Australian government spied on Aboriginal activists: photographic exhibition

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS Exhibition dates: Wed 22 January to Sat 1 February 2014 View the artworks http://damienmintongallery.com.au/artists/asio-through-the-looking-glass

Australia spy photos: Australia stalked Aboriginal activists ‘Persons of Interest’ Australia stalked Aboriginals By Brenda Norrel Censored News, 23 Jan 14, Australian Aboriginals were secretly photographed under surveillance by the government of Australia. Now, the spy photos of Aboriginal land rights activists, authors, playrights and artists are the subject of a photo exhibit.

“The 70 photos of people such as author Frank Hardy, Aboriginal activists Eddie Mabo and Gary Foley, film critic David Stratton and actor Bob Maza, among a range of Australians who went on to become prominent in public life,” Business Insider reports.

Torres Strait Islander Eddie Mabo’s Aboriginal land rights struggle and love for his homeland resulted in reshaping Australian laws. Mabo passed to the Spirit World in 1992

Gary Foley, Gumbainggir from New South Wales exposed Aboriginals deaths in custody. Foley worked with the “style and language” of the Black Power Movement in America. Robert ‘Bob’ Lewis Maza was an actor and playwright, whose father was a Murray Islander and mother was Aboriginal Yidinjdji.

Damien Minton Gallery announced that the photos will be viewed for the first time. These are previously secret ASIO, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, images sourced by the creators of the documentary series, Persons of Interest, Smart Street Films, Haydn Keenan and Gai Steele.

The director of the documentary series, Haydn Keenan, said the photos are “… images with no author, created by the State, of those who threatened it. They are secret political images, stolen to gain power over the subject. Here is a machine aesthetic. No artful frame or composition proposed, but uncannily appears.”

The gallery said the photographs were created as documents and records of surveillance by secret ASIO operatives going about their work monitoring the activities and meetings of people who the state considered to be ‘a person of interest’……(PHOTOS below in the original article) http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/australia-spy-photos-australia-stalked.html

January 23, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | aboriginal issues, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, civil liberties

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