There We Were All In One Place
Early-career survey exhibition.
(2016-2019)
To access a PDF of the exhibition catalogue, click here.
To visit the learning experience, click www.therewewereallinoneplace.com
From 2016 to 2019, Gunditjmara woman Hayley Millar Baker produced five photographic series including I’m the Captain Now (2016), Toongkaeeyt (2017), A Series of Unwarranted Events (2018), Cook Book (2017-2019), and The trees have no tongues (2019). Made almost exclusively in black and white, the photographs use historical reappropriation and citation, in tandem with digital editing and archival research, to consider human experiences of time, memory and place.
Millar Baker’s layered photographic assemblages affirm the Aboriginal experience and culture within the Australian Imaginary to form a complex image narrative of place, family, identity and survival. Her work is informed by her Gunditjmara and crosscultural heritage, grounded in historical archive research, and guided by a nonlinear form of storytelling that sees past, present and future as an unbroken continuum.
There, we were all in one place, bringing these five bodies of work together for the first time to consider how Millar Baker uses photography and storytelling to re-author history and assert the authority of memory and experience across generations.
There We Were All in One Place is extended by a catalogue with full work reproductions and essays by exhibition curator Stella Rosa McDonald, curators Hetti Perkins and Talia Smith, and a commissioned poem by poet and artist Gunditjmara woman Vicki Cousins.
There We Were All in One Place is accompanied by a Learning Experience designed by curator and educator Emily McDaniel in consultation with the artist. Aimed at tertiary students across disciplines, the experience facilitates the development of personal connections to Hayley Millar Baker's work. It encourages participants to reflect on their own experiences, memories, and understanding of the themes and stories represented in the exhibition.
“Millar Baker’s encrypted images purposefully elude easy categorisation or typecasting; they are cinematic, documentary, archival, and surreal still lifes. - ‘Girl, Interrupted’, Hetti Perkins.
“Millar Baker’s photographs are narratively and temporally polyphonic. They are composed of past, present and future, and contain, often within a single frame, two or more simultaneous lines of time, story or memory.” ‘There we were all in one place’, - Stella Rosa McDonald.’
There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
I’m the Captain Now (2016), There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
A Series of Unwarranted Events (2018), There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
Cook Book (2017-2019), There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
The trees have no tongues (2019), There we were all in one place, UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
There we were all in one place, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.
I’m the Captain Now (2016), There we were all in one place, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.
Toongkateeyt (2017), There we were all in one place, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.
A Series of Unwarranted Events (2018), There we were all in one place, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.
Cook Book (2017-19), There we were all in one place, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.
The trees have no tongues (2019), There we were all in one place, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.
There we were all in one place, USC Gallery, Sunshine Coast, Australia.
Toongkateeyt (2017), There we were all in one place, USC Gallery, Sunshine Coast, Australia.
There we were all in one place, There we were all in one place, USC Gallery, Sunshine Coast, Australia.
I’m the Captain Now (2016), There we were all in one place, USC Gallery, Sunshine Coast, Australia.
There we were all in one place, There we were all in one place, USC Gallery, Sunshine Coast, Australia.
A Series of Unwarranted Events (2018), There we were all in one place, USC Gallery, Sunshine Coast, Australia.
There we were all in one place, Flinders University Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia.
There we were all in one place, Flinders University Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia.
There we were all in one place, Flinders University Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia.
Cook Book (2017-19), There we were all in one place, Flinders University Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia.
There we were all in one place, Flinders University Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia.
There we were all in one place, Flinders University Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia.
The trees have no tongues (2019), There we were all in one place, Flinders University Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia.