Issue 42:3 | Warltati  / Summer 2022
INDIGENOUS
Guest editors: Tristen Harwood and Dean Cross

This issue has no title. It addresses what is 'unspeakable' about Indigenous art and the contemporary artworld. What can and cannot be said about Indigenous art, or what is obscured by prevailing axioms? What has and hasn't been said, what should and shouldn't be said, and why? And how can attempts to resist language be spoken about? When does language do a disservice, and when is it enough, or all that is left? We are particularly interested in documents that question counter-narratives, insider perspectives, kinships, transcultural collaborations, relics of cultural amnesia, and antimyths that might be voiced with disregard for the pull of the art market and institutions, including those resistant to codification as art.

Tristen Harwood is a writer, art critic, editor, researcher, and lecturer. The eldest of seven children, he was raised in public housing in Perth’s outer suburbs by a single mother on welfare and his Nana (a Stolen Generations survivor). Matrilineally, Tristen is a descendent of Ngalakan and Numbulwar and he has migrant Dutch, and English ancestry. His writing on art film, fashion, and literature is published in leading national and international publications. Tristen is currently working on a book of poetry about ambiguous loss, homesickness, and enduring grief.

Dean Cross was born and raised on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and is a Worimi man through his paternal bloodline. He is a paratactical artist interested in collisions of materials, ideas and histories. He is motivated by the understanding that his practice sits within a continuum of the oldest living culture on Earth—and enacts First Nations’ sovereignty through expanded contemporary art methodologies. He hopes to traverse the poetic and the political in a nuanced choreography of form and ideas. Dean has exhibited widely across the Australian continent and beyond, and his work is held by major institutions including The Art Gallery of South Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria.