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 performative print: Alick Tipoti's Girelal

Jan Hogan

Culture Warriors as cultural diplomacy

Senior lecturer at the College of Fine Arts (CoFA), University of New South Wales, Gail McDonald analyses the exhibition Culture Warriors, the first National Indigenous Art Triennial curated by Brenda L. Croft, that travelled to Washington in 2009. McDonald argues that, rather than diplomatic blandness, real political confrontation was present in the exhibition.

Gay McDonald

Trepang: crossing cultures / creating connections

by Alison Inglis and Susan Lowish

Alison Inglis and Susan Lowish

Panorama: are we there yet?

Daniel Boyd, Nadine Christensen, Sarah Goffman, Fiona Lowry, Bennett Miller, Arlo Mountford, Joan Ross, Caroline Rothwell, Bernie Slater, Jemima Wyman Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, NSW 27 January 2011 – 13 March 2012

Joanna Mendelssohn

Artrave

Stephanie Britton

Obscured by Light: Pamela Lofts and Kim Mahood

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

Kieran Finnane

Archie Moore: drilling deep

Freelance curator and writer Tim Morrell studies the art practice of Brisbane-based Archie Moore which is emphatically free from any signature style and is concerned with sharing his experience as an Indigenous Australian in order to put viewers 'in his shoes'.

Timothy Morrell

I Forgive You: Bindi Cole's Seventy Times Seven

Bruce McLean

Marco Fusinato: There Is No Authority

Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney 11 February - 17 March 2012

Amy Griffiths

A place of our own

This conversation between curator Hetti Perkins and co-editor Daniel Browning looks at Perkins call for a National Institution, or Centre, of Indigenous Art, which might become, as she puts it, “a living space that breathes culture”.

Daniel Browning and Hetti Perkins

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

Tu Di Shen Ti, Our Land Our Body: the Ngaanyatjarra poetic goes to China

The exhibition 'Tu Di Shen Ti – Our Land Our Body, Masterworks of the Warburton Collection', was seen in China by about a quarter of a million people, across seven venues, throughout 2011. Director of the Warburton Arts Project Gary Proctor describes how the exhibition came about, what it looked like and what its goal are.

Gary Proctor

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