In this work, Gough translates the usually intimate scale of the Tasmanian shell necklace making tradition to create a heavy sculpture, that carries the weight and burden of Australia’s shared histories. Steeped in multiple meanings, the work serves to memorialise, remember, and uncover the forgotten.

Written by Associate Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait, Gloria Strzelecki