Through the notion of the forensic aesthetic, Memoria investigates local and personal histories from Far North Queensland. Exploring themes of culture, identity and journey, the exhibition includes collections of personal memorabilia, historical artefacts and archival records to investigate the regional history of Italian migration, with particular focus on the first post-war Italians who arrived in Cairns to work in the Far North Queensland sugarcane industry.

As a first-generation Italian, Memoria pays tribute to my late father who migrated in 1956 for employment as a cane cutter and settled in Innisfail to work in the sugar industry until retirement. Challenged by racist attitudes, resentment and social alienation, some works reflect my personal reaction to his experiences of being culturally discriminated and misrepresented as a non-english speaking migrant in Australia. The exhibition title is taken from the Italian translation of memory, and acts as catalyst for cultural testimony due to the diminishing Italy-born population of Far North Queensland. Memoria also explores the region’s sugar-related heritage through the documentation and installation of built architecture and local artefacts.

With over 340,000 Italians having emigrated as either displaced persons, assisted migrants or self-funded, they faced considerable opposition in order to enter the country, integrate and prosper. Challenged by racism and cultural stereotyping, today Italians constitute Australia’s largest non-British ethnic group, with the language being the second most widely-spoken. Migrant Ships is a collection of sixty vintage postcards depicting passenger vessels used to transport Italians to Australia. Functioning as an archive of maritime history, the postcards were commonly hand painted by ship portraitists and mass produced as passage souvenirs. As artefacts of Australia's migration history and as an exploration of heritage, the postcards symbolise displacement, sacrifice and opportunity and acknowledge my parents who journeyed onboard the Aurelia and Neptunia liners. As a typology of naval architecture, Migrant Ships aims to not only reinforce the notion of artist as collector, but of the collection as art.

The digital slideshow Cane Cutters (Renaissance Men) is a typology of archival portraits of Italians who migrated to Australia for work in the Far North Queensland sugarcane industry. Under the Italian-Australian Migration Agreement of 1951, men were employed to cut cane by hand for two years as a condition of their financially assisted passage to Australia. Historically labelled ‘white aliens’, ‘swarthy invaders’ and ‘olive peril’ many Italian cane cutters became landowners, replacing Australian and British farmers; threatening a foreign dominance of industry and region in turn generating prejudice nationwide. As a form of identification, profile photographs from digitally re-archived immigration files have been reproduced to question the role of photography itself in the literalization of racial taxonomies. Simultaneously juxtaposed alongside comparable representations of Italian Renaissance portraits that embody idealist archetypes of physiognomy; each man’s facial characteristics, stoic expressions and formalised poses endeavour to challenge the negative stereotype of Italians in Australian history.

As physically demanding employment, the cane cutters worked from dawn to dusk suffering cuts, blisters, boils and enduring red raw hands. As the favoured ethnic group for cutting, the Italians threatened a foreign dominance of the sugar industry in turn generating anti-Italian sentiment nationwide. Cane Cutters (Handprints) is a collection of exemplar prints taken from Italian migrants who cut cane by hand in Far North Queensland. Historically used to identify employees on paydays, handprints were also utilised under the White Australia policy as a way to record and identify migrants in transit and to prevent the country from being overwhelmed by undesirable races. Representing a collective cane gang, impressions of the hand each man used to cut cane were documented on sugar cane bagasse paper. The prints function as archival records of the men who endured the hardship of manually harvesting cane and act as testament to their contribution on the sugar industry of Far North Queensland.

From 1891, the Italian’s presence on Far North Queensland’s sugar cane fields generated controversy about their inability to assimilate. Australian newspapers complained the Government was allowing ‘Mediterranean scum’ to invade the country. Racist and derogatory rhetoric was frequently published and they were considered undesirable migrants and workers up until the 1970’s. Borrowing its title from a historic newspaper article about the influx of Italians on Far North Queensland, Another Italy is a series of vintage snapshots of iconic Italian landmarks photographed on a family holiday in 1993. Capturing architecture that embodies exemplary archetypes of Western civilisation, the photographs have been arranged side by side with hand-typed lists of anti-Italian characterisations taken from archival press clippings. Another Italy symbolises the juxtaposition between the immense cultural pride this immigrant generation brought with them, having hailed from a country so rich in historical achievement and majesty; and the dehumanisation and degradation that awaited them in their new, parochial community.

The photographic series Cane Barrack is documentation of a derelict sugar cane barrack from Far North Queensland. Focusing on its boarded up openings, doors and windows, the sugar industry dwellings were erected on cane farms to house labourers under government legislation that responded to European migrants demands for better working conditions. As characteristic architecture of the pre-industrial and local landscape, the barrack structure was typically linear with single banked rooms; providing accomodation for cane gangs of approximately seven men. Typically constructed of iron, timber or blockwork, they are rapidly disappearing from the landscape due to cyclone, flood, fire and time. Exploring the aesthetics of decay, the barrack ruin lies in a state of literal and symbolic decomposition - roofless, weathered, overgrown, mildewed, faded, flaked, and covered in mould. As a typology of interior and exterior openings once used for entry, exit and observation, the closure of space represents industrial and architectural obsolescence and acts as a last testament to a cultural-historical way of life; the traces of human existence highlighting memory preserved in photographic form.

Typologies and collections are an integral component of this exhibition, as they symbolise journey and a passage of time, in particular, the installation titled Private Collection, which is an accumulation of objects belonging to my father, Mario Rosa (1931-2000). Inspired by memories spent in his handmade shed and vegetable garden and uncovered sixteen years after his death, the work draws upon the vernacular of the everyday; consisting of tools, personal artefacts and banal odds and ends. Accumulated over five decades, he collected what he believed to be purposeful items, although many of them were rusted and broken. Growing up in a family of nine throughout the war influenced his frugality, and the process of holding onto and reusing was a way of saving for the future. However, the objects now function as mnemonic devices and physical traces for his identity. Exploring notions of impermanence in personal, local and global spheres, Private Collection conceptualises the existence of a loved one. It acknowledges the work of my father; enabling me to reconnect to him through the installation of materials that embodied his way of life.