All that swagger and not a sorry in sight

At the beginning of his video work The Dinner Party (2013), Richard Bell is friendly and chatty as he walks through the crowd of people who are eager to meet him. The first question that he is asked is “So, what is it Richard, activist or artist?”, Bell replies “You will just have to wait and find out”.

More from this Issue

Fair exchange: The rise of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art fairs

Tod Jones and Tim Acker

Moments of intersection: James Tylor

Eleanor Scicchitano

The Dealer is The Devil : An Insider's History of the Aboriginal Art Trade

Stephanie Radok

Poetics and politics

On the First Peoples exhibition in the Bunjilaka Gallery at Museum Victoria

Andrea Witcomb

Reason and fancy in the art of Brian Robinson

Clotilde Bullen

The Flash of Recognition: Photography and the Emergence of Indigenous Rights

Artist and curator Troy-Anthony Baylis reviews Jane Lydon's book The Flash of Recognition: and regards it as a "crucial text for visual communication, media, film, and photography scholars, who will learn to be more analytical of how images, particularly images of Aboriginal people, have been constructed through journalism, activism, and art."

Troy-Anthony Baylis

Territory style: Salon des Refusés

Yanuwa/Larrakia/Bardi/Wardaman woman Franchesca Cubillo, Senior Curator/Advisor National Gallery of Australia, writes about the first Salon des Refusés (conceived and brought to fruition by gallerists Matt Ward and Paul Johnstone) held in Darwin in 2013 as a pendant to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

Franchesca Cubillo