SAM Talks: Stewart Russell | Peter, Tommie, & John/reliving the dream

In July 2024, artist Stewart Russell joined SAM Digital Content Coordinator Kati Hogarth for a conversation exploring the creation of his new installation Peter, Tommie, & John / reliving the dream. 

Stewart Russell’s large-scale textile installation Peter, Tommie & John / reliving the dream explores one of the most influential political actions of the 20th century through the eyes of Australian Olympic silver medallist Peter Norman.

In this episode Stewart talks about the history behind the artwork, meeting Peter Norman, his practice and inspiration behind this series. 

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Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) is located on Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton, Victoria.
As a leading Australian regional art museum, SAM showcases its exhibitions and collections in new and exciting ways to create a welcoming, inclusive, and engaging space for all visitors.

Recognised for its significant Australian ceramics collection and nationally significant collection of Indigenous art, SAM’s programming is designed to be locally relevant and engages with global contemporary ideas. Through its exhibitions, collection, programs and events, SAM creates a place where art helps us to better understand the ancient culture of this country and contemporary multicultural Australia.

Transcript

Kati Hogarth (00:04):

Welcome to the Sam Talks podcast, a podcast series exploring contemporary topics and issues that connect us across Australia. Shepparton Art Museum pays respect to the traditional custodians of the shepherd and region on whose land SAM is located, the Yorta Yorta peoples and their elders past, present, and emerging. My name's Kati Hogarth, and in this episode you're listening to artist and designer Stewart Russell delve into the stories and histories of his installation. Peter, Tommie & John / reliving the dream, now showing at SAM. Stewart joined me for this conversation over the phone on 9 July, 2024. We could start at the beginning, Stewart, if you don't mind, and if you can please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about your practise, who you are, where you're from, all of those bits.

Stewart R (00:55):

My name is Stewart Russell. I'm an artist and sometimes a designer. I have a studio in Melbourne where I make art and sometimes design for the artwork that I've made for Shepparton Art Museum. It's a work called Peter, Tommie & John / reliving the dream, and it's a work that began through a collaboration with the artist, the late artist Kate Daw now. Kate and I made work for many years together and this was one of our favourite of our projects.

Kati H (01:33):

Stewart, so where does a project like this begin?

Stewart R (01:37):

So with this project or starting to think about the project for SAM, it's kind of an interesting space within the gallery. And so the first thing that you notice about it, it's not a temporary exhibition space, it's a public space within the gallery format. So we have the atrium void and avoid above the staircase. And I was aware of the two projects, I think only two that have been there previously, the one by Annmarie May and then more later, Jess Johnson. And so I was involved with the architects when Sam was being conceived and developed, which gave me some kind of insights into the building, I suppose, or what the opportunities might have been. And it obviously very exciting. The voice are enormous and they're central within the gallery format. They also sit, as I say, outside the temporary exhibition cycle, and that was not unknown to me as a concept. I had previously worked in the Great Hall in the NGV, if anyone knows what that space is, that's the one with stained glass ceiling. Literally it's kind of outside of the exhibition cycle or the movement of temporary exhibitions and concepts and idea curatorial frameworks that kind of had me think about what it meant to be without, not within the exhibition, but somehow in those public spaces.

Kati H (03:44):

Stewart. So for someone who may be listening to us speaking, I guess I want to give them a sense of the scale of what we're talking about. And so if you could visually describe what the installation looks like, how big the banners are, that would be really good.

Stewart R (04:00):

Yeah. Well, as I say, the space before, I'd seen Annemarie May hang those twisted pieces of perspec all the way down into that atrium void. But I was also aware the building's enormous. So when I first saw the plans for it in Shepparton, I was really surprised at the, not maybe the footprint scale, but the height of the building. So I'm not sure what the total height is, but if I explain that into the stairwell void, I've hung a nine metre artwork, then it gives you some sense of what that void might look like. And that stops because we're at a viewing point rather than I could have gone on. Yeah,

Kati H (04:46):

It could have been longer,

Stewart R (04:49):

But at nine metres it seemed like that's really enough, isn't it? If you're going to make an artwork, that seems to be, but yeah, the bottom is situated or located at a point where you can view it from the first floor balcony. So I have taken into some consideration, particularly with the work in the stairwell, the viewing perspectives and points of view.

