Cast in cast out

Cast in cast out is inspired by Sydney-based Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist Dennis Golding’s experiences and childhood memories of growing up in ‘The Block’, an Aboriginal community in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern. The artwork ‘recasts’ Victorian-era ironwork panels – a distinctive feature of many 19th-century houses in Redfern – as contemporary expressions of power and ownership.

This display of Cast in cast out plays with structural form and shadow. Ten sculptural panels and fragments cast by the artist are suspended at varying heights, each one casting a shadow onto the vivid blue wall behind. Fragments appear to float from the panels onto the ground, representing Golding’s dismantling of colonial symbols of division and control, the broken shards a means of reclaiming, transforming and breaking away from colonial constructs. The artist’s presence resonates through his photographic self-portrait, which provides the focal point for the display, his arresting gaze directed at visitors as they enter the gallery.

The display is accompanied by a 3D-printed replica of one of the panels, to give visitors an opportunity to feel its shapes and textures, as well as a filmed interview in which Golding discusses Cast in cast out and its genesis.

Artist statement

Cast in cast out is a multifaceted artwork inspired by my experiences and childhood memories of growing up in ‘The Block’, an Aboriginal community in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern. It explores the practices of colonial occupation and land ownership through the motif of Victorian-era ironwork panels that were a distinctive feature of houses in the area. The title echoes the process of reproducing the panels by casting them in and then out of a mould. It also acknowledges the experiences of many displaced Aboriginal families who over the generations made their home in Redfern, and feel ‘cast out’ once more by the recent gentrification of the suburb.

Dislocated and dismantled, reproduced and recast as contemporary expressions, the panels become powerful representations of memories accumulated and fragmented over time. They are my way of decolonising these colonial objects, reclaiming them and transforming them into something of my own.

Dennis Golding, 2024