Conference home

Conference Papers

Session R1.2: Art, representation and identity

1. Dianne Jones: The Girl Next Door: In(digenous) suburbia

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow

Abstract

Indigenous artist Dianne Jones, explores how as a Nyoongar visual artist, one can interrogate and expose the hypocrisies and idiosyncrasies of dominant ‘iconic’ Australian visual imagery. Jones critiques the white blindness inherent in paintings by iconic Australian artists such as John Glover, Tom Roberts and Eugene Von Geurard, which often portrayed a romanticised white idea of Australia. Where Indigenous people were painted it was all too often as part of the flora and fauna, without names or identities, insignificantly fading into the background. When white Australians were recorded either in paintings or written history the work was often accompanied by identifying information which elevated the status of those portrayed to one of importance and a value that Indigenous people were not afforded. In her latest works, Jones extends her explorations of nationalism and identity to focus on the absence of respectful and realistic urban Indigenous representations. In particular she draws on her own family experiences and memory, to disrupt stereotypical and racist notions of what constitutes ‘real’ Indigeneity. Jones repositions the representation of Indigenous people, countering dominant colonialist discourse with active Indigenous voices and corporeality.

2. Fran Edmonds: Reclaiming the ‘hybrid’: Aboriginal art and cultural convergence in Victoria from the 1980s

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow

Abstract

In the 1980s Aboriginal artists in Victoria created a number of individual and collective artworks which contested the grand narrative of Australia as a peacefully settled European colony. Following the referendum in 1967 and the accompanying Black Power movement, Aboriginal people in the southeast were among the most prominent in campaigning for rights for self-determination and for the control of their own organisation. By the early 1970s community-controlled organisations in Victoria, including the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service and the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service had been established to provide direct services to the Aboriginal community. The expansion of Aboriginal services also paralleled an increasing endeavour to highlight and promote buildings and places as distinctly Aboriginal. Representations of Aboriginality on murals created in the 1980s and later, which were used to designate Aboriginal space and place, reflect Aboriginal endeavours to challenge the dominant culture’s perceptions of Aborigines in the southeast as obsolete (a sign of the success of past assimilation policies), and of southeast Australian Aboriginal art as mass produced and kitsch tourist paraphernalia.

This paper will examine stories told by Aboriginal artists who participated in the establishment of arts programs, the construction and design of murals and the management of art exhibitions in Victoria from the 1980s. It will explore notions of hybridity and cultural convergence in arts practices in order to develop an understanding of southeast Australian Aboriginal art today and its connection to the survival of Aboriginality in the southeast.

Author bio:

Fran Edmonds completed her PhD from the University of Melbourne at the end of 2007. Her work concentrated on the history of southeast Australian Aboriginal art and its relationship to identity and wellbeing in the Aboriginal community. This was a collaborative study and relied on the participation of Aboriginal artists, curators and arts administrators. These relationships are ongoing and are reflected in the recent report that has been published by the Co-operative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health in Darwin, which outlines the findings from the PhD in a way that is accessible to the Aboriginal community and the general public.

3. Julie Gough: Living in the past. An Aboriginal artist’s experience of being Tasmanian

Full paper pdf 4mb | Audio | Video | Slideshow

Abstract

Tasmania, north to south, or east to west can be traversed in less than 5 hours by vehicle. Rural, semi rural, regional or suburban, where there are roads, most of Tasmania includes an expanding array of compact colonial experiences. The return to the past for the return of a dollar is increasingly evident. Given the tendency for the west to value the first of anything, the earlier ‘properties’, the first ‘landholders’ and their convict servants are gaining more attention than ever since their passing. What is apparent in the mainstream restoration of Van Diemen’s Land, is the absence of Aboriginal people, past or present. This paper discusses and visually represents through an artist’s practice the need for an uncomfortable alliance in a shared colonial landscape.

Author Bio:

Dr Julie Gough is an artist, writer and curator who lives in Hobart. Gough’s art and research focuses on uncovering and re-presenting often conflicting and subsumed histories. Much of her work refers to the impacts of colonialism, and her own and family’s experiences as Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Most recently Gough was guest curator at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery developing the exhibition: Tayenebe – Tasmanian Aboriginal women’s fibre work that opened this July. Currently Gough is undertaking a residential Fellowship at Manning Clark House, transcribing for online publication 1820-1840s VDL depositions held in the National Library.

4. Wayne Quilliam: Photography and representation

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow

When major marketing campaigns sell Australia to the world it is a foregone conclusion, powerful vision of Australia's Indigenous people feature prominently in front of iconic places sharing culture. Is this who we are as a race, is this how we want to be represented and is it our choice? As an Aboriginal photographer working in rural, remote and urban communities is it my place to challenge the ideology of how 'my' people are represented and if so what is the most appropriate way of doing so?

Bio:

The 2009 National NAIDOC Artist of the Year, Wayne Quilliam is considered one of the country’s most respected Aboriginal photographers/videographers and artists working on the global stage.  With more than 100 exhibitions in Australia, Europe, Asia and the USA and the teaching of Indigenous people of Vietnam, Mexico and Bolivia, Quilliam's work has been recognised with the 2008 Human Rights Award and his position as a finalist in the Walkley Awards. Recent projects include exhibitions at the National Museum in Canberra, Vienna, Berlin, Mexico, Tokyo, Bolivia, Melbourne and headlining the International Photo Biennale. His ‘Sorry-more than a word’ exhibition opened at Parliament House in Canberra earlier this year, was on show at AIATSIS, and featured at the Garma Festival in the Northern Territory.