Kati H (05:19):

Yeah, it's very impactful having an exhibition of that magnitude. Yeah, it's really beautiful. I like your use of different colours as well. Can you delve into why they're different colours?

Stewart R (05:33):

Yeah, absolutely. And it reminds me actually of, again, maybe vibing off some the works that had previously been in those spaces and what I had liked about them, I suppose. But certainly the colourful works that I had been originally into that space had been an entry if you like, or enjoyed that aspect of it. So I see that the works in the atrium, the three coloured works in the atrium, I see them as as an introduction. They are the title of the work, but they're light on detail as to what the work's about. I suppose. They're bright, they're analogue crafted, they're made by a hand and with some interesting techniques, and then they take you, that leads you off to meet when you meet the other work located in the stairwell. I had a desire to use the building, I suppose perhaps because I had been involved when the Denton Corker Marshall were designing the building that this notion of leadings right up to the very top of the building. So you come in at the entry to the bright coloured three works that announce this, Peter, Tommy, and John, and then in the stairwell, the work, you have to follow the narrative all the way up to the very top of the building

(07:14):

On the stairwell to receive the full narrative. So in that way, I'm kind of leading you through the gallery spaces or the narrative is potentially leading you through the gallery spaces to take you up to the top. And that's partly because I just enjoy all that internal architecture and opportunities that unfold.

Kati H (07:40):

And in a sense, it makes it more interactive, I guess, and just exploring the building, exploring the space. But then you start off with the introduction with the three banners out the front, and then I guess you delve into more of the story as you approach the banner that's in the void. And because that one has more of the story about what the artwork is about and the background,

Stewart R (08:13):

It has got a direction to the narrative. You can drop in anywhere. So the construction of the narrative means that it can be isolated to a moment that you've had on the third floor or the second floor landing, but there is a way to follow the entire narrative, or in my mind, the narrative has got a direction, if you like, from bottom to top. The other aspect, you're asking about colour in the front, there is sort of an element of stained glass window as an entrance to it that's kind of semi autobiographical. And the technologies as well used very kind analogue. So the Jess Johnson piece was a beautifully rendered digital print. I did want to do something by hand as a next iteration or a mixed use of that space, I suppose, rather than a digital print or becoming a digital print opportunity because the scale is maybe somewhat uniquely. I have that opportunity to work at that sort of scale. The print tables in my studio seven and a half metres long, so it's kind of in our wheelhouse if you like that. So it's that scale of working at that size.

Kati H (09:59):

So we've discussed how the physical scale of the work has impact, and so potentially some challenges as well. So did you find any challenges whilst you were in the studio with the pieces being so large?

Stewart R (10:12):

Yeah, for sure. Visualising the rendered because we weren't using a digital process. We were making it by hand. And I'll talk to some of those techniques in a minute. But yeah, it was kind of intuitive once I started too. So I didn't map it all out as a graphic and then just reproduce it to that plan. I kind of began and then responded to what I was seeing on the tables. But I spent quite a long time on a very tall ladder having a look down to try and figure out what my next move was going to be.

Kati H (11:04):

So whilst you were creating this work, what other sort of logistical measures did you have to take?

Stewart R (11:10):

Well, the logistical measures are part of the kind of conceptual element for me too. So the practises often embedded or the production values are developed in line with the ideas. So this is a story about Peter Norman, who I feel is a bit of a hero for me.

Kati H (11:36):

This is an iteration of a project that began back in 2006, is that right?

Stewart R (11:41):

Yeah, correct.

