Issues

Issue 31:2 | June 2011 | Indigenous: Beauty & Terror
Indigenous: Beauty & Terror
Issue 31:2 | June 2011
Issue 30:1 | March 2010 | Blak on Blak
Blak on Blak
Issue 30:1 | March 2010

Articles

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Alive and Kicking
This issue is subtitled ‘beauty and terror’; let me explain. 
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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.
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An encounter with the National Galleries
Lecturer in the Australian Indigenous Studies program at the University of Melbourne, Odette Kelada describes her visit to the National Gallery of Australia's new Indigenous galleries and the National Portrait Gallery that is just next door and views them as sites of contemporary Frontier warfare.
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Self-Abrasion of our Nations
Curator and artist Brenda Croft gets experiential in telling about Australia Day, her latest exhibition Stop (the) gap and what is shared by indigenous people around the globe.
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Fearing Truganini
Tasmanian essayist and poet, currently working as Indigenous Visiting Research Scholar at AIATSIS in Canberra, Greg Lehman looks over David Hansen's recent award-winning essay entitled 'Seeing Truganini' and finds it wanting.
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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.
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Denis Nona: Art Terroir-ist
Griffith Artworks and Griffith University Art Gallery Director Simon Wright reviews the stellar career in sculpture and printmaking of Torres Strait Islander Denis Nona whose newest commission at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon is eight metres high.
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Fiona Foley: Public and Political
Fiona Foley's recent public work has gone from strength to strength most recently at Mackay where her six large new works form a trail commemorating the Pacific and black history of the region.
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Jason Wing: In Flight
Larissa Behrendt writes about both soothing and painful installations and paintings by Jason Wing that explore his Chinese and Aboriginal roots.
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Jo Rootsey: Painting Country
Dina Ibrahim looks at the Joe Rootsey Retrospective curated by Bruce McLean at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2010 to find an artist who in his short life achieved compelling evocations of his relationship to country.
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Darren Siwes: dialogue with Rembrandt
Dutch art historian Marianne Riphagen, whose PhD looked at contemporary Indigenous photo-media artists, draws togther the dark and light in the artwork of Rembrandt and South Australia-based Darren Siwes to question the Dutch Golden Age.
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Yalangabara: Art of the Djang'kawu
'Yalangabara: Art of the Djang'kawu' curated by Banduk Marika and Margie West includes art made from 1939 till recently. All works are about the same creation story and all comprise a history of creative and spiritual custodianship by the Marika family of the Rirratjingu clan.
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To hold and protect: Mulka at Yirrkala
The Mulka Project is a Yolngu archive and production centre incorporating a theatre, media lab, project office, audio video library and museum. “As the Mulka Project is growing up we need to be clear that it is just a resource and the law and culture is coming from the land where people are staying, even where there is no one staying, its patterns, the designs and culture, are coming from the country.” states Djambawa Marawili.
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Romantic Landscapes
Laura Fisher worked for three years on indigenous artists' biographies for the DAAO (Dictionary of Australian Artists Online) and is now completing a doctoral thesis on the indigenous art market at the University of NSW. Here she brings her wide knowledge to bear on representational and romantic landcape paintings by indigenous artists.
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Blandowski's Illustrated Encyclopaedia

Freelance curator, honorary associate of Museum Victoria and Blandowski-ite from way back John Kean analyses this prickly Prussian polymath's Illustrated Encyclopedia on Australia at last brought together and to light by the efforts of New Zealander Harry Allen. The book includes contributions by Mark Dugagrist, Brook Andrew, Luise Hercus and Thomas A. Darragh.

