The limits of criticism

Anthropologist John Carty casts his eyes over the last ten years of writing on Desert art, mostly in newspapers, and finds many cliches and inconsistencies. He asks: "Where are the fine-grained localised art histories, the rich biographies of our most interesting and important individual artists? Where are their voices?" And replies: "They are still waiting in the Desert."

More from this Issue

New Olds - Design between Tradition and Innovation

Curator: Volker Albus RMIT Gallery, Melbourne 7 December 2012 – 9 March 2013

Patricia Brien

Gulumbu Yunupingu (1943–2012)

People in Nhulunbuy still talk wonderingly about the last days of Gulumbu Yunupingu’s life. Something happened. Something changed. For nine days the monolithic concrete hospital in the sterile mining town threw open its doors and for nine days the Yolngu ceremony ground flowed in.

Will Stubbs

Foundations Edge: Artists and technology

QUT Art Museum 16 March – 26 May 2013

Rainer Doecke

The road to Pormpuraaw

Filmmaker Peter Hylands writes about a recent visit to the remote Pormpuraaw Art Centre in Far North Queensland. Here he talks with artist Sid Bruce Short Joe who speaks nine languages, the ninth is English.

Peter Hylands

The archive in the contemporary

The artworks of Danie Mellor, Brian Robinson and Christian Thompson each draw on archival material for subject matter, for inspiration, and to develop new work that harks back and forward at the same time.

Emily Cloney

Desert Lake

Curator: Mandy Martin Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs 2 March – 14 April 2013

Kieran Finnane

Testing Ground

Curator: Julie Gough Artists: The 1491s, Ólöf Björnsdóttir, Trudi Brinckman, Darren Cook, Rebecca Dagnall, Sue Kneebone, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Jeroen Offerman, Perdita Phillips, r e a, Keren Ruki, Christian Thompson, Martin Walch, Siying Zhou Long Gallery, Salamanca Art Centre, Hobart 14 March – 28 April 2013

Amy Jackett

Field

Curator: Lisa Bryan-Brown Hold Artspace, Brisbane 1–17 March 2013

Maria Georgiou

Good Medicine

Being Aboriginal doesn’t make you wise, spiritual or even good at art. Being Aboriginal is historical just like being any other nationality or ethnicity. All art can be examined ethnographically, all people can be examined ethnographically.

Stephanie Radok

My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Interview with Bruce McLean

On curating My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia, opening at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane on 1 June 2013.

Daniel Browning

Pamela Anne Johnston Dahl-Helm (1947–2013)

Pam was a proud Bundjalung woman. An artist, mother, grandmother, sister and friend to many, a long-term resident of Sydney’s Woolloomooloo, she was a true leftie, advocating for social justice, equality and the rights of minority groups.

Rox De Luca and Josie Newton

Let's be polite

Editor Daniel Browning interviews artist Vernon Ah Kee who discusses the lack of criticism of Aboriginal art and the abundance of 'mass production' Aboriginal art emanating from remote communities seen by some as 'real Aboriginal art' but in the eyes of Ah Kee simply and uncritically playing into false romantic notions of the lives of Aboriginal people.

Vernon Ah Kee and Daniel Browning

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