Aboriginal Art and Australian Society

Laura Fisher

Description

A unique study that tracks the way the Aboriginal art phenomenon has mediated Indigenous/non-indigenous relations in Australia.

The Aboriginal art movement flourished during a period in which the Australian public were awakened to the implications of the state’s decision to confront the legacies of colonisation and bring Aboriginal culture into the heart of national public life. Rather than seeing this radical political and social transformation as mere context for Aboriginal art’s emergence, this study argues that Aboriginal art has in fact mediated Australian society’s negotiation of the changing status of Aboriginal culture over the last century. This argument is illustrated through the analysis of Aboriginal art’s volatility as both a high art movement and a phenomenon of visual and commercial culture. This analysis reveals the agendas to which Aboriginal art has been anchored at the nexus of the redemptive project of the settler state, Indigenous movements for rights and recognition, and the aspirations of progressive civil society.

At its heart this study is concerned with the broader social and cultural insights that can be gleaned from conducting a sustained inquiry into Aboriginal art’s contested meanings. To achieve this it focuses upon the hopeful and disenchanted faces of the Aboriginal art phenomenon: the ideals of cultural revitalisation and empowerment that have converged upon the art, and the countervailing narratives of exploitation, degradation and futility. Both aspects are traced through a range of settings in which the tensions surrounding Aboriginal art’s aesthetic, political and significance have been negotiated. It is in this dialectic that the vexed ethical questions underlying Australia’s settler state condition can most clearly be identified, and we can begin to navigate the paradoxes and impasses underlying the redemptive national project of the post-assimilation era. 

Introduction; Part I: Governance, Nationhood and Civil Society; Chapter 1: New Intercultural Relationships in the Post-Assimilation Era; Chapter 2: Aboriginal People Mobilising Aboriginal Art; Chapter 3: Understanding Aboriginal Art Subsidy; Chapter 4: The State Mobilising Aboriginal Art; Chapter 5: ‘Aboriginal culture’ at the Nexus of Justice, Recognition and Redemption; Part II: Contemporary Aboriginal Art in the 1980s; Chapter 6: The Emergence of Aboriginal Art in the 1980s; Part III: Negotiating Difference; Chapter 7: Negotiation Aboriginal Difference; Chapter 8: The Art/Anthropology Binary; Part IV: Aboriginal Art, Money and the Market; Chapter 9: Ethics and Exploitation in the Aboriginal Art Market; Chapter 10: ‘Aboriginal Mass Culture’ and the Cultural Industries; Conclusion.

