Jonathan Jones

Learning resource

Recount and Revive

Jonathan Jones
Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi peoples
born 1978 Sydney, New South Wales
lives and works Sydney, New South Wales

Speak your mind

Talking points or provocations to unpack the works through discussion and/or contemplation:

• Where are the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi nations located in Australia?
• Discuss the importance that language plays in affirming an individual’s cultural identity.
• How does Jonathan Jones invoke memory as a powerful strategy to communicate his ideas about cultural loss?

Senior options

• Are we living in a post-colonial society?

• How did colonialism infer an attitude of superiority towards Indigenous Australians?
• Discover the meaning of the Latin expression terra nullius and its relationship to Australia’s colonial history.

Get to work

Creative making suggestions that highlight key concepts:

• Collect natural materials from your local area such as fallen trees, plants, shells, seeds and stone and work collaboratively to design a mandala for a site on your school ground.

Think it through

Ideas to aid you in the creation of works:

• Discover the Indigenous names in your local area for everyday items such as stone, plants, seed, fruit, hill, valley, river, cave etc. 
• Listen to Jonathan Jones speak about his works Salt 2010 and Revolution 2010–11 on the NGA’s vimeo channel at the bottom of this page.
• Discuss the rationale for your final choice of site for your mandala, whether it is at the entrance to the school, the playground area or possibly a smaller internal contemplative space such as a courtyard.

Senior options

• Research a place of cultural significance to the Indigenous people of your region. Find out more about cultural practices that would have taken place before colonial interventions. Talk about the ways your community could honour the legacy of the traditional custodians with a site-specific installation. What materials could be used and who could be involved? You might like to propose a number of respected local people to be an advisory board for this project.
• In traditional Indigenous practice shield decoration was the responsibility of skilled male carvers. Choose a sharp tool to carve the design you have chosen from the activity above into a hardwood square or diamond shape.

Places to go 

Links for more information about the artist:

• Artist’s website
• UnDisclosed: 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial
• Kaldor Public Art Projects
• NGA: Jonathan Jones talks about Revolution and Salt
• Museum of Contemporary Art

Talk the talk

Glossary of words in the education resource and artist statement:

• colonisation: the action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area
• post-colonial: of, relating to, or being the time following the establishment of independence in a colony
• superiority: acting in higher in rank, status or quality
• collaboratively: two or more parties working together
• mandala: generic term for any diagram, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically; a microcosm of the universe

 

Search for works by this artist in the national collection.