In a hot, leaky, corrugated tin shed behind Redfern's disused railway yards lie the embers of a smouldering story of injustice. As an Aboriginal artist, 69 year-old Gordon Syron knows about injustice. He's seen systemic apartheid, legal bias and abuse of Aboriginal people all his life.
Now he's fighting for his right to be left alone.
After an altercation in the 1970s he was charged with murder. Two hung juries failed to reach verdicts, but a third trial resulted in a 10-year life sentence. He lost freedoms in jail, but not the freedom to see things from a new perspective, freedom to learn the language of art and freedom to think.
"I now think in pictures", he says, with more injustices swirling around him.
Beyond the chipped concrete steps and fly-wire door of this aircraft hanger-size tin shed is an Aladdin's cave of artistic beauty whose breadth and depth is at once both breathtaking and alarming.
More than 1400 Indigenous paintings, 547 of which are valued at $1.5 million, by famous artists such as Clifford Possum, Michael Jagamara Nelson and Emily Kngwarreye, hang from naked steel rafters like silent sentinels guarding an ancient temple.
The paintings are tacit, yet they communicate. "Each tells a story", Syron says. And each is part of a magnificent mosaic.
The collection, a museum-in-waiting, tells the timeless tale of Australia's Indigenous peoples, their spiritual and physical relationship with a humbling, harsh landscape, their fight for survival, their struggles against injustice, battles against racism and abuse, their triumphs and their collective catharsis.
It is a story of humanity, a story of resilience and it is a story under threat from extinction unless it finds a permanent home. Its future is hinged on its history and how it came to be in this tin shed.
The collection also houses works by Syron, who is referred to as "the pioneer of urban and contemporary Aboriginal art in Australia". His art is prismatic, reflecting and refracting relationships with the Indigenous population. Winner of a NSW College of Fine Art (COFA) 2009 prize and nominated for an adjunct Professorship of Indigenous Art at the University of Technology, Sydney, his art is held by the National Museum in Canberra and the Sydney Museum.
His iconic work, Judgement By His Peers, is a satirical comment on a white imperialistic system of justice branded onto Indigenous Australians. It is a system based on a lie: Australia never was terra nullius (empty land). The painting uses role reversal to highlight how legal systems can be unjust: the judge and jury are black but the accused is white.
Dr. Larissa Behrendt, an Indigenous Professor of Law at UTS, Sydney, says the collection is part of Australian Indigenous peoples' DNA. She says it is "part of our culture and a way of telling those outside our community who we really are".
Today, Gordon lives with his wife Elaine in an alcove within the searingly-hot tin shed. Despite no stove, no heating or cooling, erratic running water and poor lighting, they dare not leave. "Our concern is for the welfare of the collection. It deteriorates in extreme heat and humidity with a leaky roof", they say.
After the collection outgrew its former premises in the Bangaloo gallery, the former Redfern Waterloo Authority, under control of former NSW planning ministers Frank Sartor and then Kristina Keneally, provided their rent-free tin shed, a small allowance and a malfunctioning computer where cataloguing work would continue, based on an initial six-month contract.
The job proved too large for Elaine and Gordon, despite intense work under difficult conditions. The RWA's patience expired and landlord/tenant relationships soured, with the Syrons unjustly accused of indolence. Professional cataloguers took over, working pro bono. Ten staff including volunteers finished the mammoth catalogue in 11 months.
Now, the NSW planning department and Premier Keneally have approved new apartments for the site, the tin shed is to be demolished and three eviction orders have already been served.
The government also insists on repossessing the whole collection and storing it under their lock and key, but only for six months. The Syrons say this is a form of theft, pointing to an implied accommodation agreement based on more than two years' of occupation and documents.
They believe that Keneally seems motivated by money; she has never looked inside the tin shed.
The Syrons feel unfairly treated but are backed by the Arts Law Centre, Woolloomooloo, and a groundswell of community support. They can't move out, having nowhere to go, and are in a state of limbo.
"White fellas have lots of keeping places for their art. We just want one Keeping Place for ours", Syron pointed out.
So, if injustice occurs when justice is corroded by arrogance, ignorance or avarice, surely this leaky tin shed is Exhibit A in the case for Indigenous peoples' cultural rights.