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Arts
• History of art

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 30 mai 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783085330
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Aboriginal Art and Australian Society
Anthem Studies in Australian Literature and Culture
Anthem Studies in Australian Literature and Culture specialises in quality, innovative research in Australian literary studies. The series publishes work that advances contemporary scholarship on Australian literature conceived historically, thematically and/or conceptually. We welcome well-researched and incisive analyses on a broad range of topics: from individual authors or texts to considerations of the field as a whole, including in comparative or transnational frames.
Series Editors
Katherine Bode - Australian National University, Australia
Nicole Moore - University of New South Wales, Australia
Editorial Board
Tanya Dalziell - University of Western Australia, Australia
Delia Falconer - University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
John Frow - University of Sydney, Australia
Wang Guanglin - Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, China
Ian Henderson - King s College London, UK
Tony Hughes-D Aeth - University of Western Australia, Australia
Ivor Indyk - University of Western Sydney, Australia
Nicholas Jose - University of Adelaide, Australia
James Ley - Sydney Review of Books , Australia
Andrew McCann - Dartmouth College, USA
Lyn McCredden - Deakin University, Australia
Elizabeth McMahon - University of New South Wales, Australia
Susan Martin - La Trobe University, Australia
Brigitta Olubas - University of New South Wales, Australia
Anne Pender - University of New England, Australia
Fiona Polack - Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Sue Sheridan - University of Adelaide, Australia
Ann Vickery - Deakin University, Australia
Russell West-Pavlov - Eberhard-Karls-Universit t T bingen, Germany
Lydia Wevers - Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Gillian Whitlock - University of Queensland, Australia
Aboriginal Art and Australian Society
Hope and Disenchantment
Laura Fisher
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2016
by ANTHEM PRESS
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or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
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Laura Fisher 2016
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fisher, Laura, 1980- author.
Title: Aboriginal art and Australian society: hope and disenchantment /
Laura Fisher.
Description: New York: Anthem Press, 2016. | Series: Anthem studies in
Australian literature and culture; 1 | Outgrowth of the author s thesis
(doctoral - University of New South Wales, 2012). | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016020555 | ISBN 9781783085316 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Art and society - Australia. | Art, Aboriginal Australian. |
Aboriginal Australians - Government relations. | BISAC: ART / Australian &
Oceanian. | HISTORY / Australia & New Zealand.
Classification: LCC N72.S6 F57 2016 | DDC 701/.03-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020555
ISBN-13: 978 1 78308 531 6 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1 78308 531 2 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
For David Fisher
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I.
Governance, Nationhood and Civil Society
Chapter 1.
New Intercultural Relationships in the Post-Assimilation Era
1.1 Cultural Trauma in Australian Public Culture
1.2 The End of Assimilation and the Rise of Aboriginal Culture
1.3 Paul Keating, Indigenised Settler Nationalism and Reconciliation
Chapter 2.
Aboriginal People Mobilising Aboriginal Art
2.1 Aboriginal Art Mobilised in Political and Legal Domains
2.2 Aboriginal Art, Activism and Pan-Aboriginal Identity
2.3 Urban Indigenous Aesthetic Public Spheres
Chapter 3.
Understanding Aboriginal Art Subsidy
3.1 Meaningful Work : Making Sense of Aboriginal Art Subsidy
3.2 The Ambiguity of Aboriginal Art Sector Policy
Chapter 4.
The State Mobilising Aboriginal Art
4.1 The Acquisition, Endorsement and Appropriation of Aboriginal Art and the Growth of Aboriginal Public Culture
Chapter 5.
Aboriginal Culture at the Nexus of Justice, Recognition and Redemption
5.1 Cultural Loss, Cultural Rights and Keeping Culture Strong
5.2 Aboriginal Art as Metonymic for Aboriginal Culture
5.3 Conclusion to Part I
Part II.
Contemporary Aboriginal Art in the 1980s
Chapter 6.
The Emergence of Aboriginal Art in the 1980s
6.1 The Cultural Cringe and Provincialism
6.2 The Emergence of Contemporary Aboriginal Art
6.3 Artistic and Critical Approaches to Aboriginal Art
6.3.1 Cultural convergence and rapprochement
6.3.2 Killing me softly : cultural colonialism and ethnocide
6.3.3 Landscape and tribalism
6.3.4 Appropriation
6.3.5 Postmodernism and conceptualism
6.3.6 Social justice
6.4 The Overseas Reception of Aboriginal Art
6.5 Postcolonial Critique and Urban Aboriginal Voices
6.6 The Bicentenary
6.7 Conclusion to Part II
Part III.
Negotiating Difference
Chapter 7.
Negotiating Aboriginal Difference
7.1 Four Facets of Difference
7.2 The Cosmopolitan and the Tourist: Being an Outsider with Aboriginal Art
7.3 Authenticity and The Story
Chapter 8.
The Art/Anthropology Binary
8.1 The Disciplinary Relationship between Art and Anthropology
8.2 Western Secularisation and the Differentiation of Primitive Art
8.3 Anthropology, Colonialism and the Urban Aboriginal Art Movement
8.4 Conclusion to Part III
Part IV.
Aboriginal Art, Money and the Market
Chapter 9.
Ethics and Exploitation in the Aboriginal Art Market
9.1 The Bifurcation of the Aboriginal Art Market
9.2 Where Does the Value of Aboriginal Fine Art Reside?
9.3 Morality and Money in the Aboriginal Art Arena
Chapter 10.
Aboriginal Mass Culture and the Cultural Industries
10.1 A Critical History of Aboriginal Mass Culture and Visual Culture
10.2 Aboriginal Art and Culture and the Cultural Industries
10.3 What Do Aboriginal Mass Culture and the Cultural Industries Do to Aboriginal Fine Art?
10.4 Aboriginal Artistic Labour, the Economic Imperative and the Crisis of Aboriginal Art s Value
10.5 Conclusion to Part IV
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has taken shape over ten years, with the majority of the research undertaken between 2007 and 2012 when I completed my doctorate at the University of New South Wales. It seems a good idea to recall the atmosphere in which I began. At that time there was a sense of extraordinary momentum surrounding the Aboriginal art movement. The first National Indigenous Art Triennial, Culture Warriors , was staged at the National Gallery of Australia in 2007, and the gallery was preparing its expansive Indigenous art wing, which was launched in 2010. Significant exhibitions of John Mawurndjul (Basel, Switzerland and Hannover, Germany) in 2006, and Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Osaka and Tokyo, Japan) in 2008, and the varied architectural commissions for the Mus e du quai Branly in Paris seemed to signal that Aboriginal artists were reaching audiences offshore in a way that few Australian artists had in the country s history. Both the primary and secondary market in Aboriginal art had become intensely competitive as Aboriginal art experienced a speculative boom befitting the years immediately prior to the global financial crisis. Many people were wondering whether Aboriginal artists themselves were benefiting from this boom.
This was surely a significant moment in Australian cultural history, and my aim when I began my PhD was to draw together the many threads of artistic and social change that had led to this moment. But more than this, I wanted to understand how Indigenous people s pursuit of justice in the settler state had shaped Aboriginal art s trajectory and inflected its meanings. This line of questioning remains at the heart of this book.
Despite the reworkings that have occurred in subsequent years, the book retains something of the outlook of my younger self, and is still in some ways moored to the climate of acceleration, expansion and controversy in which I was immersed. It focuses largely on the years between the election of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and the global financial crisis. While it does touch on some events and debates of the very recent past, the present circumstances of Indigenous affairs, for example, are for the most part beyond its scope. I became less insecure about this retrospectivity while listening to the public commentary following the deaths of Gough Whitlam in 2014 and his successor Malcolm Fraser in 2015. I hope that the book s value lies in the story it tells about two s