Unprecedented

2020 being the year where the word ‘unprecedented’ features daily in the media. Everything is apparently ‘unprecedented’, and it's really starting to frustrate me because it’s a very powerful word. Unprecedented means “never known or done before” and so it’s completely irresponsible to be calling the global events we are witnessing such. We know that there have been pandemics in the past, abhorrent violence, systemic racism, we are also aware that growing ecological crises are not only repeating every season but intensifying every year now too.

As an Aboriginal person, it is very clear to me that the misuse of this word in the Murdoch Press is absolutely intentional and by defining all the current global tragedies as unprecedented, it allows a cognitive dissonance and perpetuates a colonial mindset which apparently exists without a past, without memory of anything that happens on earth. 

Colonialism is the precedent to the so-called unprecedented and terror that the whole world continues to endure, often unwillingly.

EXHIBITION HISTORY:
- NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC, Curated by Myles Russell-Cook; 19 December 2020 – 18 April 2021