Kitty Hauser

Geoffrey Bardon effectively invented the origin story of Aboriginal painting – the pivotal moment in Australian art history – with himself as chronicler, hero and martyr. He did it partly to manage his own disintegrating sense of self after undergoing a catastrophic form of psychiatric treatment called Deep Sleep Therapy, from which he never fully recovered. Kitty Hauser’s book brings into sharper, truer focus the context of Bardon’s life and work, and what the success of the story he created says about Australia and its white mythology.