Kati H (11:44):

How the project began,

Stewart R (11:48):

Kate and I shared an interest in suppressed and forgotten narratives stories, and also we were interested in other people were interested in other people's achievements. So I think neither of us, we were somehow critical of the kind of artist ego mentality, but we developed a partnership or a double act do and Russell or Kate Dawn, Stuart Russell, that's more usually known. We started to make some projects. The first one was the remaking of a garment. It was a garment that had been worn by Carl Williams who was a notorious underworld character. And that was, we'd enjoyed recreating this garment. And then we thought we were looking for another story of a piece of clothing to remake or to, and we came across the story or the story, actually, it's something I'd known that the person who in that photograph, or let me go back and explain what the photograph is. There are many varieties of viewing point perspectives of the photograph, but the photograph is basically journalists, photographs of an event, an action, a political action that took place at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico. And it was the medal ceremony for the 200 metres. And during that medal ceremony for the 200 metres to Black American athletes, Tommy Smith and John Carlos made a protest and I witnessed it as an 8-year-old. I remember seeing that happen.

(13:57):

They didn't know much about the politics potentially or kind of put it away, but I can remember now that it was something that we saw and it then became a popular poster. And that was around, and it was, you grew up with it, college and other, it was a common image that was used to signify attitude of resistance. And so I had understood that the person at the front of that image was Australian, partly because the poster, in the poster, it clearly shows that he's got this kangaroo tracksuit, kangaroo put on his tracksuit. And so I said to Kate, what about making the tracksuit that the guy and whose name I didn't know at the time who finished second in that in the race and the protest, Mexico Olympics, et cetera. And Kate's kind of going, I don't know who you mean. And I was surprised that this was an Australian who was interested in sport, but she didn't know that this was an Australian finished second said, you must know. So we went to talk to other people and found that this was super similar in 2006, that nobody knew or remembered that this was an Australian athlete that's in this seminal image of the sixties and the civil rights activism.

(15:47):

So it's this big international image. And then we found that the name found out, obviously he was Peter Norman, got more and more interested that nobody knew who he was. So it became one of our, we were instantly sort of alert to the idea that this could be a story that we might be interested in. It was our kind of thing and the social justice implications of the actions. So we find out who, as much as we could about Peter Norman, and then I located him and phoned him and found out that he was living just around the corner from us.

Kati H (16:34):

No way.

Stewart R (16:36):

Yeah,

Kati H (16:37):

That is amazing.

Stewart R (16:38):

Amazing. So now we've not only, we've gone from this conversation where we find that nobody in the building knows who the person was, but not only finding out who he was, but also knowing that he lives close by.

Kati H (16:57):

He might be your neighbour,

Stewart R (17:00):

Ride past his house every weekend, and I make a tiny detour just to pay some sort of homage to Peter as I go out on my ride on a Saturday and Sunday.

Kati H (17:14):

Oh, how excited were you guys when you found out that he lived close by?

Stewart R (17:20):

Crazy excited because the story was just unfolding in such an interesting way. We were intrigued why nobody knew we couldn't figure it out. It was unfathomable. And we had lots and lots of questions. So we went round and saw him, but just at the front of his house and said hi. And we'd arranged to go, we didn't just knock his door cold and then made an arrangement to go round again and asked if he'd be happy if we interviewed that conversation. And he said, yes, that would be fine. And also said that this was not, this was quite rare these days for people to want to interview 'em.

