Shevaun Wright | Apologies
28 June – 14 July 2018
This exhibition draws its title from a lesser known costs appeal by Andrew Bolt and Herald and Weekly Times Pty Ltd (‘Herald’) against Pat Eatock in her successful application for a declaration that they had breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Despite losing their case, Bolt and the Herald sought legal costs against Eatock on the basis that she had failed to secure a better judgment than their offer to compromise the case; their apology.
Etching parts of the judgment and apology onto either sides of successively receding and fading Perspex pages, the work asks viewers to consider the framework of colonial histories in which the judgment, the law and apology exists.
Accompanied by a series of prints overlaying the judgment in black and white ink, as this year marks the 10th anniversary of then Prime Minister Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generation is a critical moment in which to think about the notion of costs; not only in monetary terms, but intergenerational trauma.
