Uluru Bleeding

Reflections on the tragedy at Australia's heart ABC Australia- Culture of Violence Revealed in Central Australia
As an artist interested in exploring notions of Australian Gothic this story reveals a deep necrotic wound we as a nation have been scared to touch, terrified of doing more harm, torn by guilt over our complicity in its creation.

To understand the depth of grief, my western gothic mind conjures up images of a traditional aboriginal woman cast as a Holy Mother holding in her hands a fleshly uluru dripping with blood; shards of glass from broken bottles a vicious crown of thorns.

Only one thing is sure. The healing will be complex, controversial with no guarantee of success. As the wise know, the most important factor in healing a wound lies not in the strength of the medicines or the skill of the doctors, but the bodies own capacity to rally its own defences and inherent strength to fight against the toxicity and affect its own healing.

That healing and recovery will involve pain is a given. The daily cleaning and dressing of the skin grafts of burns victims is excruciating, the painful physical therapy of an spinal patient the only path to restoring function.

But to do nothing will ensure only further suffering, continued rotting and the eventual death of spirit in entire communities of australia's first people.