Executed in Franklin Street Commentary

Dr Tony Birch, Dr Bruce McGuiness Research Fellow, Moondani Balluk Academic Centre, Victoria University

“The story of the first public hanging in the Port Phillip district is not only an Aboriginal story. It is a shared story that non-Aboriginal people must also take ownership of, in the hope that with ownership comes a sense of responsibility, refection and where necessary, a commitment to reciprocity. The artist Pamela Horsley, has accepted this challenge with a dynamic sense of creative and intellectual work. Her painting ‘Evasion’, which documents the resistance of the five Aboriginal from Tasmania while ‘on the run’ in the colony of Victoria, brings Truganini, Planobeena and Pyterunner out of the shadow of history. Horsley’s work reminds us of the courage of the women and the centrality in the wider story of colonial occupation and Aboriginal resistance, which is a story of autonomy and bravery of all aboriginal women as much as it is a story of men.