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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.
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Paint every hill: Billy Benn
Billy Benn Perrurle and Catherine Peattie with essays by Ian McLean and Judith Ryan IAD Press RRP $34.95
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Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route
Sarah Scott reviews and questions Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route exhibition at the National Musuem of Australa. She asks: "Why don’t the NMA’s collections of Indigenous material culture feature more strongly in their exhibition program? Why are both the NMA and the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) collecting the highly sought after and expensive works produced by major Papunya artists? If the commissioning of art and associated documentary material is a priority for the NMA what other Indigenous material culture may they be neglecting?"
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Remembering Forward at the Museum Ludwig
Curator at AAMU Georges Petitjean describes the 'Remembering Forward' exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in detail, how it came about, what surrounds it and what it might mean.
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CoBra and Aboriginal art at AAMU, Utrecht
Newtown fellow at the University of Cambridge Khadija La visited AAMU (the Musuem of Contemporary Aboriginal Art) in Utrecht to see "Breaking with Tradition" an exhibition curated by Georges Petitjean that hangs works by CoBrA artists together with work by Indigenous artists and Roar artists who work or worked in Indigenous art centres.
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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."
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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.
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New displays at Pitt Rivers Museum
In 2009 eight new case displays were added to the legendary 1884 Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Indigenous art scholar and lecturer Susan Lowish examines how Aboriginal art fared in this rejig of history.
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Rising Queensland Indigenous artists
As leaders of unique working partnerships between the Indigenous art industry and the Queensland Government, pioneers like Judy Watson, Dennis Nona, Vernon Ah Kee, Richard Bell and Sally Gabori have established strong international reputations.
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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."
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Action at Canopy Artspace in Cairns
Canopy Artspace first opened for the 2009 Cairns Art Fair. It houses the Australian Art Print Network, New Flames Foundation and Editions Tremblay NFP (no Fixed Press). Paloma Ramos who works at Editions Tremblay vividly decribes the intense and fertile work in printmaking and sculpture that happens at Canopy.
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Euraba Paper Company, Boggabilla
Associate Lecturer at the College of Fine Art in Sydney Tess Allas writes about when she was NSW Regional Indigenous Cultural Officer and first met the women of Boggabilla who formed the Euraba Paper Company which won the Parliament of NSW Aboriginal Art Prize in 2010.
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Working in Indigenous Art Centres
Felicity Wright speaks from long experience, as a worker and as a reviewer of art centres on Aboriginal lands. Her thoughtful article teases out many do's and don'ts in this highly contested field.
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Tracey Moffatt / Stop(the)Gap / <BR>tall man
Tracey Moffatt: Narratives Curators: Stephen Zagala, Maria Zagala Art Gallery of South Australia 26 February - 20 March 2011 Stop (the) Gap: International Indigenous art in motion Curator: Brenda Croft Samstag Museum of Art 24 February - 21 April 2011 Vernon Ah Kee: tall man Australian Experimental Art Foundation 23 February - 26 March 2011
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Dialogues with Landscape
Exhibition Co-ordinator: Katie Lenanton University of Western Australia Cultural Precinct 15 February – 6 March 2011
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Landscapes and Horses: Ivan Durrant
Curator: Rodney James Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery 16 February - 26 April 2011
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TextaNudes: Arlene Textaqueen
Sullivan and Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney 3 - 27 March 2011
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Bruce Reynolds: Air Percussion
Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane 3 - 26 March 2011
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FELTspace Gold
FELTspace, 12 Compton St, Adelaide 9 March – 3 April 2011
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Ken and Julia Yonetani / Janet Tavener
Still Life: The Food Bowl: Ken and Julia Yonetani Artereal Gallery, Sydney, June 2011 Mildura Palimpsest #8, 9-11 Sept 2011 GV Art, London, October 2011 Melting moments: Janet Tavener Incinerator Art Space, Willoughby 2 -27 March 2011
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Networks (cells & silos)
Monash University Museum of Art
1 February – 16 April 2011
Curator: Geraldine Barlow
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Dis-covery
Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart 25 March - 1 May 2011 Curator: Colin Langridge
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Conjure: Zoe Porter
Level Gallery, Brisbane 12 March – 1 April 2011
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Paperartzi '11
Perth International Art Festival Albany, WA 5 - 20 March 2011
Ulli Beier

Ulli Beier (1922-2011) I remember a Yoruba saying that Ulli often quoted: “If an old man dies, you shall not weep but congratulate his family for that his life has come full circle.”

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John Barbour
John Barbour (1954-2011), a complex, intelligent and much loved South Australian artist and academic, was in the prime of his life and at the height of his career when he died on Sunday 17 April 2011.
Victorian Indigenous Art Awards 2011

Article on VIAA, Indigenous arts in Victoria – from the VIAA Curator.

