Brenda L Croft
(Australia 1964– )
- Language group
- Gurindji, Fitzmaurice region , Mutpurra, Fitzmaurice region
- Title
- Oh look the Antichrist, from the series In my father's house
- Year
- 1998
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- colour ilfachrome photograph
- Dimensions
-
94.0 x 66.0cm sheet; 126.0 x 99.0cm frame
- Credit
- Gift of the artist 2007
- Accession number
- 252.2007.11
- Copyright
- © Brenda L Croft. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia
- Location
- Yiribana Gallery
- Further information
Brenda L Croft is known for her intimate photographs of family, friends and Indigenous community members which present positive images of urban Indigenous communities. The personal becomes political in her works, both in the intimacy of the photographer's relationship with the families, and the strong and confident sense of self-imaging presented.
Since 1998, Croft has worked with digital media to create images that layer photographs and text, exploring more directly autobiographical subject matter. History and personal memory intersect in the series 'In My Father's House', 1998, where Croft uses family snapshots, religious imagery and language to consider her own experience of growing up in the 'suburbs' with a white mother and an Aboriginal father who was stolen from his parents under government policy at the age of two. In these works Croft interrogates cultural difference in Australia and exposes the personal impact of this on her family.
Croft completed 'In My Father's House' following the passing of her father and through the works it is evident Croft is exploring his life, what he was subjected to and experienced, his place in society and inturn her own. The role of religion in this understanding is questioned by Croft through the use of black angels to deliver her messages, provocatively questioning what is right and acceptable and if this can only be 'white'. The title of the series, 'In My Father's House' is therefore not only about Croft's own father, but also the church and how it is implicated in the process of assimilation.
© Australian Art Department, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2007
