AHIS10003 Chap.3 Escape and Chase: Two First Nations Works
Escape and Chase: Two First Nations Works
Week 2 sets a pen-and-ink drawing of about 1890 beside a sculptural work of 2008, and calls the relation between them a ricochet rather than a line of influence. The week's stated method is long looking, sustained attention to a colonial-era image treated as a research technique that yields new insight into contact history.
Its sharpest material is provenance: two groups of drawings by the same artist travelled different routes out of the nineteenth century, and one arrived at a Canadian estate sale in 2023 catalogued as by an artist unknown.
The chapter reads a 1946 covering letter as evidence of reception rather than as description, uses auction figures carefully as evidence of a shift in the sphere of reception, and then turns to the 2008 work, a colonial chaise longue rebuilt with spear-like legs and an 1830 newspaper item pinned into its leather surface in steel.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Two works a century apart, and the week's word for their relation
- 02
Long looking as a research method, not as an instruction to pay attention
- 03
What the two catalogue records state, and where the university's records disagree
- 04
Provenance as an interpretable chain rather than as paperwork
- 05
A documented route: from the artist, by descent, a 1946 gift, a 2023 estate sale, a gallery
- 06
The 1946 covering letter, and why it is reception evidence
- 07
Auction figures as evidence of changing valuation, and what they cannot show
- 08
Antecedents and contemporaries: situating an artist rather than isolating him
- 09
The 2008 work: a found colonial form remade in leather and tea tree wood
- 10
A newspaper item of 1830 pinned into the surface as content, not caption
- 11
Asking what else a work could have been made from
- 12
Shield designs read as title deeds, and where that idea goes next
Comparing across a century without flattening either work
- 1Reject the thematic version. Saying both works deal with colonisation is true, general, and writable without having looked at either object.
- 1Anchor the earlier work in its materials and scale: imported pen and ink on paper at 24 by 30 centimetres, a size that fits inside a settler's letter.
- 1Anchor the later work in its materials: leather, tea tree wood and steel pins, a colonial chaise longue with spear-like legs and an 1830 press item pinned into it.
- 2State the axis that joins them and the direction each takes on it.
Key terms
- Provenance
- The documented chain of commission, ownership and acquisition attached to a work. In this week it is the argument rather than the background.
- Ricochet
- The week's term for reading two works made a century apart as one another's echo rather than as a linear sequence.
- Long looking
- Sustained attention to a colonial image treated as a research method in its own right, on the argument that it yields new insight into contact history.
- Contact history
- The history of first and continuing encounter between First Nations and colonising peoples, read through images.
- Colonial archive
- The documentary record produced by colonisation, which this week treats as material an artist can work with rather than only work from.
Escape and Chase: Two First Nations Works FAQ
What does the week mean by a ricochet?
It is the week's own word for the relation between the two works: not a line of influence running forward from 1890 to 2008, but a shot that comes back. It frames the later work as returning to the earlier one rather than descending from it, which is why the comparison has to be built on a shared question rather than on a chronology.
Are the artist's dates settled?
No, and this book prints both readings. The lecture programme gives 1830 to 1901; the subject's own caption page gives c. 1835 to 1901. The people are given as Kwatkwat on the caption page and as Kwatkwat and Wiradjuri in the week 2 tutorial materials. Where official records differ, name your source rather than choosing silently.
Can I use the auction price as evidence in an essay?
Yes, carefully. A pair of drawings by the artist carried an estimate of $50,000 to $70,000 and sold for $196,364 including buyer's premium, having been catalogued in that sale as by an unknown artist. That is good evidence of a shift in the category the work is received into. It is not evidence about the quality of the work, which did not change.
Why is a 1946 letter on the slides at all?
Because of how it describes what it encloses. It offers two drawings as novelties, calls them crude sketches, and attributes them to an artist from a tribe it says is extinct. Read as a document about 1946 rather than as a description of the drawings, it records what a well-connected observer then believed these objects were, which is exactly the kind of claim an art historian dates and situates.
Exam move
Practise the two moves this week teaches, because both transfer to the first essay. The first is reading a provenance chain as evidence: write out the route an object took and mark the point where an attribution was lost or gained. The second is the materials question, which is to ask what else a work could plausibly have been made from and what would have been lost.
Applied to the 2008 work it produces immediate results, because leather, tea tree and driven steel pins are each choices with alternatives. Do not attempt to memorise the auction figures; remember instead what class of claim they can support.
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