Snapshot of a Culture

Cover of Snapshot of a Culture
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Geological pit stops: Kate Hill and Isadora Vaughan
Feature
Abbra Kotlarczyk

Published 01 March 2020
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Duchamp and Australia: In opposition
Feature
Rex Butler and A.D.S. Donaldson

Published 01 March 2020
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The Brazilian moment: A picture gallery in transformation
Feature
John Mateer

Published 01 March 2020
Artlink Promo
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Crafty prepping
Feature
Sera Waters

Published 01 March 2020
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2019: The year of our cyberpunk future
Feature
Darren Jorgensen

Published 01 March 2020
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Art in the time of the burning
Feature
Ian Milliss

Published 01 January 2020
Australian Body Art Festival
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Reading the entrails: Digesting posthuman entanglement
Feature
Sasha Grbich

Published 01 December 2019
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Eating together online: The ambivalent conviviality of ASMR videos
Feature
Francis Russell

Published 01 December 2019

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

Judy Watson's etched zinc wall at Bunjilaka
Feature
Gaye Sculthorpe

Queensland artist Judy Watson spent three months in Melbourne on a commission for a zinc wall around 50 metres long for the Bunjilaka gallery at the new Museum Melbourne. Watson used motifs relating to Aboriginal material culture in the etched panels of this work.

Published March 2000
Homeland: Sacred Visions and the Settler State
Feature
Marcia Langton

In spite of supporting a vast artworld of curators, critics and collectors, the 'otherness' of Aboriginal art in the Western canon persists, fuelled by white settler reluctance to acknowledge history. The valorisation of the life and work of Emily Kame Kngwarray is one of the great imponderables of our time. Her extreme age, traditional origins, style of painting and prodigious output were the causes. Most significantly she demonstrated the possibility of human intimacy with landscapes.

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
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
Remote Area Computer Art: Multi-Media Talent Emerges in Yuendumu
Feature
Sue Angel

Donovan Rice is a young Warlpiri man who has virtually taught himself to make computer art in the remote community of Yuendumu. He is making digital images and animations which relate to his own cultural situation against the backdrop of a chronically disfunctional society. He works under the aegis of Warlpiri Media, a community-run media resource centre and TV production house.

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
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 '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
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
M.N. Tjapaltjarri
Tribute
Richard (Dick) Kimber

A tribute to Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri born c.1926 in Pintupi country and who died in 1998. He lived in Papunya and was encouraged by Geoff Bardon to start painting and was a member of the Papunya Tula Artists Company. By 1991 when he won the National Aboriginal Art Award his works were being acquired by national collections and many other collectors.

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
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