Australian Aboriginal Contemporary Art

Wyman is a Palawa woman who was born in Sydney and raised in North Queensland (Dysart, Moranbah, Tolga and Mackay). Her own visual sense of identification and what would emerge in the public sphere as a question of both indigeneity and authenticity, were perplexing, challenging, and unresolved growing up—a matter further complicated by living in a diasporic context. Attending the Queensland University of Technology, Wyman’s initial desire to pursue painting was met with defiance. In the early noughts, art schools were navigating the politics of post-modernity and modernist disambiguation.  The jargon around the open studio practice of environmental art and transdisciplinary new media was used to discourage female painters from pursuing what was perceived as decorative, leaving the ‘history painting’ to the men.  Wyman eventually resurrected the act of painting through her own distinct language. Using a Turkey baster—the mythologised phallus perceived to be a tool for individually performed female insemination, was used by the artist to create drip paintings on canvas. Claiming this instrument was as an act of queering.

This paper aims to clarify the relationship between the examination of Old Norse engravings of signs and symbols and the analysis of Australian Indigenous iconography. Individuals aspiring to become artists in the non-Indigenous context typically pursue education at art schools, where art history is a significant subject. Emerging artists study classic Greek art, its impact on Roman art, the Romanesque and Gothic periods, the pinnacle of Western art, the Renaissance. The rules established during the Renaissance, particularly the central perspective, persisted as foundational elements in subsequent styles, including Baroque, Rococo, and Classicism. Prior to the advent of abstraction in the 20th century, naturalistic representations dominated the creation of paintings and sculptures. Pre-Mediaeval and Early-Mediaeval Norse engravings illustrate narratives in a manner akin to comic books, as can be seen at the stone of Ramsund in Norway. Sand paintings, produced by Central Australian Aboriginal people, may seem abstract to those unfamiliar with them; however, these artworks, organised through circles and lines, convey narratives to individuals who have been trained to interpret them. Subtle distinctions, such as the arrangement of three concentric circles versus two or the spatial positioning of symbols, whether in proximity or distance, also communicate significant differences. Participants in ceremonies typically possess an understanding of the event's overarching theme and have acquired, or are in the process of acquiring, specific details of the narrative. Understanding Aboriginal art, utilising traditional painting techniques, enhances the non-Indigenous artist's comprehension of Northern European pre-mediaeval art, establishing connections to contemporary abstract art, while at the same time creating a link to Northern and Central European heritage. The Party of Life Invitation by Keith Haring (1986) is an outstanding example of resemblance to the engravings on the stone of Ramsund.

Aboriginal art in southeast Australia is dynamic, innovative and
powerful. The diverse artworks featured in this book celebrate
contemporary artists and their continuation of Ancestral knowledge.
With each chapter the result of an intercultural collaboration,
this volume speaks to globally resonant themes in First Nations
art, storytelling, and sovereignty. Each contribution prioritises learning
with and about First Nations artists to support Indigenous knowledge
systems.
A guiding theme is the creative practice of internationally renowned
artist Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti/Wamba Wamba/Yorta Yorta/
Boonwurrung), who is both an editor, co-author and an inspiration.
Bringing together thoughtful analysis and lush illustrations, ngargee,
meaning coming together in Boonwurrung language, gives southeast
Australian Aboriginal art the long overdue attention that it richly
deserves. ngargee will be a welcome addition for anyone who wants
to learn more about southeast Australia, the richness of
its art practices, and the continuity and innovation of First Nations
knowledge-transmission and culture-making across time and place.

