This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners to take stock of the frictions generated by a tumultuous time in the Australian art field and to probe what the crises might mean for the future of the arts in Australia. Specific topics include national and international art markets; art practices in their broader social and political contexts; social relations and institutions and their role in contemporary Australian art; the policy regimes and funding programmes of Australian governments; and national and international art markets. In addition, the collection will pay detailed attention to the field of indigenous art and the work of Indigenous artists. This book will be of interest to scholars in contemporary art, art history, cultural studies, and Indigenous peoples.
This book is an investigation of the way the Aboriginal art phenomenon has been entangled with Australian society’s negotiation of Indigenous people’s status within the nation. Through critical reflection on Aboriginal art’s idiosyncrasies as a fine arts movement, its vexed relationship with money, and its mediation of the politics of identity and recognition, this study illuminates the mutability of Aboriginal art’s meanings in different settings. It reveals that this mutability is a consequence of the fact that a range of governmental, activist and civil society projects have appropriated the art’s vitality and metonymic power in national public culture, and that Aboriginal art is as much a phenomenon of visual and commercial culture as it is an art movement. Throughout these examinations, Fisher traces the utopian and dystopian currents of thought that have crystallised around the Aboriginal art movement and which manifest the ethical conundrums that underpin the settler state condition.
This book aims to redefine Australia’s earliest art history by chronicling for the first time the birth of the category "Aboriginal art," tracing the term’s use through published literature in the late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Susan Lowish reveals how the idea of "Aboriginal art" developed in the European imagination, manifested in early literature, and became a distinct classification with its own criteria and form. Part of the larger story of Aboriginal/European engagement, this book provides a new vision for an Australian art history reconciled with its colonial origins and in recognition of what came before the contemporary phenomena of Aboriginal art.
'Painting matters to Australia and Australians as it does in few other countries. It has formed our consciousness, our sense of where we come from, and who we are. It cries out for wider recognition and acknowledgement.' - Patrick McCaughey Why has Australia, an island continent with a small population, produced such original and powerful art? And why is it so little known beyond our shores? Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters is Patrick McCaughey's answer.
"This publication accompanies the exhibition Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 5 through September 18, 2016."
Catalogue to accompany exhibition investigating two main streams of Symbolist art in Australia: works by artists who trained or lived overseas and drew directly from European Symbolist genres; and works by artists in Australia who referenced Symbolism to define a local experience.
In the early days we did painting. Cultural way. For ourselves. Then on the mission Sister Alice was working with the young men and women, like Gracie Green and Matthew Gill. We did a lot of landscapes at the start. Then after that people did a lot of paintings for the church. Then we decided we gotta do our own painting now. About ngurra and tjukurrpa. Ngurra are the places we came from, our Country. We came to the mission from Kiwirrkurra, from Canning Stock Route, from Mulan lake Country. All the different families. All now to this Country we call Balgo. And we have always enjoyed our culture. We never stopped. Always dancing and singing, teaching our kids and keeping our culture strong. Here in Balgo. We keep our ceremonies, we visit our Country. That's why we still live here. That's why we paint. That story from our Tjamu and Tjatja (grandfather and grandmother). Our rockholes and waters where we used to live. We paint that. Our bush tucker and lovely bush potatoes! We paint that. Balgo is Country for all of us now. We were all born here, these generations here today. We are Wirrimanu kids. We belong to Balgo. That's what we paint. That's why we paint. This is our story. -- Eva Nagomarra, Warlayirti Artists This beautiful monograph features countless images of full colour artworks from communities including Birrundudu, Papunya, Yuendumu and Balgo and language groups including Kukatja, Djaru, Warlpiri, Nyining, Ngarti, Wangkajunga and Manjilyjarra. It is deeply grounded in country has been put together in conjunction with the Warlayirti Arts Centre.
The untold story of a major Australian artist. Regarded in his day as an important Australian impressionist painter, A.H. Fullwood (1863-1930) was also the most widely viewed British-Australian artist of the Heidelberg era. Fullwood's illustrations for the popular Picturesque Atlas of Australasia and the Bulletin, as well as leading Australian and English newspapers, helped shape how settler-colonial Australia was seen both here and around the world. Meanwhile his paintings were as celebrated as those of his good friends Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton. So why is Fullwood so little known today? In this pioneering, richly illustrated biography, Gary Werskey brings Fullwood and his extraordinary career as an illustrator, painter, and war artist back to life, while casting a new light on the most fabled era in the history of Australian art. 'Gary Werskey's compelling and vivid biography of A.H. Fullwood -- a decade-long labour of love, written with a sharp, empathetic eye - rescues one of Australia's most accomplished artists from oblivion. It also stands as a highly original and deeply researched history of Australian culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.' -- Mark McKenna 'Through extensive, patient research, a discerning eye and lyrical prose, Gary Werskey recovers the life of brilliant artist A.H. Fullwood and guides us on a fresh journey into the fabled world of Australian art and artists in the crucible decades of the 1880s and 1890s. Here is a fascinating creation story about the visual language of a nation enchanted by its own dreams.' -- Grace Karskens 'Gary Werskey's essential and rousing portrait lifts Fullwood to his rightful place in the pantheon of Australian art, and reminds us how much the nation owes a generation of inspired bohemians for uncovering and defining its character and identity. It's a great read, and looks beautiful.' -- Don Watson 'Werskey has used the engaging life and work of A.H. Fullwood to re-cast the history of Australia's settler-colonial art. Set against the era's revolution in how art was produced and reproduced, Fullwood's pictures reveal him to be a master of half-toned illustrations, underpinned by the high-keyed palette of his creativity. A double vision splendid!' -- Humphrey McQueen 'An outstanding account of one of Australia's most fascinating Bohemian artists. Werskey not only reveals the very heart of Fullwood's art, but uncovers an Australian Georgic in which a prosperous agriculture emerges on small farms, and the life of the pub and the office and the quiet corners of the everyday in settler Australia are brilliantly evoked.' -- Jeanette Hoorn
Papunya- A Place Made After the Storyis a first-hand account of the Papunya Tula artists and their internationally significant works emanating from the central Western Desert. This momentous movement began in 1971 when Geoffrey Bardon, a hopeful young art teacher, drove the long lonely road from Alice Springs to the settlement at Papunya in the Northern Territory. He left only eighteen months later, defeated by hostile white authority, but a lasting legacy was the emergence of the Western Desert painting style. It started as an exercise to encourage local children to record their sand patterns and games, and grew to include tribal men and elders painting depictions of their ceremonial lives onto scraps of discarded building materials. With Bardon's support, they preserved their traditional Dreamings and stories in paint. The artistic energy unleashed at Papunya spread through Central Australia to achieve international acclaim. These works are now regarded as some of Australia's most treasured cultural, historical and artistic items. The publication of this material is an unprecedented achievement. Bardon's exquisitely recorded notes and drawings reproduced here document the early stages in this important art group. This landmark book features more than five hundred paintings, drawings and photographs from Bardon's personal archive. It tells the story of the catalyst for a powerfully modern expression of an ancient indigenous way of seeing the world.