Kati H (18:13):

So

Stewart R (18:13):

Intrigued by that as well. So when we turned up for the interview, we explained that we weren't a hundred percent sure what we were going to make, but we just knew that we wanted to, were interested in the story. And so he took that quite well. It wasn't going to be a portrait for the Archibald Prize or anything. It was research driven art practise that was going to, would result in something, but of what form that might take. We at that stage didn't know. So a bit of an awkward beginning to the conversation really. But the beginning of the conversations, well, they took an interesting turn. So we sat down and turned the cassette recorder on and started to ask Peter about the politics of the situation. And he stopped us pretty much straight away and asked if we'd seen the race. And we both said, yeah, yeah, we'd seen the, we'd watched the race, we'd been able to see the race. And he said, so did you watch the heats and the semifinals? And we said, no, we admitted that we hadn't. We'd only watched the final. I said, well, the whole event of the 200 metres has to be taken as the heats and the semifinals and then the final. And so Kate put the kettle on and Peter put a cassette tape into this huge square deep, not modern television,

(19:56):

And we sat down with a cup of tea and he talked us through every heat and all the way up to the final and then the medal ceremony. And it was very, very revealing. It was such a lovely detour, or not even a detour, it was just taking us back to what the sport of the event was first before we discussed the politics of it and how the stage was set for these athletes to make a protest.

Kati H (20:30):

And so it wasn't historic only in the sense of what the protest that happened on the podium, but it was historic because of the outcome of those heat and the fact that it was a record breaking 200 metre race, wasn't it?

Stewart R (20:46):

Yeah, huge. I mean, we thought Peter was in heat number two, and he broke the Olympic record in the second heat. We were jumping up and down just before we got to the semifinal and the final and in the final, both the 20 seconds was a mark that had never been achieved under 20 seconds, was a mark never achieved in the 200 metres.

Kati H (21:12):

That's

Stewart R (21:13):

Tommie and John and Peter broke that obviously broke the world record. Smashed the world record.

Kati H (21:23):

Right. So the fastest 200 metre race in history,

Stewart R (21:28):

Well, certainly, I'm sure, not nowadays, but it was a very, very long time. And at the time it was way faster than anything that had been. That was shockingly quick. And the two of them both breaking 20 seconds in the stadium was huge. The time was a massive, it was just an enormous sort of feat. For example, nobody ran under 20 seconds again until Carl Lewis in 1984. So we go from 68 to, and Carl Lewis was somebody very, very special, but that took the Flight X world all that time to break. It

Kati H (22:14):

Was 16 years later.

Stewart R (22:17):

Yeah. Wow. And then also Peter's time would've won the gold medal at the Sydney

Kati H (22:21):

Olympics,

Stewart R (22:23):

For example. That's 2000. So it gives you some kind of context for the achievement of it all, which made it even more, we were just more flabbergasted at the, that obviously Peter's part of an iconic political image, cultural, and we are sitting with him in our suburb in Melbourne, getting his perspective on an international iconic image the same time. Now we're thinking, wow, how come why nobody know your name playing? These times were so quick that you would've won the gold medal at the Sydney Olympics.

Kati H (23:11):

Yeah. So that's

Stewart R (23:12):

The time that you ran in 68. Yeah. Well, super interesting. So they've gone after the race, they've gone underneath into the stadium, and Tommy and John have gone to Peter and said, look, we're thinking about making a protest, but this is your big day too, and if you're not into it, then it won't happen.

(23:38):

And he said, so now it's an interesting time to look at some of that context. So Peter explained to us that his family and him were in the Salvation Army growing up, and that they had been very, very cognizant of what was happening in the civil rights area or the riots that were happening in America. What they watched them, they discussed them on the TV when they came and said that they wanted to protest. He'd heard that the people that athletes might protest, and they had some concept of what the demands were, but the athletes that were protesting. And he said, yeah, of course. What can I do to help? So instead of either saying, no, you'd rather it not happen, which would stop it happening, he's actively encouraged it. And then he's ended up wearing a badge that's an Olympic project for human rights, and all three of them wear the badge.

