Jenny Murray-Jones
Artist's Statement

My art is about images, the images which are part of my identity.

I want to recreate the many images which have been taken from us. In many cases, these images have been used against us.

I am responding to the many ethnographic images which found their way onto postcards and into the archives of government departments. These are to a great extent, still locked away. These images are our faces and the faces of our ancestors, yet we have had no access to them.

This was another way in which the coloniser consumed, deconstructed and de-valued our culture. These are the nameless faces, and insulting captions which still haunt us.

My painting is my way of responding to this injustice. I also want to explore a landscape which is full of the images of our ancestors. The land has been witness to the many journeys we have made, from mission to mission and town to city. These are the journeys my father and grandmother have made, when they were wards of the state, and sent from one place to another. All of these journeys were documented by the departments, yet these were kept from us.

For me, my work is about my own documentation. These are the images which we must reclaim.

Jenny Murray-Jones 2003

Jenny Murray-Jones

I was born in Melbourne in 1956, the second daughter of Norman Murray (Jones) and Shirley Bawden (Jones).

My father was a Railmotor Driver for the Victorian Railways, and our family travelled around Victorian country towns, living in railway houses in the Wimmera and South Gippsland.

My father was taken away and put in homes around Victoria, including Rupertswood at Sunbury, and Tally Ho Boys Home at Burwood. From here he was sent to ‘positions’ all over the state as a farm hand. He escaped from these on many occasions, only to be picked up by the Police and taken back. His file is 122 pages long, and this is only one part of it. The remainder lays in some archive or maybe it has been destroyed. My father had a very unhappy childhood, being moved from pillar to post. There is a lot of sadness in his file, yet to his credit, there was a lot of strength, when you read of his resistance and letters of complaint to the board.

My father passed away at the age of 34 from Motor Neurone Disease. He was the son of Molly Murray, eldest daughter of William Murray a Wiraduri man, and Lylla Atkinson, Yorta Yorta. My grandmother was born at Cummeragunja and went to school there, until the family moved to Kyalite on the Wakool River. My great-grandfather owned a property there, and the children all went to school in a little one roomed school house near the river.

The family was moved off the property, and onto the mission at Balranald. It was from here that my grandmother and her sister Bessy, were taken away to work as domestics. Many of my family still live at Balranald, but we are pretty widely spread now all over the state.

My Great Aunty Mary survives all of her brothers and sisters, and she lives in Gippsland. I am now an art teacher at Drouin Secondary College, and actually teach my Great Aunt’s grandaughter.

My father’s sister and brother survive him, and they both live in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

Jenny Murray-Jones