Protest art on contested statues igniting conversations about art, law, and justice

The expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 shone a spotlight on global anti-racist protests not seen since the anti-apartheid movement in the early 1980s. Powerful images of the contestation and removal of statues of historical figures linked to violence, colonialism, and slavery were broadcast widely by the media. Three years on, Confederate statues in the US and colonial monuments in Australia, to name just two cases, continue to receive critique, yet with mixed outcomes. While US citizens and governments have demonstrated a certain amount of political will in removing symbols of white supremacy from public space, Australia has done little to dismantle its racist symbols and the laws protecting them. Hobart City Council’s recent decommission of a statue of William Crowther (Figure 1) is so far the only instance of permanent government-sanctioned removal in Australia motivated by principles of historical justice. A surgeon and later Premier of Tasmania, Crowther decapitated and stole the remains of Aboriginal man William Lanne. Yet, as historian Cassandra Pybus has argued, tributes to perpetrators of even more heinous deeds remain standing across the nation (quoted in Murray, 2022). As researchers with expertise in law, history, and the creative industries, in late 2020 we commenced a research project that analyses the nature and effect of the laws that restrict and regulate engagements with these contested public artworks. Our research focuses on how the moral rights held by statue artists can conflict with the public interest in the conversations around racial justice that anti-racist graffiti stimulates. As the project unfolded, we also experimented with practice-based methodologies in the commission and curation of protest art as a means of energising and supporting public discourse around law’s direct, indirect, and symbolic maintenance of racist public spaces. One of our key findings is that both unlawful and lawful protest art are powerful conversation-starters that support critical reflection on contested public art as a legal object and site of in/justice. Our study encompassed both ‘illegal’ anti-racist graffiti on contested statues and ‘legal’ artwork critical of law’s role in perpetuating colonial injustice.