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Polly
Sumner was born at Point McLeay Aboriginal Reserve, South Australia in
1952 and is of the Ngarrindjeri people. She has lived in Adelaide since
1962. Sumner commenced photography as a member of the Women's Art Movement,
Adelaide in 1983 and first exhibited her work a year later in exhibitions
including Black Women in Focus at the Adelaide Festival Centre, an exhibition
at Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, and one for the Women's Art Movement,
Adelaide.
In 1984 she participated in an exhibition at Flinders University that
focussed on Adelaide's Jubilee celebrations. Sumner started work on the
After 200 Years project in the community of Port Augusta, South Australia
in 1986. She exhibited her photographs as part of the Adelaide Fringe
Festival at the State Bank of South Australia in 1988. For the last fifteen
years Sumner has worked for the Aboriginal community-controlled health
organisation Nunkuwarrin Yunti, where she initially commenced employment
as a trainee. She has a Diploma in Management Practices (specialising
in Human Resource Management) from the Australian Institute of Management,
and is involved in a number of committees including the Aboriginal Sobriety
Group of South Australia (of which she is Chairperson), the Aboriginal
Health Council of South Australia, the Women's Community Legal Service,
the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO),
the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Council, and
the Sexual Health Reference Group.
Artist
statement — Polly
SUMNER
My work can sometimes take the form of photographic essays; it's almost
a diary of events of what I have been doing since 1983. The characters
I have photographed are usually chosen at random - when I first started
photographing, I would wander around the parks of Adelaide knowing that
I would find that the inhabitants of the park were quite often homeless
people. A lot of these persons were Aboriginal people and people I knew,
thereby making it a little easier to get permission to take their photographs.
NAIDOC marches show a mixture of pride, anger, desolation and desperation
and capturing these emotions on film allows me to look back and reflect
on what has many times been very tumultuous and emotive moments. Each
photograph can capture the emotions - the eyes, watery and creased, reflect
the history of days gone by; the brighter ones looking at what is yet
to come …
September 1998
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