Blind Ned 1996-1999

“Derek Kreckler’s installation Blind Ned includes two stuffed kangaroos, a photographic portrait head of one kangaroo, and a video. The video loop depicts Australian folk hero Ned Kelly feeling his way through the Australian bush with a white cane, disappearing into the bush before going off-screen. A single shot in black-and-white, the video appears scratched and gate-jumps like an old newsreel. The kangaroos look at us looking at the video. They seem wary, accusing, defensive—looking away from the ‘past’ towards us with uncertain expectation. Initially the sight of Ned Kelly with a white cane is comic, almost farcical. But this deceptively simple conjunction is full of possibilities for interpretation, suggesting a traumatised relationship to land and nation. Together with the kangaroos specimens, it conveys a strong sense of pathos; the figures within the installation seem to exist in a neglected—even brutalised—place where no-one belongs. They prompt us with questions how do we identify with this hero of the bush? who identifies? does Ned’s blindness and repeated disappearance signify a loss of understanding of the environment, the loss of a believable national role model? Kreckler’s installation gently alerts us to the implications of our national blindnesses, clearing a path to increased self-awareness.”

Linda Michaels, Australian Perspecta catalogue, Living Here Now, Museum of Contemporary Art 1999.