Sorry Cloud
WARNING This item displays the names of some deceased members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait community. No offence is intended, however members of the Indigenous Australian community should be aware of its content if imagery or text associated with recently deceased members of their community does cause cultural harm or offence.
BACK BY REQUEST 28 MARCH 2008
With the Australian Federal Government’s apology to the Stolen Generation on 13/2/08, I’ve seen quite a few ‘Sorry’ Tshirts doing the rounds. I like most of the designs I’ve seen, however I wanted to create something that highlighted the apology, but also points out that there’s a lot more things (both bad and good) that we can’t afford to forget.
Enter the Sorry Cloud based on Tag Clouds that you see on the web these days (see example here )
The basic premise is that sites tag news items and the cloud displays those tags in varying font sizes e.g. the more interest in a particular tag, the bigger the font. It gives people a quick way to see what’s big in the news at that particular time.
My cloud is a representation of what I think should be most important. The tags are made up of issues, people and events. Some I consider to be important because they are issues that need to be tackled, others I have included as important because I think they should be celebrated. It was important to me that the cloud wasn’t just full of negative sentiment.
I understand that this is highly subjective and many will agree or disagree. I don’t expect anyone to agree with every level of importance that I have assigned to each tag. Even as I was putting it together I struggled with how much weight to give some tags. I eventually decided that it started as a symbolic image and didn’t need to get too literal in it’s application.
I also acknowledge that the tags that have made it to the final product are by no means an exhaustive list of issues/people/events. Again, it is simply a representative snapshot.
Finally, I am new to redbubble and new to public political comment. I think the image is within the content guidelines, but am happy to be advised if this isn’t the case and will be happy to amend the design to conform if required.
Sorry Cloud belongs to the following groups:
For the love of typeAvailable for sale as T-Shirts
JackOfNoTrades, 9 months ago
awesome.
MuscularTeeth
,
9 months ago
intense.
very good.
Peta Hurley-Hill, 9 months ago
great work
WENDY BANDURSK..., 9 months ago
Intense stuff,.... glad to see you included the warning and i seriously love your take on combining font/tag/importance to your design as a STATEMENT. I can see the bigger concept within this…... i love you took a chance on apolitical commentary piece…....after all all art is political…some more overt than others. Bravo !
samedog, 9 months ago
Thanks all for the comments and encouragement, much appreciated. It’s been a big day but I think most will agree there’s a long way to go. Hopefully the spirit of today will live on and inspire a new generation of reconciliation.
chriso, 9 months ago
Great work. Hope to see many of these walking around.
Karin Taylor
,
5 months ago
I think this is a very well thought out concept and I enjoyed reading your description as to how you developed the idea. Conceptually, i like the way you’ve created the tag cloud, and sized the issues according to the level of importance you’ve ascribed to each one….i like it when people think, not just react…i like an argument to have been well thought out, so that we may not come to a unanimous decision on a particular subject, but can agree that various things are difficult to come to terms with and nothing is black and white. All in all a very sensitive, intelligent and thoughtful design that highlights australian indigenous historical events, and the tragedy of one people trying to dominate another people for control, forgetting that we are all human…we bleed the same colour…thank you samedog :D
georgiegirl, 5 months ago
At least humans have learnt something over the past 1 millions years or so… compassion and love for other human beings, no matter what we look like. It took a while. I know some are still yet to learn. But now we have RedBubble… the perfect place to spread the love ;D
samedog in reply to Karin Taylor’s comment, 5 months ago
Not sure where this issue is heading Karin. On 13 February I thought we were witnessing a watershed moment, but lately I’ve been feeling like the sentiments expressed on that day have been pushed aside in favour of the same debates and bickering that were around pre-Sorry Day.
Thanks for taking the time to really look at the design and think about the tags. It’s a very subjective piece, but even though we might place different emphasis on the various issues, I guess one of the positives is that many of us are still pushing in pretty much the same direction.
samedog in reply to georgiegirl’s comment, 5 months ago
Hear, hear GG! Agree that some are still yet to learn, but there does seem to be more tolerance around these days.
Stephen Thomas, 1 day ago
Great t-shirt!
samedog in reply to Stephen Thomas’s comment, 1 day ago
Thanks Stephen, appreciate the comment.