Kay Lawrence
Kay Lawrence | Australia b.1947 | No work for a white man 2006–08 | Blanket under-trousers, mother-of-pearl buttons, cotton thread, chair, white cotton-drill suit made by Adriana Loro, coat hanger, photograph by Michael Kluvanek, wooden frame, glass | Proposed for the Queensland Art Gallery Collection
Prior to the second world war, 80% of the world’s pearl shell came from Broome. The Kimberley pearl shell industry, dating from 1860, was first built on the labour of local indigenous people, and later on the Asian labour. In the wake of the White Australia Policy in the early 20th Century, an experiment to introduce white labour into the industry failed, giving credence to the popular belief that diving for pearl shell ‘was no work for a white man’. (Kay Lawrence, adapted from a text reproduced in the exhibition catalogue This everything water, 2008)
In Kay Lawrence’s work, the material of the two uniforms – the coarse woollen under-trousers worn by divers and the starched cotton suit worn by white ‘pearling masters’ – acknowledges a specific history of exploitation. By adorning the under-trousers with an abundance of mother-of-pearl buttons, Lawrence acknowledges the cross-cultural fascination with their lustre, and makes a symbolic gesture of recompense.
