We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
Vincent Serico / Wakka Wakka and Kabi Kabi peoples / Australia 1949–2008 / Carnarvon collision (Big map) 2006 / Synthetic polymer paint on linen / Purchased 2007. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Vincent Serico
Vincent SericoCarnarvon collision (Big map) 2006
Not Currently on Display
Vincent Serico’s Carnarvon collision (Big map) tells Jiman contact history in the lead up to the Hornet Bank Massacre (1857), as passed down through his Jiman family links, relaying the history held by a people so brutally treated that they were thought by some to have been exterminated.
The survival of Aboriginal people along the colonial frontier created new problems for settler society. A huge number of displaced people from devastated societies became fringe dwellers, living off the invaders’ scraps. Those who were not useful to land barons as unpaid or underpaid labourers were moved onto state reserves and Christian missions, where their lives were controlled by church and government officials.
Vincent Serico was born in Southern Queensland and grew up on Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve. His father was born in the Carnavon Ranges and his mother came from Palm Island. As a child he was separated from his family and placed in a segregated boys’ dormitory to ‘learn white ways’.
Serico is one of the best known and most respected artists to have emerged from the Cherbourg Mission community in Queensland. The Cherbourg style incorporates diverse influences from other areas as knowledge of local regional art was lost after the arrival of Europeans. Cherbourg art represents the attempt to re-establish a cultural identity which had been disrupted by enforced resettlement.
In 1974 Serico travelled to Mornington Island where he worked with local artists, including Dick and Lindsay Roughsey. Initially, he did not let the artists know that he was a painter too, as he wanted to learn from them and was reluctant to introduce the outside influence of his own Westernised style.