Floating Land event creates partnership with South Sea Islander descendents on Sunshine Coast

The Butter Factory Arts Centre in Cooroy will later this month host exhibitions for an important part of Queensland’s history of which many are not aware. Beginning on 29 May, Long A…Long, Sugar…Ca…Cane, and My Island Homes will open as part of the Floating Land 2011 event and will educate the community about the Australian South Sea Islander’s history on the Sunshine Coast.

Australian South Sea Islanders were originally of countries such as Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Gilbert Islands, New Ireland and Milne Bay Provinces of Papua New Guinea, and were recruited in the 1800s by Queenslanders, who used the people for cheap labour in the sugar fields.

Many South Sea Islanders remained in Queensland and their descendents live on to tell their story. Floating Land is an opportunity for these stories to be told.

Long A…Long, Sugar…Ca…Cane is a new media installation by Krishna Nahow-Ryall, a South Sea Islander artist, who, using recycled materials and projected recorded voices and sounds, will focus on the culture of Islanders and of the slavery and ‘blackbirding’.

My Island Homes is co-curated by South Sea Islander Imelda Miller of Queensland Museum and is in conjunction with DASSI (Descendants of Australian South Sea Islanders) and the Queensland Museum. It will incorporate oral histories, photographs, digital stories and objects from local and state collections into the exhibition to promote an awareness and understanding of the history surrounding this population.

My Island Homes follows on from a community day event in March held in Bli Bli, which worked with DASSI in creating awareness of an important location, ‘The Old Place’, where South Sea Islanders once lived together after a day’s work at the cane fields.

Sunshine Coast Regional Council Cultural Heritage Curator Olivia Robinson said "Floating Land was a great platform for this important part of Sunshine Coast history to be heard. This year for Floating Land, we’ve seen it as an opportunity to really start to work with the Australian South Sea Islander community. It’s been very much a partnership with DASSI. We’ve been working with DASSI and Krishna and Imelda to bring it all together. Krishna’s exhibition is about her as a South Sea Islander and how she explores her identity through her artwork. Really what it’s about is that the Australian South Sea Island history is very unknown on the Sunshine Coast… it’s not really known throughout Queensland or Australia for that matter. We’re trying to increase the understanding and recognise that there is a distinct community up here and create a broader understanding of their history and heritage and their connection to the Sunshine Coast."

Long A…Long, Sugar…Ca…Cane, and My Island Homes will open at 2pm on 29 May at Cooroy Butter Factory and will run until 2 July.