Welcome to ACMI: New work encourages visitors to think about country
Mick Harding wants us to pay more attention to the natural world: the water, the land and the sky.
“Because we’re in and on them or around them every single day of our lives, we don’t pay them the close scrutiny we really should,” he says.
In Indigenous culture, everything is respected and because of that relationship, Harding says: “We understand our responsibilities. Everything is connected.”
Indigenous artist Mick Harding, in front of his video installation for ACMI, with his son Mitch who worked on the piece with him.Credit: Justin McManus
From the Yowong-Illam-Baluk and Nattarak Baluk clans of the Taungurung people of central Victoria, Harding’s animated film – called Baan Biik Woora Woora Water, Land and Sky – is an ode to the natural world.
Made as a one-off commission, with $20,000 funding from the museum, the 20-minute animation will be installed in Australian Centre for the Moving Image’s entrance. Called the ACMI First Nations Welcome Installation, it screens from Friday in the museum’s Fed Square foyer, where it will serve as a permanent welcome to visitors.
As well as the earth, sky and water, the animation features kangaroos, a wombat, gliders, yellow-tail black cockatoos and a goanna, based on drawings by the 64-year-old.
It wasn’t until his early 20s that Harding learnt he was Indigenous; he’d grown up thinking he was part Maori. The revelation marked a turning point in his life. “I never knew about my heritage as a boy,” he says, adding it began a journey of learning that continues to this day.
From then on, he was on a quest to learn more about his culture. “I started drawing, as accurately as I could, who we are as Kulin people.”
His work features colour and symbolic geometric shapes, in a process of “always trying to find ways to continue our connection to Country, and each other”.
Harding is based in Churchill in Gippsland. As well as drawing and painting, he makes artefacts such as boomerangs and possum-skin cloaks. His adult sons, Mitch and Corey, helped create the film and its soundtrack, which features the three of them singing, as well as local magpies warbling.
Although he failed form three in high school, in 2016 Harding completed a Masters in Fine Arts; he credits connecting with his heritage as the catalyst for change in his life. “I think it’s a really good story about how anybody can become whatever they want to really become.”
The collaboration involved in creating the film has been wonderful, Harding says, not just as an artist but as a human being.
“You get to throw [ideas around] with other people and mould what it all looks like ... You keep adding these little bits together and you go from it being this beautiful piece to create this really rich, even more beautiful thing.
“Story-telling is a foundation of humanity.”
Mick Harding’s Baan Biik Woora Woora Water, Land and Sky (2025, ACMI Commission) is now on display at ACMI. See acmi.net.au