Cathy Keys - Redcoat

Redcoat (2025) examines the environmental impacts of colonisation from a settler perspective. The work draws on the historic association between the colour red and colonial authority, seen most visibly in the redcoat uniforms worn by British forces during the invasion of Australia. This colour was produced from cochineal insects imported from South American cactus plants. Prickly pear and cochineal insects were brought to Australia on the First Fleet in 1788 in an attempt to establish a commercial dye industry. Although the trade was short lived, the cactus spread rapidly from Sydney Town, displacing native plants and grasses and creating one of the most significant biological and environmental catastrophes in Australia’s colonial history.

The skeletal remnants of prickly pear pads (Opuntia tomentosa) used in Redcoat were collected from Booburrgan Ngmmunge (Bunya Mountains) in Queensland, on the lands of the Wakka Wakka, Jarowai and Barrumgum people, near the region where Keys’ European ancestors settled. The ongoing presence of prickly pear in this landscape forms a material connection to the ecological consequences of colonisation that persist today.

Redcoat enters into dialogue with Kyra Mancktelo’s X, a print created for Syntax in 2019. Both artists use indexical and dialectical image making to address consequences of colonisation, Keys contributes to a broader conversation about memory, impact and the material traces that persist across the Australian landscape.