They draw attention to Indentured , a major new public art installation by Gail Mabo. The work illuminates the often unacknowledged and sometimes suppressed Queensland history of South Sea Islander indentured labour in the early colonial era, which is part of the artist’s matrilineal family heritage. In the installation these people become present and unavoidable in the Gurumbilbarra / Townsville CBD.
The installation - mounted on the façade of the 1887-built Bank of New South Wales building - is in direct conversation with the bronze statue, not 50 metres away, of Robert Towns, the namesake of ‘Townsville’. Towns was a leading figure in ‘blackbirding’ trade in Queensland in the late 19th century.
It is estimated that statewide, over 62,500 Melanesian people were trafficked and forced to work in the sugar cane fields and maritime industry, by unscrupulous characters like Towns, between 1863 and 1904.
Mabo is described as a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, printmaking and painting, her work often connecting Torres Strait Islander knowledge and political histories , including that of her own family, to manifest contemporary advocacy.