(24:54):

And for that, Peter was, and all three of them were kicked out of athletics, not just the Olympics, but all athletics and found it very, very hard. The press were very antagonistic towards what had happened. They were furious that these athletes had brought with inverted commas, bringing politics into sport was the crime or what they'd, the mark that they'd overstepped. And to explain a little bit about how deeply his achievements, sporting achievements, and his humanitarian achievement of standing with somebody else's cause, how deeply that was buried. Peter was not in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, for example. He wasn't invited to go to the opening ceremony like every other champion or Australian Olympian of note,

(26:13):

Not even invited to, not just the opening ceremony, but none of the events of the Olympics. The movement was pushing on. In Sydney, one of the American athletes, Michael Johnson, a 200 metre runout, was a big fan of Peter Norman and his running style. And when he got to Sydney, he asked, where's Peter Norman? I'd really love to meet him. And so the officials kind of all looked around, where's Peter Norman here? Is he here? And then he found out that he hadn't been invited to come to the Sydney Olympics. So he phoned Peter Norman and said, look, I'm a huge fan. I'd love to catch up. And Peter said, well, I'm not, I haven't been invited to anything, so I'm not in Sydney or no plans to be up. And Michael Johnson got him on a plane, and he spent two nights sleeping on Michael Johnson's floor as the two in the Olympic Village, as the two of them caught up on all the things that they needed to catch up on.

Speaker 3 (27:24):

Oh, wow.

Stewart R (27:25):

So there's lovely stories, but he's excluded. He's been so successfully wiped out of history that it seemed like you would have to think that there wasn't a deliberate policy to not bring Peter Norman to the 2000 Olympics after all that time. It's just that, yeah, that's a huge amount of time. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So I think it's just that he had been very successfully written out. People had forgotten all about this achievement and him, and so that was what we encountered in 2006, and that the story unfolded for us. We were so angry.

Kati H (28:11):

Yeah. Oh my God, I be I bet you were

Stewart R (28:14):

Furious.

Kati H (28:15):

Yeah. I mean, just such a remarkable achievement, and not only the achievement, but yeah, just so unjust. And unfortunately, God, that's the world that we live in, isn't it? When you spoke to him in 2006, did you guys ever talk about what he did subsequently, and did he ever regret the decision to be involved in the incident?

Stewart R (28:44):

Yeah, we talked about it. In fact, that was what we went in imagining. We were going to talk about what happened after he stood with these two guys on the podium. We didn't realise that he had actively been involved. We didn't realise he had helped to plan the action. One of them had forgotten their gloves. So Peter said, why don't one of you wear one on the right hand and one on the other, wear on the left hand, et cetera. So he's got his fingerprints all over that protest that we hadn't understood. But yeah, we did ask never any regrets, and that's the love. The other thing that amazed us in a sense was it fits so well with some of a cultural identity of Australian, this idea of nature and looking out for other people. This is kind of what he did. He stood up for somebody, but it seemed so, he had no regrets there. He considered himself to be a political activist. When we met him and had embraced this role of activism, what actually happened to him was that once he was no longer part of the athletics set up, he joined West Brunswick football team, and he coached, he became their running coach, and he played for them.

Kati H (30:15):

So he went over to and played footy,

Stewart R (30:18):

But not a FL Vice Brunswick Mag Pines, which are, I'm not even sure if they were a v ffl team, but that's what the next step after high level silver medal Olympics.

Kati H (30:38):

He sounds like a legend. Absolute legend.

Stewart R (30:42):

Yeah. We also felt that if there was an adaptation of that identity, Australian identity, then now or then 2006, this was a good time to revive this and felt that it could be a way of adapting or evolving that's makeshift story from essentially from the first World war, but bringing it more up to date and in line with maybe what our children's expectations might be of that identity.

Kati H (31:26):

Actually, I was born in Mexico City, and so I've got no doubt that both my parents, they would've seen the act and yeah, my dad was British. He's no longer with us. So I wish I could talk to him about that and just pick his brain. Yeah, I wasn't around back then, but I didn't really know about this story.