Increasingly planning practice and research are having to engage with Indigenous communities in Australia to empower and position their knowledge in planning strategies and arguments. But also to act as articulators of their cultural knowledge, landscape aspirations and responsibilities and the need to ensure that they are directly consulted in projects that impact upon their 'country' generally and specifically. This need has changed rapidly over the last 25 years because of land title claim legal precedents, state and Commonwealth legislative changes, and policy shifts to address reconciliation and the consequences of the fore-going precedents and enactments. While planning instruments and their policies have shifted, as well as research grant expectations and obligations, many of these Western protocols do not recognise and sympathetically deal with the cultural and practical realities of Indigenous community management dynamics, consultation practices and procedures, and cultural events much of which are placing considerable strain upon communities who do not have the human and financial resources to manage, respond, co-operate and inform in the same manner expected of non-Indigenous communities in Australia. This paper reviews several planning formal research, contract research and educational engagements and case studies between the authors and various Indigenous communities, and highlights key issues, myths and flaws in the way Western planning and research expectations are imposed upon Indigenous communities that often thwart the quality and uncertainty of planning outcomes for which the clients, research agencies, and government entities were seeking to create.

This response critiques Donald Richardson’s essays The Problem of Australian Aboriginal Art and The Continuing Problem of Aboriginal ‘Art’, which frame Aboriginal art as an issue to be resolved within Western/white/European (W/w/E) frameworks. While Richardson attempts to assess Aboriginal visual expression through the lens of Western art history, the real “problems” lie in his Eurocentric assumptions, dismissive terminology, and exclusion of Indigenous perspectives. The essays overlook the cultural, spiritual, and communal significance of Aboriginal art, instead forcing it into narrow Western definitions of “art.” By interrogating the flawed premises in Richardson’s work—particularly his use of quotation marks around the word art and reductive labels such as “primitive” and “naïve”—this critique argues for a decolonised approach to art criticism. Aboriginal art should not be treated as a puzzle to be reconciled with Western paradigms but must be recognised on its own cultural terms, with Indigenous voices leading the conversation. This critique emphasises the need to expand art criticism to accommodate diverse cultural expressions, acknowledging the depth and significance of Aboriginal art beyond Eurocentric aesthetic standards.

You are reminded of the following:  Copyright owners are entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright.  A reproduction of material that is protected by copyright may be a copyright infringement. Where the reproduction of such material is done without attribution of authorship, with false attribution of ' 2/ o 4-' Acknowledgements My sincerest gratitude goes to my supervisors Nicola Kaye and Dr Dean Chan for their dedication, enthusiasm and unlimited patience. I would also like to greatly thank Amanda Allerding for her flexibility, understanding and continuous support in regards to the practical component of this project. I would like to thank Paul Halfpenny and Doug Reid (Post Graduate Association) for all their technical and mental support in regards to thesis writing and overall social welfare. A large supply of thanks also goes to Derek Kreckler for agreeing to be my very first research interviewee. There are other people amongst staff and students I would also like to thank for their continuous advice, support and readiness to be there-Thank you. And finally h.> my husband Arttu Rousi, thank you for your support, tolerance and compliance. Although you have a busy life, you managed to be my everything when I needed it most. Figure II Rebekah Rousi, Washed Block #3 (top); Washed Block #4 (bottom) [video stills], digita1 video, duration 2.45 min; 4.12 min

Resum: Confondre ambdos nivells d’intervencio –estetica i poetica– implica sovint tot uncumul de perillosos equivocs, en no tenir en compte des de quina perspectiva i ambquines consequencies efectuem les nostres propostes teoriques, aixi com les seves ineludiblesprojeccions i influencies sobre l’ambit de la propia practica. Ates que ens movemdes d’una optica propia de l’estetica general, ens centrarem en dos aspectes: principi defuncionalitat vs. principi d’autonomia. Plantejarem en quina mesura no es tractara d’interpretar-les com els dos possibles extrems d’un continuum, que, en si mateixos, no fan–amb la seva necessaria tensio i copresencia– sino delimitar i definir, de fet, la totalitatde l’espectre global de les plurals opcions operatives a que pot acollir-se la vitalitat del’afer artistic, a traves de la marcada fluencia i diversificacio de les seves multiples iparticulars poetiques. Abstract: Confounding both levels of intervention –aesthetic and poetic− implies frequentlya g...

