Alive and Kicking

This issue is subtitled ‘beauty and terror’; let me explain.

I often think of the natural environment of the continent as a metaphor that mirrors the history of colonisation; a kind of infinite pathetic fallacy redoubling on itself.

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

Torres Strait Islander watercolours

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.

Published June 2011

Rewriting the Labels

Indigenous culture is moving out of dedicated spaces and into the mainstream. Ultimately all Indigenous culture is claiming the space for experiences that have not been widely told and this broadens the space for the stories of everyone whose stories are untold.

Published June 2011

Trevor Nickolls: Other side Art

This is the first time that noted historian and writer on Aboriginal art Ian McLean has written a substantial interpretive artcile on the work of Trevor Nickolls. Nickolls began working in the 70s and is still painting his own particular brand of cross-cultural art.

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

Landscapes and Horses: Ivan Durrant

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

Published June 2011

A Third Path: the Musée des Confluences

French curator Arnaud Morvan, who recently completed his Phd at the University of Melbourne on the art of the East Kimberley, writes about the new approach to showing and consulting about Indigenous art taken by the still-under construction Musée des Confluences (due to open in 2014) in Lyon.
"It represents a first step towards an abolition of the segregation endured by non-Western art in Europe and an attempt to rise above the antiquated opposition between art and ethnography."

Published June 2011

Elcho Island: Morning Star over London

Artlink's UK contributing editor Jo Higgins interviewed Melbourne-born London gallerist Rebecca Hossack about her Indigenous art program and her attempts to raise its profile in London. She has two galleries and each summer for three months both galleries show only Australian Indigenous art in her Songlines series. Recently Elcho Island art featured.

Published June 2011

New Exhibitions Projects Initiatives

Published June 2011

Space Antics: Sue Henderson, David Marsden, Penny Mason

Burnie Regional Art Gallery
19 March - 8 May 2011

Published June 2011

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