Stewart R (31:49):

It's a fascinating, I've been making work about sport in the Olympics, again, buying autobiographical, which always intertwines and weaves its way in amongst everything else. But my family are a sports family, and that was what I did until I was, until art took. So we were aware or involved in national teams and things and those types of actions and all the nephews and the family still is all of that. But when I was at art college, I met an academic historian called James Reardon, and he had been the attache to the British team, the British Olympic team when they went to Moscow, a very, very interesting writer and sociologist. And so we spent a lot of time when I was at art college and I was interested in the semiotics of sport, and he knew all about the politics of the Olympic movement. And as the Los Angeles Olympics came up, it was in my sights and that I made, my first public artworks were all about the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics with this support, mentorship, or encouragement from an amazing academic called James Reardon. So the interest goes back a long way for me. And so these stories, they don't pass me by, but I had a really good sense of the underbelly of the Olympic movement,

(33:45):

Particularly in that time. And you'll know that Mexico was really quite an interesting example. They had all the riots in Mexico City students riots. There was a real big police crackdown, security crackdown on students in Mexico City. Quite brutal.

Kati H (34:08):

Yeah, very brutal. Matan ol, quite a few students perished at the hands of the authorities.

Stewart R (34:15):

The person heading up the Olympics at that stage was a notorious individual called Avery Brundage, and he had a very, very chequered history as the president of the American Olympic Committee. He befriended Hitler and was a really big part of what saw Germany and Hitler's Germany in 1936 be successful in bidding to hold the Olympic games where other countries were already expressing a desire not to go to Germany. So he's the same person that was leading the Olympics when Tommy and John and Peter ran into him or delivered their message.

Kati H (35:11):

It's no surprise, their careers pretty much ended in athletics, isn't it?

Stewart R (35:15):

It's no surprise. Oh yeah, yeah,

Kati H (35:18):

Absolutely. With a person like that,

Stewart R (35:19):

He was a very, very powerful person, and he's a real kind of body in the story, I suppose.

Kati H (35:27):

Yeah. So Peter, obviously we're coming up on the inauguration of the 2024 Paris Olympics later this month, and we've got your beautiful installation here at Shepherd and Art Museum. I'm hoping to hear from you, obviously you're very interested in telling these underrepresented stories. You're interested in social justice. What are you hoping the viewer will take away from the installation?

Stewart R (35:54):

Yeah, I mean, it's obviously timely. Part of me was directed towards the telling this story because of the proximity of the

Speaker 3 (36:06):

Olympics,

Stewart R (36:08):

Although I do know that that work will stay up for a much longer timeframe. So I was also encouraged that the stories has got many ways of understanding it or relating to it. So now, it was a narrative that was deeply emotional for me, and I felt that it would resonate with people in Shepparton. I know Shepparton reasonably well over the years. So I've been in Australia since 2000, and I have spent quite a bit of time going up and down to, and working with artists from Shepherd over the years, particularly artists associated with Kyle Arts, Yorta, Yorta artists, and the main, but others too. And so I've been aware through some research that Belinda Briggs had been doing about the history of running in athletics in Shepparton and some famous athletes, I'm aware of Rumble and the position that holds in the town. And so, yeah, I saw a sport and the sort of sport as a carrier of social justice and storytelling as something that existed in Shepherd in Shepparton already. So I thought that might connect.

Kati H (37:53):

Yeah, a great way to sort of just segue into a very important topic through sport, through talking about sport and talking about this history.

Stewart R (38:09):

Kate and I both enjoyed stories from popular culture, so this fitted in a number of different ways. So it's hard to say definitively how you align on one idea over another, but there was a lot of things I think that came together to suggest that this might be the to tell.