Els apropaments sociolbgics, materialistes i idealistes no permeten adonar-se, en la seva totalitat, dels significats que l'art ((primitiu)) ha tingut i té a la societat occidental del segle xx. Investigar el paper que tenen els ((usuaris)) d'art ((primitiu)) permet reconeixer el seu paper protagonista en la creació de nous atributs i significats per a aquest tipus &art a la societat contemporania. Sociological approaches, both materialist and idealist, do not permit a full awareness of the meanings held by ccprimitive)) art in Western society in the course of the 20th century. Investigating the role of the ccusers,, of ccprimitive), art allows us to recognize their protagonism in the creation of new attributes and meanings for this type of art in contemporary society.

“We are all beneficiaries of the deep history of this continent and its long human occupancy stretching back thousands of generations. Immerse yourself in this legacy. It is a shared history in a shared country.”
(Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly, "Songlines")

In the following text we will explain the concept of aboriginality and its role as an identity resource in Australian painters. We will also describe the development of Art History in Australia and the construction of its research methodologies around the image, as well as the situations in which Aboriginality has been used in an arbitrary or exaggerated way. The emergence of aboriginality as a synonym for authenticity and its relationship with national identity gave rise to various interpretations of aboriginality. But what are the factors that allow us to call an artist Aboriginal? and Should everything that looks like such be called Aboriginal? Are there limits between native representations and those that are based on their traditional motifs?

Advances in the study of Aboriginal art have occurred mainly through anthropology and sociology, which is why several of its concepts come from these disciplines. Aboriginality is a notion that has several nuances through which it seeks to relate painters or their works with the primordial qualities of art in Australia. The following text describes the Hermannsburg School as well as the Papunya Tula movement, two of the most influential pictorial trends in Australia and named equally as the origins of Aboriginal art. We will describe the emergence of its artists and the conditions under which they developed, as well as the function that each one has played in strengthening the aesthetic values ​​of this country.

Old man, you listen! Something is there; we do not know what: "Something." Like engine, like power, plenty of power; it does hard work: it pushes. 1 The capacity of a person to be a psychoanalyst rests upon his or her grasp of theory and aptitude for observational technique in the fieldwork of the psyche, as well as the capability to dwell enough in the "main thing" marked so definitively by Freud as that bittersweet activity generated between persons. The psychoanalyst must be willing to deal with the strange substances that shake one's being when two or three are gathered together in a way that enables matter from that famous "unconscious" to emerge in bits, groans, and halfformed misunderstandings-to emerge in any shape, from anywhere along the spectrum of love to hate, beauty to terror, self-knowledge to self-delusion. This matter can be developed further if I slow things down and ask, "Who are these two or three who sit together?" And I am thinking now, remembering occasions sitting in the company of older men-the sort of older men with whom anthropologists often have conversations. Older dark-skinned men who have custodial functions for their specific languages and a cultural obligation. Older men who smell of embedded smoke and kangaroo grease and maybe Log Cabin tobacco. And the question might be, "What is in our minds as we sit together, you and I?" with the fire simmering, tea stewing, ants busy on the sand, and maybe the heat of coals drifting through the shade of a mulga tree. These settings are fitting for reflective conversations between men of two worlds-Indigenous Warlpiri, perhaps, and the travelling Caucasian. Such conversations take place on the edges of campsites, on the edges of settlements, on the edges of and between dreams, between times, between languages, a shimmering, dusty place where nothing much is really what it seems. And nothing spoken is exactly what it might mean and nothing heard is quite what is intended, perhaps. Ambiguous answers and ambiguous tracks of thought are exchanged between persons in exactly the settings where transference phenomena might readily be found, if Freud or Jung had time enough and the chance to sit there long enough-learning, letting go of anticipation, observing the flow of desire and projection. Seated between the eyes of two worlds. That sort of thing. And thus another question arises about what emerges from somewhere between a different pair of men, not an Austrian Jewish doctor and a Swiss Protestant psychiatrist, both speaking German, seeking forms of feeling, edges of image, flurries of body sensation, legs, gut, heart, throat, headache , squinting eyes, nods, moving two minds so differently formed, hunching into conscious enough conversation, seeking to listen. No, not these two, but, let us say, a Warlpiri or Pintubi man, speaking Warlpiri, Pintubi languages and a half-formed English, and maybe a psychiatrist or anthropologist or a lawyer or police prosecutor, the two of them sitting there wondering about a mutual problem: an act of drunken assault, the suicide of a petrol-sniffing boy, the mutilated body of a woman in the creek bed, a traditional man so senseless with sweet white wine that he blurts out age-old secrets in bad company and ought to be speared for it. And if the spear is cast, the men who mete out the sanctioned, traditional punishment will be imprisoned for assault or maybe manslaughter. And they may deserve to be, if they carried out the penalty while drunk or lost their reason while doing it. Irreconcilable parallel laws, cognitive dissonance, daily bread. Myself, I have sat in many such conversations, the ants busy, the fire dimmed by psychic pain, on a cold concrete floor, dull with ash and grease, supporting so many suchlike conversations, a hundred times, somewhere between two worlds. In the overlap of intercultural conversation, things arrive, if we take the trouble to create between us a "location for cultural experience" 4 and accept that what might arrive will be perplexity, compassion, humour, irony, whimsical desire, flights of ideas, confusion, resolution-or nothing much

