Ben McKeown: Sunshine and Lollipops

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.

Published June 2011

To hold and protect: Mulka at Yirrkala

The Mulka Project is a Yolngu archive and production centre incorporating a theatre, media lab, project office, audio video library and museum. “As the Mulka Project is growing up we need to be clear that it is just a resource and the law and culture is coming from the land where people are staying, even where there is no one staying, its patterns, the designs and culture, are coming from the country.” states Djambawa Marawili.

Published June 2011

Jason Wing: In Flight

Larissa Behrendt writes about both soothing and painful installations and paintings by Jason Wing that explore his Chinese and Aboriginal roots.

Published June 2011

Romantic Landscapes

Laura Fisher worked for three years on indigenous artists' biographies for the DAAO (Dictionary of Australian Artists Online) and is now completing a doctoral thesis on the indigenous art market at the University of NSW. Here she brings her wide knowledge to bear on representational and romantic landcape paintings by indigenous artists.

Published June 2011

Exhibitions to Watch

Published June 2011

An encounter with the National Galleries

Lecturer in the Australian Indigenous Studies program at the University of Melbourne, Odette Kelada describes her visit to the National Gallery of Australia's new Indigenous galleries and the National Portrait Gallery that is just next door and views them as sites of contemporary Frontier warfare.

Published June 2011

Paint every hill: Billy Benn

Billy Benn Perrurle and Catherine Peattie
with essays by Ian McLean and Judith Ryan
IAD Press RRP $34.95

Published June 2011

Mary Ann Mungatopi's Tiwi Portraits

Artist and curator Una Rey tells the moving story of the life and work of Tiwi artist Maryanne Mingatopi.

Published June 2011

Donning Oxford

Christian Thompson who is one of the two inaugural Charlie Perkins Scholars at Oxford University writes about this experience and how it makes him think of his upbringing and the responsibility it entails. "...it is our arrival at Oxford that reminds me of how much work we still have ahead of us as young Aboriginal people and future leaders of our communities. This is something you feel as an inherent responsibility when you meet people daily from all around the world, whose communities are facing similar hardships and the symptoms of the ravages of colonisation; time is of the essence."

Published June 2011

Conjure: Zoe Porter

Level Gallery, Brisbane
12 March – 1 April 2011

Published June 2011

Darren Siwes: dialogue with Rembrandt

Dutch art historian Marianne Riphagen, whose PhD looked at contemporary Indigenous photo-media artists, draws togther the dark and light in the artwork of Rembrandt and South Australia-based Darren Siwes to question the Dutch Golden Age.

Published June 2011

Landscapes and Horses: Ivan Durrant

Curator: Rodney James
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
16 February - 26 April 2011

Published June 2011