Caitlin Hogan
– Artist’s Website –
A refugee/asylum seeker sits in a bleak room in a detention center. A tourism-type poster on the wall reads, ‘Welcome to Australia’, contrasting the image of the Australia we like to project to the world and to ourselves – a place that is always sunny and optimistic, the lucky country where everyone gets a fair go – with the reality of what the Australian government does to people when they are at their most desperate and vulnerable.
The title refers to the book, ‘The Tyranny of Distance’ by Geoffrey Blainey, which explores how Australia’s non-indigenous culture is defined by its geographical isolation from the countries that Australian migrants came from, especially Britain. The work appropriates this title to refer to the distance refugees have traveled to find a safe place, and how far they are from that within the detention centers. They have come so close and yet so far.