If pigs could fly (the media machine)

Produced for the Bicentennial Travelling Exhibition which circumnavigated Australia during the ‘celebration of a nation’ in 1988, this work represents a return by Callas to distinctively Australian imagery: the Anzac, a kangaroo playing the fiddle, the swagman, and the surfer. These patriotic and nationalistic icons are intercut with references to contemporary media culture to reflect a process of ‘cultural de-territorialisation’, brought about by the advancement of communications technologies in the late 20th century. The irony of the national media promoting and perpetuating the notion of a unitary, cohesive Australian identity in a nation made up of multiple racial and ethnic groups and founded on a largely unresolved colonial past, is not lost on Callas.
Notes by Rachel Kent, reprinted courtesy of the author and d/Lux Media Arts.