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Not black enough, the politics of skin
Bundjalung man, journalist and radio broadcaster Daniel Browning, guest editor of this issue of Artlink, writes about the current state of racism and Aboriginality in Australia.
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Lin Onus: picturing histories, speaking politics
Art historian and painter Gamilaroi/Gamilaraay woman Donna Leslie examines the work and the legacy of Lin Onus, its humour, its depth and its urgency.
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Learning to be proppa : Aboriginal artists collective ProppaNOW
Senior Research Fellow and Senior Curator at the National Museum of Australia Margo Neale presents an incisive account of the genesis of proppaNOW the Queensland collective of urban Aboriginal Artists who are making waves in Australia and internationally with their intelligent brash art.
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Gordon Hookey : Flash Gordon’s message - language is a virus - the King's English (not)
Curator, artist and South Australian School of Art lecturer Brenda L. Croft gives the lowdown on Gordon Hookey's really rude and loud art that uses language and Australian animals to put the boot into racism and lend a voice to the silenced.
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History is a weapon: Fiona Foley history teacher
Badtjala woman Fiona Foley is a sculptor, installation artist, painter, printmaker, photographer, public artist, curator, lecturer and public speaker. Her work addresses lacunae and silences in Australian history, opening wounds and drawing attention to important topics of the past and how it affects the present.
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Art of glass: Yhonnie Scarce
The first Aboriginal student to graduate from the University of South Australia with a major in glass, Yhonnie Scarce makes blown glass objects that explore Aboriginal history and draw on her Kokatha and Nukunu ancestry.
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Dianne Jones : a little less conversation
Curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia Clotilde Bullen provides insight into Nyoongar artist Dianne Jones' use of humour and iconic images from Western art to make hard-hitting blak art about racism, the absence of black faces in history and the portrayal of black women.
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Tony Albert: there’s no place like home
Wirri man Bruce McLean of the Birri Gubba nation is currently Associate Curator, Indigenous Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. He writes with personal insight about the art practice of the youngest member of proppaNOW Tony Albert who comes from Cardwell in Queensland and was included in the 2009 Havana Biennale.
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From Tiwi with love: Bindi Cole
Yamatji man Stephen Gilchrist is curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria. He writes about recent winner of the 2009 'Victorian Indigenous Art Awards' Bindi Cole’s provocative artwork as an inventive addition to the genre of portraiture photography.
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Gary Lee: the outsider
Photographer Gary Lee makes work saturated with beauty and homoeroticism. His photographs of Aboriginal men are celebratory, bold and uncompromising.
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Beaver Lennon: painting country
Trainee curator of Indigenous Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia Nici Cumpston writes about the new art of Beaver Lennon a young emerging artist of Mirning and Antikirinjara people who lives in Ceduna on the far west coast of South Australia. His great-grandmother was the author of the memoir 'I’m the one that know this country, the story of Jessie Lennon and Coober Pedy'.
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Nowhere Boy
Emeritus Curator Djon Mundine OAM, currently Indigenous Curator of Contemporary Art at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Western Sydney, spills his guts on the current state of play as he sees it in Australian Aboriginal art where fashion has overtaken activism and some artists are just so hot right now.
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Look good feel good: the art of healing
Murri woman Jenny Fraser has recently completed a Masters in Indigenous Wellbeing at Southern Cross University in Lismore. She writes about different avenues for wellbeing for all Australians through practices known by Indigenous Australians.
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New Creations in Aurukun: Ceremonial Art
For the Adelaide Festival, Aptos Cruz Gallery in the Adelaide Hills is showcasing an extensive range of art from senior and emerging Aurukun artists, with about 35 works representing all artists using the art centre. This is a great opportunity to see new creations coming from the community. The exhibition continues to 4 April 2010.
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Queensland Indigenous Artists Creating More than Great Art!
The Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing and Export Agency (QIAMEA) was established in 2003 to promote the export of quality Queensland Indigenous art globally and nationally. A focal point for Queensland Indigenous art will be the 2nd Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF) to be held from 20 to 22 August 2010.
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6th Asia Pacific Triennial
Queensland Art Gallery Gallery of Modern Art 5 December 2009 - 5 April 2010
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APT6 another look
Queensland Art Gallery Gallery of Modern Art 5 December 2009 - 5 April 2010
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Culture Warriors
Culture Warriors Curator: Brenda L. Croft Katzen Arts Center, American University, Washington D.C. 10 September – 6 December 2009
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Menagerie
Menagerie Object Gallery and Australian Museum, Sydney 5 September - 2 November 2009 travelling till 2012
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Barks, Birds and Billabongs
16-20 November 2009 National Museum of Australia, Canberra
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To hear the language of birds: Paul Uhlmann
Fremantle Arts Centre 26 September – 22 November 2009 Curator: Jasmin Stephens
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Critical Generosity
Morgan Allender, Christopher Boha, Thom Buchanan, Annika Evans, Talitha Kennedy, Chloe Langford, Julian Lucas, Mary-Jean Richardson, Sam Songalio, Tomasz Talaj, Billie Justice Thomson, Reed Young Curator: Brigid Noone FELTspace ARI, Adelaide 5 - 21 November 2009
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Charlie Sofo
Utopian Slumps, Melbourne 5-–19 December 2009
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MONA FOMA
Curator: Brian Ritchie Hobart January 8 – 24 2010
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DEXA-Dan: Danny McDonald
Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute 75 Commercial Rd, Melbourne
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Glissando: Hans Kreiner
1 – 22 November 2009 Prospect Gallery, Adelaide
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HAART: Kim Stanley Medlen
Galerie Düsseldorf, WA 15 November – 13 December 2009
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Full Circle: Dacchi Dang
Metro Arts, Brisbane 4 - 21 November 2009
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