Fire and Brimstone: Therese Ritchie, Chips Mackinolty, Todd Williams & Djon Mundine
The exhibition Fire & Brimstone casts a watching eye over the corporations and individuals who continue to choose profit over people and climate catastrophe. Before there was a virus crisis, many expert reports warned of the need to close the inequality gap. The reports all pointed to our declining health, life expectancy and rising numbers of preventable deaths; especially in prisons, aged care and rural and remote communities which, in Australia, largely comprise First Nations peoples. The most shocking work in Fire & Brimstone is 'Kumanjayi', Chips Mackinolty's stark red and black text memorial to the 437 black deaths in custody since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (Report 1996). Very few of its 330 recommendations have been implemented. Every year, Aboriginal people continue to die in custody. Mackinolty's work is subtitled, "and still counting".
