DIVThe history of the Australian Aboriginal painting movement from its local origins to its career in the international art market./div

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.

A timely reexamination of European engagements with Indigenous art—and the presence of Indigenous art in the contemporary art world. The arts of Africa, Oceania, and Native America famously inspired twentieth-century modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Max Ernst. Was this a cross-cultural discovery to be celebrated? Or just one more example of Western colonial appropriation? What might a “decolonized” art history look like? Over the last half- century, scholarship emerged that gave the arts of Africa, Oceania, and Native America dedicated attention—though often in terms associated with tribal art connoisseurship, without acknowledgment of the colonial contexts of Indigenous art traditions or histories of appropriation and violence, and often stopped short of engaging with Indigenous visions or voices. “Decolonization” refers to an event, a liberation. In one sense, decolonization has happened: it was the moment of national independence for formerly colonized nations across Africa, Asia, and Oceania. But from another perspective, more prominent in current debate, decolonization is ongoing. What work does art do now, toward decolonization? And how can we, the audience, be active agents in redefining these histories? Possessions, first published in 1999, offered a dynamic and genuinely cross-cultural art history, focused on the encounter, or the confrontation, in Australasia between the visual cultures of European colonization and Indigenous expressions. This new edition of Possessions contributes to today’s debates on diversity and race, giving voice to Indigenous artists and their continued presence in contemporary art today. A new introduction and concluding chapter frame the book in the present day, with recent studies, catalogs, and updated references.

The belief held by Aboriginal people that their art is ultimately related to their identity, and to the continued existence of their culture, has made the protection of indigenous peoples' art a pressing matter in many postcolonial countries. The issue has prompted calls for stronger copyright legislation to protect Aboriginal art. Although this claim is not particular to Australian Aboriginal people, the Australian experience clearly illustrates this debate. In this work, Elizabeth Burns Coleman analyses art from an Australian Aboriginal community to interpret Aboriginal claims about the relationship between their art, identity and culture, and how the art should be protected in law. Through her study of Yolngu art, Coleman finds Aboriginal claims to be substantially true. This is an issue equally relevant to North American debates about the appropriation of indigenous art, and the book additionally engages with this literature.

A comprehensive overview covering indigeneous Australian art, archeological traditions, styles of the contact period, nineteenth-century art trends, and the development of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practices.

In this highly original study, Vanessa Russ examines the gradual invention of Aboriginal art within the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This process occurred as the social histories of Australia expanded and recognised Aboriginal people, through wars and political shifts, and as international organisations began placing pressure on nation states to expand, diversify, and respect multicultural perspectives. This book explores a state art institution as a case study to consider these complex narratives through a single history of Aboriginal art from early colonisation until today. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, and Indigenous studies.

Take a journey into the fascinating world of Australia's Aboriginal culture with this unique collection of 33 authentic, unaltered stories brought to you by three Aboriginal storyteller custodians! Unlike other compilations of tales that were modified and published without permission from the Aboriginal people, these stories are now presented with approval from Aboriginal elders in an effort to help foster a better understanding of the history and culture of the Aboriginal people. Gadi Mirrabooka, which means below the Southern Cross, introduces wonderful tales from the Dreamtime, the mystical period of Aboriginal beginning. Through these stories you can learn about customs and values, animal psychology, hunting and gathering skills, cultural norms, moral behavior, the spiritual belief system, survival skills, and food resources. A distinctive and absolutely compelling story collection, this book is an immensely valuable treasure for educators, parents, children, and adult readers. Grades K-A

Featuring over 240 colour plates, this volume canvasses an extraordinary diverse range of Aboriginal art. The 27 essays by leading authorities and 13 interviews with key artists are accompanied by an extensive chronology.

Presenting the work of artists from every state and territory, the work in this catalogue demonstrates the extraordinary range of contemporary Indigenous art practice. The largest survey show of Indigenous art at the NGA in more than fifteen years, the Triennial featured up to four works by each artist created in a variety of media, including painting on bark and canvas, sculpture, textiles, weaving, new media, photomedia, printmaking and installation.