Artlink has not only set a standard of readability that is exceptional in the field. It has stood firmly against temptations that much of the comparable literature has found irresistible. One of the most insidious of these is the invitation to embrace the artworld’s profitable association with the dealership system and the art market. Another is the pressure to acquiesce in a conception of its role as the public relations arm of the culture industry.
Donald Brook, arts writer and philosopher
Editors: Clothilde Bullen, Wardandi/Yamatji/French/English heritage, is Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections and Exhibitions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia. James Tylor is a visual artist of Kaurna/Maori/European heritage.
This edition, representing the perspectives of the southern language groups of Australia, focuses on Indigenous sovereignty through the actions of cultural producers. Decolonisation is addressed in a multitude of ways, starting with the decolonisation of the self, and the ways in which we narrate the impact on the lives of First Nations peoples of centuries of generational trauma, following European colonisation, and the enforced assimilation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It takes on the challenge of reinvigorating tradition, language and cultural values as protocols for leadership, centred on the critical agency of First Peoples.
Above: Jonathan Jones, barrangal dyara (skin and bones), Kaldor Public Art Project 32, Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney, 2016. Cover image: (detail) Ali Gumillya Baker, sovereignGODDESSnotdomestic (1), 2017, digital print, light box. Courtesy the artists
