Big wave: Desert Country

Legendary curator John Kean looks at three recent large exhibitions of Aboriginal art - Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, Desert Country and Living Water, and questions whether the same spirit sings in all of them.

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The Ballad of Jimmy Governor

Emeritus Indigenous curator Djon Mundine wrote this essay on the occasion of a production of Posts in the Paddock a play about Jimmy Governor by the company My Darling Patricia. The performance included members of the both families involved. Mundine addresses questions of familial and national forgiveness.

Djon Mundine

For architecture and country

Torres Strait Islander Kevin O'Brien, who is commissioning and directing an independent exhibition called 'Finding Country' at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 running from August to 25 November 2012, writes about an Aboriginal architecture that is not about buildings shaped like native animals.

Kevin O'Brien

Artefacts of authenticity

Artist and lecturer Garry Jones is undertaking a Phd at the Australian National University School of Art in Canberra. In this article he reveals some of his investigations of Aboriginal artefacts in museum collections and questions notions of authenticity, reclamation and reinvigoration of the past in contemporary Aboriginal art.

Garry Jones

Ancestral memory: out of the shadows

University of Melbourne Research Fellow Fran Edmonds along with Victorian artists Lee Darroch, Maree Clarke and Vicki Couzens looks at the story of Aboriginal art in Victoria as a determined reclamation of the past, a cross-generational celebration in the present and a visionary guide for the future.

Fran Edmonds

Spaced: Art out of place

Artistic Director: Marco Marcon Fremantle Arts Centre 4 February - 11 March 2012

Nien Schwarz

Marco Fusinato: There Is No Authority

Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney 11 February - 17 March 2012

Amy Griffiths

On the ground with Our Mob in 2011

Terry Cleary was the Statewide Indigenous Community Artists Development (SICAD) Program Manger with Ananguku Arts and Culture from 2009-2011. He reflects on the potential power of Our Mob when it works.

Terry Cleary

Into Cosmos: Adelaide Festival Artists’ Week 2012

Christine Morrow

Obscured by Light: Pamela Lofts and Kim Mahood

Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs 25 February – 25 March 2012

Kieran Finnane

The elephant in the room: public art in Brisbane

Artist-activist Fiona Foley recounts a recent incident of the commissioning of a public art work for Kurilpa (place of the kuril or native water rat). Kurilpa is the cultural precinct where GOMA is located. Foley imagines works by prominent Queensland Aboriginal artists dotted along that place.

Fiona Foley

Lateral Violence is an Indigenous arts thing

Sam Cook

The Ghost Net art project

Program Director for Ghost Nets Australia Sue Ryan describes how the Ghost Net Art Project began and what it is all about - people using eco-trash to share stories and express their creativity.

Sue Ryan

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