Art exhibition at Cockatoo Island

Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour was the venue for an art exhibition which appropriately challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of the Turnbull Government. Turnbull has sought to gain votes by running a hate campaign against asylum seekers and promoting a nationalist "Australia First" policy.

The exhibition was dominated by an exhibit by Ai Weiwei which was made with rubber from a factory in China which produces boats used by refugees. It is entitled "Law of the Journey" and reflects the conditions under which many refugees have risked their lives on the sea.

Another exhibit was a replica of the Hiroshima bomb which was an accompaniment to an animated display by Yukinori Yanagi which centres on an eyeball in which are reflected the atomic tests, many of which were carried out in the Pacific.

Cockatoo Island itself has a grim past. On it you can still see the barracks in which convicts lived in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. You can also see the scarcely better accommodation of the soldiers who were guarding them and the luxury accommodation provided for the privileged officers. All of these were built with convict labour i.e. slave labour.
One artwork which interested me depicted one of those unfortunate convicts.

Is there any principled difference between the Tories who sentenced them to transportation for life 150 years ago and their heirs who say of asylum seekers who died in the Mediterranean "they made their own choice"?