No Blood Stained the Wattle (2016-2017)

In her series NO BLOOD STAINED THE WATTLE, Aletheia Casey uses the violent conflicts and mass murders that took place during the colonisation of Tasmania to investigate how the earth bears traces of historical traumas. The Tasmanian aboriginals lived there for forty thousand years, until the British invasion destroyed their lives in 1803. The conflict led to the Black War, a guerrilla war that forms the backdrop to Casey’s work. With her portraits of descendants of indigenous Tasmanians, she tells the story of a people deeply connected to their land. Casey took her photographs in places where mass murders occurred and where she believes the spirit of the people still roams today. She treated the photographic film using pigments and stones from the area, as a symbol of our history, of our origin that needs to be better understood. The title is a cynical reference to the myth of a bloodless immigration – the wattle flower is a national Australian symbol.