Editorial: Making history

Stephanie Radok takes the temperature of Aboriginal art and history in 2012.

Published June 2012

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”.

Published June 2012

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.

Published June 2012

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.

Published June 2012

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.

Published June 2012

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.

Published June 2012

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.

Published June 2012

I Forgive You: Bindi Cole's Seventy Times Seven

Published 01 June 2012

Lateral Violence is an Indigenous arts thing

Sam Cook is an artist, educator and currently the Director of The Dreaming: Australia's International Indigenous Festival. She writes incisively about the deep layers of 'lateral violence' in the Indigenous arts sector.

Published June 2012

Long Way Home: A celebration of 21 years of Yunggorendi First Nations Centre

Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research at Flinders University, celebrated 21 years of operation in 2011 with an exhibition of work selected by staff and students from the collection of Flinders University Art Museum. Artist Ali Gumillya Baker critically reviews selected works in the exhibition and the issues they raise.

Published June 2012

No Place without Other Places: Spinifex Arts Project at fifteen years

University of Western Australia lecturer Darren Jorgensen examine the Spinifex Arts Project from its inception with reference to a new exhibition happening August-October 2012 at John Curtin Gallery and asks the big question: "What would it mean if Aboriginal artists were not tied to language groups, communities, art centres and regional styles?"

Published June 2012

Postcards from China

Multi-disciplinary artists Jason Wing, who has both Aboriginal and Chinese forebears, undertook a residency in Xucun, a remote village in China, where Chinese artists Qu Yuan and Shen Shaomin have established the Xucun Art Commune in order to protect the village's beauty and heritage.

Published June 2012

Reviewing Our Mob: A state-wide celebration of South Australian Indigenous art

Our Mob is a state-wide celebration of South Australian Indigenous art held annually at the Adelaide Festival Centre since 2006. Curator Susan Jenkins who worked on it for three years from 2009-2011 analyses what works about Our Mob and what the future might be.

Published June 2012

Sitting & connecting: Goulburn Art Class 2-0-1-1

Goulburn Class 2-0-1-1 was an exhibition curated by Djon Mundine at the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery of work made by prisoners at the local Correction Centre in response to ten one day workshops in the prison by seven Aboriginal artists whose work was also in the show. Writer and editor Maurice O'Riordan reviews the exhibition and more importantly the processes it involved.

Published June 2012

Tandanya: the case for home

The National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, known as Tandanya, was established in 1989 in Adelaide. Philip Watkins, Artistic and Cultural Director of Tandanya, 2006-2011, said: “This is Tandanya’s role – to show our world through our eyes, to tell our stories and to sing our songs with our voices.” Curator, educator and writer Sara White reviews Tandanya's 23 years of art and asks "Does Australia need more Tandanyas?"

Published June 2012

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.

Published June 2012

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.

Published June 2012

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.

Published June 2012

Trepang: crossing cultures / creating connections

by Alison Inglis and Susan Lowish

Published June 2012

Trepang: Crossing cultures, creating connections

On the collaboration between Zhou Xiaoping and John Bulunbulun for the exhibition Trepang: China & the Story of Macassan-Aboriginal Trade at the Capital Museum, Beijing, and the Melbourne Museum.

Published 01 June 2012

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.

Published June 2012

What lies buried on my land rises

Nyoongar artist Dianne Jones returned to York in Western Australia where her people come from and researched its tragic Aboriginal history.

Published June 2012