For the longest time, Dugal Armour never had his own safe space.
But now he is drawing on his own experiences to create safe spaces for others.
A sexual abuse survivor, Armour is re-staging his exhibition, Standing Up, a series of hand-wrought steel sculptures that unravel his personal story of trauma, self-realisation and recovery, at Forrester Gallery.
The return of the exhibition to the gallery is one of four events in Oamaru initiated by Armour and supported by Stronger Waitaki to highlight Child Abuse Prevention month, in April.
The other events are a panel discussion with Male Survivors Aotearoa national advocate Ken Clearwater, a talk by Campbell Park abuse survivor Darryl Smith, and "One in Five", an exhibition by a collective of local artists at Clear Space Gallery.
The initiative is the first of its kind in the district and the first time Armour has spoken publicly of the abuse he suffered.
He wants to encourage further conversations.
"It’s part of a bigger conversation. Also, I’ve included the didactics to each work, which I think [previously] I might have felt a little bit vulnerable to put up there.
"I think it was everything at that time that I could create really strong, authentic, impactful work, that gave me ability to look at something tangible and unravel my experience."
He said the process of making the artworks was cathartic.
"[It was] the first time I was authentic and real in my own expression . . . "Because it was metal, too, I could go wild, putting the whole thing together. I was crying and screaming.
"When I finished, I felt, completely exhausted, but I just love this work. It was me, it was real."
Armour said he had been "challenged" in the past by other communities when he attempted to draw awareness to child sex abuse.
"I can understand that fully, but what that does is it protects the perpetrators and gives no safe place for people who’ve been abused to be able to engage.
"The thing with abuse is it silences your ability to tell other people, to say what’s been going on.
"That’s why people who have been abused feel so isolated and sidelined."
Armour’s father left when he was three and he suffered ongoing abuse from the age of four by multiple people, male and female. He attended boarding school in Nelson and was raped in his final year at school by an authority figure, he said.
"I had 20 years of just hell."
He created "coping strategies" to survive but believes the " normalising"of those destructive strategies needs to be challenged.
"We tend to criminalise a lot of the expressions of abuse by men, which is criminality, violence, excessive drinking and drugs and yet we normalise a lot of the expressions of sexual abuse by females, like pornography. . . that has a sort of wider umbrella like the fashion industry, advertising and the corrupted sexualising of females.
"It is dysfunctional and harmful to society but we minimise and normalise."
As an adult, within men’s support groups, Armour began to find space to connect with his vulnerability and the courage to speak up about his own experiences.
". . . they [the men] were strong in their ability, strong in their vulnerability, strong to show emotion, like crying, and expressing their own sadness.
"I found that so empowering. Armour, who recently turned 60, said he spent his entire lifetime attempting to have a relationship with his estranged father, a good man who was highly regarded in the community.
"He’d take his shirt off his own back for a stranger."
But he felt his father was "emotionally cut off" and unreachable, and Armour "found that the most devastating thing".
Later in his life, when his father was in his 80s, Armour confided in him and told him of the abuse he had experienced as a child.
The result of that conversation revealed a secret his father had been keeping his entire life.
"The next day he told me ‘I’m really pleased that you told me; I was raped as a 7-year-old."
Armour’s revelation had given his father permission to share his story. He died not long after their conversation.
"What it did— I still miss that opportunity of having my father in my life but that gave me an understanding — that I feel comfortable with, of why he was so guarded and cut-off emotionally and the fact he’d carried that abuse for over 70 years.
"That’s what I’ve realised the whole way through, the power of the voice, the power of expression. The truth.
"You give people the licence then to be able to express their trauma in a real way."
Armour credits his wife of 16 years, Megan, and their relationship, in large part, for his healing journey.
"We’d be dead without each other.
"That’s something that I’ve really learnt. My level of ability to love and be authentic and express gratitude for what I have is quite new to me.
"All of that was taken away and it’s only going into my fear and my trauma that I’ve gained the capacity to do that.
"That’s what I see in other survivors who have done other things. You know if I was to admire anyone — and Megan is at the top of the list — it’s people who have been through the most horrific experiences and yet maintain that ability to be a loving authentic human being.
Forrester Gallery director Chloe Searle praised Armour and said he had been an "incredible driver" of the initiative.
"Dugal’s exhibition is a great example of how art can be used to explore difficult subjects and we really congratulate Dugal on re-presenting this show at the Forrester Gallery and in time with the awareness month.
"And having the panel discussion with Ken Clearwater . . . Dugal’s work does really stand out as a incredible generous act, to put his story there for the community to raise awareness."
The exhibition opens tomorrow at Forrester Gallery and runs until the end of April.
