Rainbow Serpent, Rustling Wind

The Rainbow Serpent, Rustling Wind exhibition critically engages with the Harriett Brims 1890 to 1930 photographic collection of over 600 glass plate negatives. The collection offers one of the few visual records of early settler life in Far North Queensland, Australia. Though seemingly documentary, the historic photographs are deeply implicated in colonial systems of control. They reveal histories shaped by power and hierarchy, particularly the exploitation of Melanesian labourers coerced to work in the sugarcane fields between 1860 and 1901 through the practice of Blackbirding.
In response, photographic practitioner Azura Silberschmidt adopts a counter-approach, reworking these archival materials, placing them in dialogue with contemporary images. The exhibition challenges conventional engagement with historical imagery through Critical Fabulation, a method of storytelling that works with fictional narratives to fill gaps in historical records. It invites broader perspectives on the lives and labour entwined with the sugar industry’s legacy. Ultimately, it prompts reflection on photography’s role in shaping colonial memory and global food systems, not only as a record of the past, but as a space for creative intervention, where dominant narratives are unsettled and more
inclusive futures imagined.

The original glass plate negatives of Harriett Brims are archived at the Heritage Collection at the John Oxley Library,
State Library of Queensland, Australia.