Snapshot of a Culture

Cover of Snapshot of a Culture
1.128
Wardlipari Homeriver: Vulnerable observations
Feature
Uncle Lewis Yarluburka O’Brien and Ali Gumillya Baker

Published 01 March 2019
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Local colour: Dyeing and women's wealth
Feature
Julie Ewington

Published 01 March 2019
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Hi-vis commodities: A body corporate's toxic economy
Feature
Tessa Laird with Debris Facility

Published 01 March 2019
Crown Resorts
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Revisiting colour problems: Emily Vanderpoel, Hilma af Klint, Becca Albee, Clare Milledge
Feature
Amelia Wallin

Published 01 March 2019
1.126
Queer uses of colour: A tinted hermeneutics
Feature
Abbra Kotlarczyk

Published 01 March 2019
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Meet Lisa Walker in her workshop: VR in the museum
Feature
Justine Olsen and Prue Donald

Published 01 December 2018
Riddoch
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Eugenie Lee's Seeing is Believing: VR in pain management
Feature
Dylan DeLosAngeles

Published 01 December 2018
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Artificial imagination: Deepfakes from latent space
Feature
Sean Dockray

Published 01 December 2018

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.

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More from this Issue Full Issue Contents

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
New Ways With Clay: Tiwi Pottery
Feature
Margie West

The Tiwi people on Melville and Bathurst Islands just north of Darwin have a 30-year tradition of pottery. They have absorbed a range of influences from the British Michael Cardew to visiting potters from Australia or via annual workshops with a Swiss potter Claude Presset. Some pots were collaboratively done - thrown by experienced potters and decorated by local artists. Slab and coil pieces drew on artists' experience in wood carving and painting.

Published March 2000
George Milpurrurru and David Malangi
Tribute
Michael O+Ferrall

Tributes to two painters from Ramingining in Arnhem Land, George Milpurrurru and David Malangi who helped to place this region on the map. Paintings were included in the 1979 Sydney Biennale. The iconography, style of painting and the public response to their work and interaction with the wider art world is discussed. Both of these major artists died during the 1990s after careers of around four decades.

Published March 2000
Rover Thomas
Tribute
Kim Akerman

A tribute to the Western Australian artist Rover Thomas who died in 1998 aged around 72. After a full life spent as a stockman and an important leader of ceremonial life through the Kurirr-Kurirr dance cycle in the Warmun community, in 1982 he began establishing a new mode of painting based on Kimberly rock art. His bold and original painting depicts the land and the massacres that took place there up to the 1950s. The National Gallery of Australia accorded him a retrospective exhibition Roads Cross in 1994.

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
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
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 '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
Black Glory: Erotica Old and New
Feature
Gary Lee

The exhibition 'Love Magic' explored Aboriginal male erotica and reveals a little-known dimension in traditional spirituality which has been echoed by contemporary artists. Images of phalluses, couples embracing and testicles going walkabout refer to legends and stories of the Old People. This very large exhibition was a life-affirming spectacle with humour and poignancy as well as some powerful eroticism.

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
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
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
 
NAVA
Sydney Opera House
The Japan Foundation
Churchie
ACE Open