Kati H (38:36):

Yeah, well, it's beautiful and it's important and it's impactful, and I think it makes the viewer contemplate what things were back then, what they're like now, and all the work that still needs to be done. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your work

Stewart R (39:00):

Pleasure. How we frame civil society and the collective inheritances, which includes storytelling. It's just, if we can, I think this is a better fit than a lot of the other stories that we consider as part of the makeup of our collective identities. And so there is a sort of sense of promoting something or trying to bring something back into the public eye. And it has been more undoubtedly since 2006. This story has been told by a number of people in different ways, but in reality, Peter Norman is still much better known in America than he is in Australia.

Kati H (39:45):

Incredible.

Stewart R (39:47):

Have a day for Peter Norman and their athletics calendar. It's Peter Norman Day in the us In the us

Kati H (39:55):

And not here in Australia.

Stewart R (39:57):

Not here in Australia.

Kati H (39:58):

Where do we enter the petition?

Stewart R (40:02):

Maybe we could do that. Maybe I could put a petition together and we can all sign it when you get to the top of the arc would be a little petition on the table for a date and the calendar of Athletics Australia.

Kati H (40:14):

Since recording this conversation with Stuart, we've learned that Athletics Australia have caught up with the USA, and since 2018 have a Peter Norman Day celebrated every 9th of October. That same year they inaugurated the Peter Norman Humanitarian Award as a way to honour the legacy of Norman as both an athlete and an advocate for human rights.

Stewart R (40:33):

The other part that I never mentioned that was really part of Kate and I's story, Kate and I had started to make the work, we'd been in communication with Peter, but we decided that we wouldn't show him the things that were coming together, but we were making the badge that Peter wore the Olympic project for human rights. We were having a craft person who did a particular type of embroidery called gold work, and it takes a very long time. So it fitted with my devotional techniques theory, I guess, and she was going to remake a copy of the badge, but in gold work, and she thought it might take 120 hours. So we thought that this appealed to us, and we wanted to show him some of these different aspects of the work that was first shown at the Ian Potter Museum at Melbourne University, and then acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria. And it's in their collection and shown periodically nowadays. Perhaps it'll come back out for the Olympics, I guess. But so we were about a week away from the exhibition going up at the Ian Potter when Peter suddenly and out of the blue passed away, died mowing his garden lawn in Williamstown. And so we, yeah, we were just completely devastated. But the interest thing, those two gave me another angle on the life of Peter Norman. And when Tommy Smith and John Carlos flew over from America and carried his coffin out of Williamstown Town Hall,

(42:30):

And something of that is part of what this story is about and why I have left the title of the work. And those three huge banners at the front, just say Peter, Tommy, and John, they supported each other through the rejections, and when the doors began to close on them after the protests they made in Mexico, they supported one another. And that friendship was something that had a deep impact on us as well.

Kati H (43:01):

Were you there at the funeral?

Stewart R (43:03):

Yes, and we did see them there, but they weren't in a great state. So we get friends to speak to them. But we have since exchanged emails with Tommy Smith for a while after the event and showing them what we were doing with the artwork. He sent us a badge from 1968, not one that they wore, but Peter had lost his badge and giving a kids show and tell in Spotswood in Melbourne. So somewhere in the Spotswood area, there's the original badge that Peter Norman wore

Speaker 3 (43:46):

At

Stewart R (43:47):

The Olympic Games, but it hasn't turned up yet.

Kati H (43:51):

So you just touched on the name of the artwork, Peter, Tommy and John reliving the dream, Peter, Tommy, and John. That's pretty self-explanatory. What does reliving the dream mean?

Stewart R (44:02):

Well, in my, it's a good example. I think it certainly exists in Australia lexicon as well, but in Scotland, my nephew plays for Scotland at rugby. He's a superstar known all over the world. He's Finn Russell. And my brother always says when he sees him on the television, they get Finn living the dream. And always thought that that's what these sports people are doing that are given this opportunity to compete in the Olympic Games, or they are living people's dreams, living out people's dreams. And so reliving the dream was just a way of returning to the sport aspect of it, I suppose, just the sort of honour of the triumph of the sport as well as their friendship.

Kati H (45:12):

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