garrie maguire
art practice // inquires into masculinity
The Ward aka WTF (Warden's Temporary Facility)
There are prisons and then there are detention facilities. Over the last ten years Australia’s refugee policy has been a focus of international attention. We rarely see images of what happens inside. Our government and our population does not want to see. We do no want to humanise the people there. We no not wish to see the horrors that happens in those walls. We do not want to imagine that the same will be our experience. We assume that white privilege or being Australian that halo of that privilege will protect us. I grew up in a more humane society that accepted that if we bomb a country we take responsibility for the people we displace. We now seem to understand that when we invade a country we should take only it’s resources.
I once told my father, that if i was to die overseas, please do not let the press call me an ‘innocent victim’. I was not i am fully aware that the world is unjust and my privilege within this system, may be targeted. In 2014 this happened. I was scammed at a level that is, to most Australians, incomprehensible. I went to meet a Manila local, i’d met online a few months before, and instead was abducted by police out of uniform, with out announcement, and an attempt at extortion was made. When my life situation did not reflect their cultural understanding, I was charged with a made up crime. After a sex months i brought a case against the police for grave misconduct. When that got hot, i was indefinitely detained by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration, extensively to stop me testifying.
I was brought to Bicutan and locked up. I discovered that most detainees had one thing in common, they had disappointed locals in their ability to provide wealth, at the level the culture expected. During this time i documented the life that was lived. I shared the cells with rapists, pedophiles, financial scammers, businessmen and gangsters. This is our story in photographs. Told from the perspective of a white male in their fifties over the period of their stay. I note that for most viewers how long is an important question, but it takes away from the indefinite, the not knowing the end date. This is a window into a world rarely seen. A world we thought we’d never partake. A world that slowly kills one’s confidence and self esteem.
This is a visual story of my decent into hell. The work conforms to the conventions of photo-documentary, travel and portrait photographic traditions. Told in 6x4 inch photographs that hark back to the holidays of the later part the twentieth century. It is at once both familiar and other. In doing this I am attempting to disrupt the presumption of privilege that the viewer may have. I would hope that seeing this project forces the viewer to question our attitudes towards government processes and brutality.
I once told my father, that if i was to die overseas, please do not let the press call me an ‘innocent victim’. I was not i am fully aware that the world is unjust and my privilege within this system, may be targeted. In 2014 this happened. I was scammed at a level that is, to most Australians, incomprehensible. I went to meet a Manila local, i’d met online a few months before, and instead was abducted by police out of uniform, with out announcement, and an attempt at extortion was made. When my life situation did not reflect their cultural understanding, I was charged with a made up crime. After a sex months i brought a case against the police for grave misconduct. When that got hot, i was indefinitely detained by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration, extensively to stop me testifying.
I was brought to Bicutan and locked up. I discovered that most detainees had one thing in common, they had disappointed locals in their ability to provide wealth, at the level the culture expected. During this time i documented the life that was lived. I shared the cells with rapists, pedophiles, financial scammers, businessmen and gangsters. This is our story in photographs. Told from the perspective of a white male in their fifties over the period of their stay. I note that for most viewers how long is an important question, but it takes away from the indefinite, the not knowing the end date. This is a window into a world rarely seen. A world we thought we’d never partake. A world that slowly kills one’s confidence and self esteem.
This is a visual story of my decent into hell. The work conforms to the conventions of photo-documentary, travel and portrait photographic traditions. Told in 6x4 inch photographs that hark back to the holidays of the later part the twentieth century. It is at once both familiar and other. In doing this I am attempting to disrupt the presumption of privilege that the viewer may have. I would hope that seeing this project forces the viewer to question our attitudes towards government processes and brutality.
Exhibition History
This project has not been exhibited.