The night bird sings
its mourning song.
The day beckons,
light through shadow.
It feels hollow
but sinks me
and a kind of weight follows
reaching into every crevice.
‘Don’t cry baby, please don’t cry.’
You were nothing but a promise.
Return to silence
to the quiet and calm
of the night tide
hitting the shore,
like a slap that’s been
worn before.
Main image: Teena McCarthy, ‘A Triple Gin on the Rocks’. Photography, ochres, organic house paint, charcoal. Location: my Grandmothers Country, Broken Hill, NSW, 2016
Portrait of Teen McCarthy by Bill Hope, ‘The Essence of a Woman’, 2013.
Graduating in 2014 from University of NSW Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction, Teena McCarthy has exhibited extensively for the past seven years. In 2011 she curated iNTervention Intervention, a protest exhibition about The Northern Territory Emergency Response Act. In 2014 McCarthy’s work was exhibited in Monuments to the Frontier Wars, curated by Damien Minton, who later invited her to appear in the Redfern Biennale 2015 and 2016. Djon Mundine OAM curated her in That I May be of Service – Motto of the Clan Foley, an exhibition about activist, actor, academic and original member of The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Dr Gary Foley, at The Rocks Discovery Museum(2014-15). McCarthy was selected finalist in The NSW Parliament Aboriginal Art Prize 2014 and 2015, and her commissions include the cover of UNSW Law Faculty’s Reconciliation Action Plan (2015), a painting which is now part of UNSW’s permanent collection. McCarthy was the featured artist in Old Lands – New Marks, an exhibition in Artlands Dubbo 16 curated by Djon Mundine OAM for Western Plains Cultural Centre, and she also featured as a performance and visual artist in the successful Contemporary Arts Festival in Kandos, Cementa 17, curated by Ann Finnegan. McCarthy recently exhibited in a group show, Summer Sojourns 17, at Simon Chan’s Art Atrium, Bondi, and all enquires regarding her work can be addressed to this gallery.