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence. Individual articles may be copied or downloaded for private, scholarly and not-for-profit use. Quotations may be extracted provided that the author and The Royal Society of Queensland are acknowledged. Queries regarding republication of papers, or parts of papers such as figures and photographs, should be addressed to the Secretary of The Royal Society of Queensland (

Mainstream perspectives in "Indian Prince" by Trevino Brings Plenty At first, "Indian Prince" comes off as an obvious list of stereotypes. One of the ways that "Indian Prince" talks back to these mainstream representations of native people is by its effects as an oral poem. My analysis of "Indian Prince" involves a breakdown of the visual and oral aspects of the poem. It is necessary to break down both of these components and look at the individual themes that are related to the mainstream media's negative image of aboriginals because the media has a way of misrepresenting aboriginals. By this I mean that several groups of first nation's people are generalized into one broad category that functions to represent natives in North America. These categories are encouraged by the mainstream use of stereotypes, and Craig Proulx helps explain this in Reclaiming Aboriginal Justice, Identity, and Community by acknowledging that Stereotypes allow one group to see another as they want or expect to see them, not necessarily as they are. Stereotypes encourage us to oversimplify and ignore complexity and contradictions that might prompt us to challenge the status quo.

Following the GlobalScapes' drift of territories snapped up by
the environmental imperialism of the meta-Modernity, the
international implosion of the expert-government-civil society
triumvirate is led to the re-emergence of autochthonous
ontologies and enables us to ensure the stability of human
capital disorientated by Modern policy protocols. The demand
of new generations of citizens, built environment experts, and
politicians to ensure the resilience of former local practice
denounces in part the International Environmental Convention
(COP) and encourages to engage a practice in another form of
Spatial Curriculum acknowledgment.
To avoid the toxicity of a generalisation of practices serving a
western capitalist democracy, this research analyses their
causes together with the collaborative projects among local
communities and experts in intangible landscape design. This is
to prove the viability of working on conflicts to understand how
the spatial curriculum of 20th century cultural landscapes
resolves, through a Panarchy process, the ecological
fluctuations of region dominated by a centralising and harmful
power to social, cultural, and environmental diversity.
Accordingly, the research falls within the scope of the article 12
of the Nagoya Protocol (2012) advocating the resurgence of
indigenous practices and customs and their hybridisation with
ethical human science and responsible environmental
planning. This is to get away from the harmful processes
elaborated during the globalisation of the landscape design at
the time of the triumphant neoliberalism, to renew with the
worldwide celebrated translations of the genius loci into Just
Design.
Based on the rejuvenation project developed by the aboriginal
Coranderrk Corporation in Australia, the research intends to
specify the legitimacy of such Globalisation from the Grassroots
phenomenon in Australia.

