by Jason Wing
Linear Park retaining wall, near Kingsbury Reserve
I wanted to put the story back into this location as Pemulwuy would have travelled through here. Pemulwuy is just one of the many thousands of heroic stories that is often untold. The idea was to inform Aboriginal placemaking back onto site.
Jason Wing is commissioned to do a series of stencils along the Linear Park retaining walls, connecting the new cultural landscape of contemporary artworks between Bexley North and Beverly Hills. This series will pay homage to Pemulwuy the Rainbow Warrior, a Bidjigal man of the Eora nation and one of the most significant activists and political figures in the late 18th century.
Pemulwuy led the Aboriginal campaign of resistance against colonial forces, using the Cooks River as a major artery for connecting clans and transporting warriors. This important, site-specific history will be recognised at Linear Park, representing the Bidjigal hero in context.
Pemulwuy will be depicted by the crow. He was known as Butu Wargun, meaning “crow” or “law man” in Bidjigal language, and there are accounts of Pemulwuy escaping incarceration by transforming into a crow, only leaving behind crow feathers in his cell.
Jason Wing is a Sydney based artist of both Chinese and Aboriginal heritage. Born in 1977, Wing’s formative years were spent immersed in Asian cultures in the western Sydney suburb of Cabramatta. Wing began as a street artist and has since expanded his practice to incorporate photo media, installation and painting. However, despite branching into new mediums his work continues to contain elements of street art as well as frequently drawing upon his tri-cultural heritage.
Known for addressing somewhat contentious issues, Wing explores complex notions of race, the environment and politics through a bold, graphic aesthetic to create work that is deceptively simple yet concurrently hard hitting.
Wing holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Sydney College of the Arts and a Bachelor of Graphic Design. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 2012 he held his first international solo show at the Kluge-Ruhe Museum, Virginia, USA titled People of Substance, followed shortly a solo exhibition at Arc One. 2012 also saw the launch of Between Two Worlds, a major public artwork in Kimber Lane, Chinatown, Sydney, commissioned by the City of Sydney.
He has been included in group shows such as Making Change (National Art Museum of China, Beijing 2012), Cold Eels and Distant Thoughts,(Monash Gallery of Art, 2012), Bungaree: The First Australian (Mosman Art Gallery, 2012), Look Closely Now (Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, 2012)and Made in China Australia (Salamanca Art Centre, 2012).Wing has also undertaken several residencies including Red Gate Gallery, Beijing, Ozasia Festival, Adelaide and Xucun Art Commune, China. In 2012 he won the NSW Parliament Indigenous Prize for his provocative work Australia Was Stolen by Armed Robbery. Wing has also been a finalist in the Redlands Emerging Artist Prize and in 2009 won the Fishers Ghost Indigenous Art Prize. Wing’s work is collected by Artbank, Blacktown Council, Kluge-Ruhe Museum and private collections both in Australia and overseas.
These resources have been designed by experienced Visual Arts educators to support students and teachers studying and delivering the NSW syllabus for Visual Arts, and are tailored to Stage 4 and Stage 5.
Stage 6 teachers may also consider some of the artist studies for their students.
