The Indigenous Visual Arts Industry: Issues and Prospects for the Next Decade

Cover of The Indigenous Visual Arts Industry: Issues and Prospects for the Next Decade
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Between worlds: Belinda Mason and Blur Projects
Feature
Alasdair Foster

Published 01 September 2020
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Body, remember: Wrap me in a sister cloak
Feature
Ali Gumillya Baker

Published September 2020

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Regimes of care: Concerning the afterlife of artists
Feature
Robert Cook

Published 01 September 2020
UNSW
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The idea of redemption: Artmaking in prison
Feature
Alasdair Foster

Published 01 September 2020
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On thin ice: Creating a life beyond addiction
Feature
Ginger Gorman

Published 01 September 2020
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Flesh after fifty: Changing images of older women in art
Feature
Jacqueline Millner

Published 01 September 2020
Amended 2020
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How can I live in your world? Empathic strategies in contemporary Asian art
Feature
Reuben Keehan

Published 01 September 2020
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Shahidul Alam: You're blocking the sun
Feature
Kelly Hussey-Smith

Published 01 September 2020

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.

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More from this Issue Full Issue Contents

Tandanya: One City and a Festival
Feature
Darryl Pfitzner Millika

3SPACE -C21st Indigenous Explorers was an exhibition by Darryl Pfitzner Millika, Mark Blackman and David Pearce for the 2000 Adelaide Festival. In common is their shared history as contemporary indigenous artists in Adelaide, the city which had the first indigenous art centre Tandanya, a powerful catalyst for many enterprises which without it would not have been so well presented or widely seen.

Published March 2000
Boomalli: Fact or Fantasy: you decide!
Feature
Ken Watson

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.

Published March 2000
Political Theatre in Beyond the Pale
Feature
John Kean

The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Artin 2000 was a survey of new indigenous art titled Beyond the Pale. This attempt to show the best of new work was staged as a series of rooms each with a different mood from baskets and shimmering paintings to rooms of confrontation where works invited viewers to be shocked by figures of authority seen in very unflattering mode.

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
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
Emily Kame Kngwarray
Tribute
Jenny Green

A tribute to Emily Kame Kngwarray the celebrated painter from Sandover near the central desert community of Utopia, who died in 1996 after a meteoric career during which she produced 3,000 works in 8 years. Although her concern was to paint and thus protect her country (her main subject was the pencil yam after the seeds and flowers of which - kam - she was named) she was acclaimed by some as a major abstract painter of the 20th century. She won a major creative fellowship and was posthumously shown at the Venice Biennale.

Published March 2000
Nomad to TV star in three years: Walala Tjapaltjarri meets the world
Feature
Lotte Waters

In late 1984 Walala Tjapaltjarri and other Pintupi tribespeople walked out of the Gibson desert in WA and met Europeans for the first time. Within a few years Walala adapted his traditional ground and body painting to painting on canvas and was filmed by Robert Hughes for his TV series Beyond the Fatal Shore.

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
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
Looking at the Stolen Generation
Feature
Christine Nicholls

The government policy of separating Indigenous children from their parents was still in force until the 1970s in some states. Indigenous artists who have recently begun depicting these events include Julie Dowling, Gordon Syron, John Packham, Rea and Brenda Croft. Their work has been part of the uncovering of the hidden history of these children of which many non-indigenous Australians were quite ignorant until the mid 1990s.

Published March 2000
Snapshot of a Culture
Feature
Philip Morrissey

A conference about Indigenous arts and crafts was held in 1999 and was a useful sounding board for issues from the new Label of Authenticity and copyright, to the new Goods and Services Tax and art in cyberspace.

Published March 2000
Art in Warmun community
Feature
Susan Hartley

A new art centre at Warmun in the Kimberly of WA is a showcase for the talents of the artists of the area, some of whom used to work on big pastoral stations in this remote area. Celebrated founders of the centre were Rover Thomas and Queenie Mckenzie. There are tensions between their interests and those of white landowners in relation to access to 'country' being denied. Young people are unable to have a traditional education and are becoming westernised through videos.

Published March 2000
 
QAGOMA
Bill Morrow
MGNSW
Desert Mob
CAT