Boomalli: Fact or Fantasy: you decide!

Cover of Boomalli: Fact or Fantasy: you decide!
1.126
Foreign returned: Between expatriate and repatriate in Mumbai
Feature
Balamohan Shingade

Published 01 September 2018
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Human flow in Melanesia: Taloi Havini's artefacts and habitats
Feature
Nicholas Thomas

Published 01 September 2018
1.122
Living and dying under surveillance: Xu Bing's Dragonfly Eyes
Feature
Sasha Grbich

Published 01 September 2018
Artlink Subs Promo
1.122
Inhuman flow: Censorship and art in the two Chinas
Feature
Darren Jorgensen and Tami Xiang

Published 01 September 2018
1.124
Sublime Plight: Richard Mosse, Ai Weiwei and the social turn
Feature
Wes Hill

Published 01 September 2018
1.3
YARN: The art of conversation
Feature

Coby Edgar interviews Warren Roberts, CEO of YARN Australia

Published June 2018
Joondalup
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Editorial: Kanarn Wangkiny/Wanggandi Karlto (Speaking from Inside)
Feature
Clothilde Bullen with James Tylor

Published 01 June 2018
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Katie West: Living well
Feature
Katie West

Published 01 June 2018

Boomalli, founded in 1987, enters an unlikely future where anonymous benefactors help them to buy premises in an inner city suburb, to employ curators and become independent of funding bodies. Tax-free havens are set up for indigenous artists in NSW and Boomalli members exhibit regularly at MOMA in New York.

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More from this Issue Full Issue Contents

Contemporary Voices: Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery in the SA Museum
Feature
Franchesca Cubillo

The new Aboriginal Cultures Gallery at the SA Museum has set a new standard of excellence in interpretation of historical material. The use of film, video and computer terminals carrying extensive information from songs and interviews to historical documentation adds to the rich texture of the displays. Contemporary Voices is a set of filmed interviews conducted by museum staff in the six months before the opening of the new Gallery

Published March 2000
The Indigenous Visual Arts Industry: Issues and Prospects for the Next Decade
Feature
Jon Altman

The economics of indigenous art is analysed in detail in relation to production, collection and distribution, consumption, developments in the 1990s, prospects for the next decade, tourist art, protection of intellectual property, quality control, authenticity and leadership.

Published March 2000
Health and Art: Can art make people (feel) well?
Feature
Felicity Wright

Art can function in a wide range of ways beyond what is normally regarded as its arena. It can empower by raising confidence, providing income which can be used to improve diet and living conditions, it can be therapeutic, liberating and provide an emotional and intellectual outlet, while posters and TV ads can convey important messages about health issues. When a culture is strong the people are healthy.

Published March 2000
Queenie McKenzie
Tribute
Patricia Vinnicombe

A tribute to the Western Australian artist Queenie McKenzie who died in 1998. She lived her whole life in the Texas Downs area and before taking up painting in old age she worked on the cattle station there and was a stalwart supporter of 'women's law business' and language. She was a confident and prolific painter mostly of her country but sometimes of social topics. When her work was recognised by the art market she shared her material success generously with her adopted family.

Published March 2000
Polemic: From the 21st Century and Through the Telescope
Feature
Janet Maughan

Polemic: There has been a paradigm shift in Australia with the development of Aboriginal art, which may be as consequential as that of the Impressionists. Over the last 30 years Aboriginal artists have been making their voices heard and now make up at least 25% of the country's working visual artists though they are only 1.7% of the population. Their art will go down in history as providing new perspectives with which to view the world

Published March 2000
Snapshots of Contemporary Sound, Movement and Words from Broome
Feature
Cynthia Coyne

Broome is a town in WA with a long history of many cultures living and working together. It is the home of a vibrant Indigenous music industry, its most famous sons being the Pigram brothers and Jimmy Chi, author of the musicals Bran Nue Day and Corrugation Road . Magabala Books is flourishing, and the Stompen' Ground Festival is gaining in strength and reputation.

Published March 2000
Photography with Intent
Feature
Gary Lee

Various indigenous artists began to use photography to express ideas about their social and political position in the 1980s; the 1988 Bicentennial celebrations were a strong catalyst. Formerly they were always on the other side of the lens, as anthropological subjects. The exception was Mervyn Bishop, employed as a press photographer in the 1960s, and pioneer in the medium and role model for younger artists including Fiona Foley, Ricky Maynard, Peter McKenzie.

Published March 2000
Bush Toys
Feature
Liesl Rockchild

Bush Toys was an exhibition of toys made from scraps of metal and copper wire by the male members of the Eastern Arrente tribe of Central Australia in the late 1990s. These recall the era when Aboriginal people were the backbone of the pastoral industry, as stockmen and horse trainers. There are miniature horses and riders, windmills and stockyards, and wooden 'cars' for children to push along or ride in. The toys are a source of great pride for the men who make them.

Published March 2000
The House of Aboriginality
Feature
Vivien Johnson

The House of Aboriginality is an evolving multimedia project about the merchandising of Indigenous imageries. A CD-rom sets out the story of the circulation of this in mainstream culture through the metaphor of a house entirely furnished with products bearing Aboriginal art designs.

Published March 2000
The 'Aboriginal Art Scandals' Scandal
Feature
Vivien Johnson

A chronicle of a spate of so-called 'Aboriginal art scandals' which happened in the late 1990s, some of which involved white artists passing off work as Aboriginal. The custom amongst indigenous artists of family members working with an artist on paintings creates problems for the western art market and leads to claims of fraud. The media is often guilty of distorting and sensationalising events. The newly launched Label of Authenticity enters the scene.

Published March 2000
The Art and Craft Centre Story
Book Review
Tamara Winikoff

Review of The Art and Craft Centre Story Volume I by Felicity Wright and Frances Morphy. This is an exhaustive survey of Indigenous art centres examining every aspect of their operations. The appalling conditions under which the staff of these centres work bely the extraordinary success of these centres. The authors recommend adoption of a policy of coordinated help with human resources.

Published March 2000
Challenging boundaries: Indigenous Art in Three Dimensions
Feature
Doreen Mellor

Recent Indigenous 3-D work is regarded as both art and craft. The materials range from shell and rushes to scrap steel, grass, ceramic, glass and bull kelp; the works may be vessels, installations, necklaces, small figures etc. The works often contain explicit references to cultural or historical truths eg the figures by WA artist Joyce Winsley which recall characters from her youth in the country, or Lola Greeno's water containers made in the traditional way from bull kelp .

Published March 2000
 
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