Zoe Jackson: Girls on the Verge (Of Death)

By recasting Black-Eyed Sue and Sweet Poll in shackles, Sayer’s 1792 engraving subverts the sailor’s farewell to reveal convict and naval cruelty as mirror images.

The Tennant Creek Brio’s art isn’t a legible script, a tidy lineage, or an easy metaphor—it’s a rupture, a refusal, a site of resurgence. This story sends us somewhere else, reaching for something that came before or after, looking for what’s out back, round the back of the house, the shed, the art centre, the “outback.”