It all started in 1994 with a small levitating spooky black doll in a tutu called Waiting for Goddess, one of Destiny’s numerous clever puns riffing off Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953). This was my introduction to Destiny’s make-believe world when I curated her cast of blak dolls in polaroid outputs into an exhibition called Bad Toys at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, back when the gallery was in Melbourne’s inner city gardens.
Destiny told me from the start: ‘If you can work with me, you can work with any artist. I’m someone you learn a lot from.’
I certainly learnt a lot from such a funny, clever friend. Destiny was super smart, a voracious reader with endless newspaper subscriptions and well-versed on topics from popular culture to politics. She had an encyclopaedic knowledge of current affairs and a sharp memory. She was funny and fierce, tender and reliable, often uncertain of herself and self-deprecating, tinged with bouts of anxiety. Our enduring artist/curator bond was based on camaraderie and a dose of humour.
She always said: ‘There is no excuse for ignorance.’ Destiny didn’t get up and make art every day, more often when curators like me were on her back. Her practice was researched from daily life, through television, newspapers, the internet, videos and library books — in short, the mass media available in her studio/living room. Pieces of Koori kitsch, dolls and other objects were given to her by obliging friends, sourced from thrift shops.
Source: Artlink by Natalie King
Image Credits: Destiny Deacon, My living room, Brunswick 3056, 1996-2004, found objects, photographs, video, carpet, household furniture, installation view, Walk & don't look blak, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, November 2004 – January 2005. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
