This is titled, “Australia Gives the Finger to the United Nation’s Convention on Refugees”
image by Robin Roberts
As my artist statement I used excerpts from the ASRC fact sheet 2013. www.asrc.org.au
Asylum seekers who enter Australia without a valid visa by boat or plane are not illegal. They are permitted to enter without prior authorisation because this right is protected by Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention which recognises they have good cause for entering without a visa.
No offence under Australian law criminalises the act of arriving in Australia without a valid visa for the purposes of seeking asylum.
The allegation that boat arrivals are not genuine in their appeals for protection from persecution is untrue.
image by Robin Roberts
image by Robin Roberts
My second entry is titled, “Delicate Flowers Failed to Bloom”
image by Kim Foale
When reading patient records from the New Orleans City Insane Asylum I wondered if some of the women were really insane or if they were just inconvenient or opinionated?
New Orleans (La.) City Insane Asylum
Record of Patients, 1882-1884; 1888
Excerpts of
This woman is a Raving Maniac who can give no account of herself. She is naked in her cell.
Finding her insane, suffering from Stupidity.
She laughs constantly: when asked a question she gives a sharp answer, which is sometimes correct, but generally not.
Suffering from Delirium of Persecution, the result of unrequited love
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Asylum is on at the Sidespace Gallery until the 15th of November. Open daily from 10.30 am – 4.30 pm
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Our treatment of asylum seekers shames me.
And women frequently were locked up for being inconvenient. A local mental asylum discovered that women had been sent there – and never released – for the crime of pregnancy outside marriage.
Your work makes a very strong statement. I admire your voice..
The term hysterectomy comes from the fact that women were given them to “cure hysteria”! Which was probably no more than frustration at being treated like a child for life!