Published 01 December 2020
Tasmanian essayist and poet, currently working as Indigenous Visiting Research Scholar at AIATSIS in Canberra, Greg Lehman looks over David Hansen's recent award-winning essay entitled 'Seeing Truganini' and finds it wanting.
The National Museum of Australia's Margo Neale writes in depth about the curation of a 100 year old collection of Aboriginal art at the Vatican in Rome. She asks: "How do Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, previously captive to the anthropological gaze and to unequal power relations, not only interrogate the histories that defined them as ‘other’ and ‘lesser’, but also regain their voice and agency over historic cultural objects that reside in collections around the world?"
Published June 2011
The Queensland State Library Executive Manager of Indigenous research and projects Tom Mosby writes about the Margaret Lawrie Works on Paper Collection and the role of art in the lives of Torres Strait Islanders. Between July and October 2011, the watercolours in the Margaret Lawrie Works on Paper Collection will, for the first time, be exhibited together as part of 'Strait Home' at the State Library of Queensland.
Ulli Beier (1922-2011) I remember a Yoruba saying that Ulli often quoted: “If an old man dies, you shall not weep but congratulate his family for that his life has come full circle.”
Associate Lecturer at the College of Fine Art in Sydney Tess Allas writes about when she was NSW Regional Indigenous Cultural Officer and first met the women of Boggabilla who formed the Euraba Paper Company which won the Parliament of NSW Aboriginal Art Prize in 2010.
Fiona Foley's recent public work has gone from strength to strength most recently at Mackay where her six large new works form a trail commemorating the Pacific and black history of the region.
Curator at AAMU Georges Petitjean describes the 'Remembering Forward' exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in detail, how it came about, what surrounds it and what it might mean.
Dina Ibrahim looks at the Joe Rootsey Retrospective curated by Bruce McLean at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2010 to find an artist who in his short life achieved compelling evocations of his relationship to country.
Griffith Artworks and Griffith University Art Gallery Director Simon Wright reviews the stellar career in sculpture and printmaking of Torres Strait Islander Denis Nona whose newest commission at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon is eight metres high.
Ian McLean is Winthrop Professor, Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts, The University of Western Australia.
'Yalangabara: Art of the Djang'kawu' curated by Banduk Marika and Margie West includes art made from 1939 till recently. All works are about the same creation story and all comprise a history of creative and spiritual custodianship by the Marika family of the Rirratjingu clan.
Melbourne-based Ben McKeown was the overall winner of the 2011 Victorian Indigenous Art Award with a mysterious photograph called Untitled of an Aboriginal man concealing hinself behind two heavy boomernags. McKeown's artwork is inspired by a quest for belonging, by the genealogical researches of the anthropologist Norman Tindale, by the city and the suburbs.