Across Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal songs are often attributed to the spirit world rather than as compositions by the living. Deceased ancestors give songs to people and such a recipient is described as the finder of a song. This is particularly evident in 'Puranguwana' ('Perishing in the Sun'), a song of the public ceremonial genre known by older men and women at Balgo and Bililuna communities in the southeast Kimberley in Western Australia. The protagonist in the song is a Pintupi man called Yawalyurru Tjapangarti, who dies of thirst on Sturt Creek Station on Jaru country. The first-person perspective in the lyrics is common in Aboriginal song, rendering the singers active participants in the event. The words of the song are relatively easy to identify, which is consistent with the song's purported recent origin. Yawalyurru is both the subject matter of the song and the song-maker. According to oral history, Yawalyurru's spirit gave the song to the Jaru people before returning to its Pintupi country. 'Puranguwana' also resembles a song that was recorded at Balgo in 1981 by ethnomusicologist Richard Moyle. In 2019, Balgo residents were unfamiliar with the earlier recording and, on listening, regarded this as a different song to 'Puranguwana'. While not identical, an analysis and comparison of both their text and music suggests that the songs are cut from the same cloth. This cloth reflects the region's multicultural history where both desert and Kimberley linguistic groups have co-resided since the 1930s. The article aims to increase appreciation of the artistry of Aboriginal song, the complexity of its creation, and its value to Aboriginal history.

Kathleen (born Kweyetemp) Petyarre, one of Australia's foremost living Indigenous artists, was born between 1931 and 1940 on her family's vast desert estate, Atnangker, located almost three hundred kilometres north east of Alice Springs in arid, spinifex country. Petyarre, an Eastern Anmatyerr woman, saw a white man for the first time when she was around eight or nine years old. Hiding behind a group of small bushes, Petyarre and her siblings reported their 'discovery' of the strangely coloured man to their father, Kngwarreye, who tentatively approached the man, generously offering him life-giving water and delicious bush food. Since that fateful day, Kathleen Petyarre has been fascinated by the machinations of white people and their society. When adult educator Jenny Green arrived at Utopia in the late 1970s, Petyarre eagerly joined in batik classes. Kathleen Petyarre has gone on to achieve considerable national and international celebrity as a visual artist.

Research has highlighted the importance of Indigenous knowledge and cultural practice in healing from ongoing histories of trauma, dispossession, and displacement for Indigenous peoples in Australia and elsewhere. Connection with culture, Country, and kinship has been identified as protective factors for Aboriginal social and emotional well-being and as facilitating cultural healing. This paper draws on stories mediated through cultural practice specifically, Wayapa and bush-dyeing workshops, to explore how women resignified experiences and engaged in "healing work." Our collaborative analysis of the stories shared resulted in three main themes that capture dialogs about the need for culturally safe spaces, vulnerability and identity, and culture, Country, and place. Centering Aboriginal knowledge, our analysis shows the meanings of Country, spirituality, and the coconstitution of people, culture, and the natural environment. Through Indigenous cultural practice, the women "grew strength in relationship" as they engaged in the psychosocial processes of deconstruction, reclamation, and renarrating personal and cultural identities.

is a Martu artist who grew up between Bidyadanga in the Kimberley Region, and Parnngurr in the East Pilbara. Currently based in Perth, over the past decade Taylor has developed a distinct practice that spans sculptural installation, painting and filmmaking. Through these mediums he presents urgent narratives that speak across generations, exploring ideas about identity, language, cultural practice and responsibility. Taylor grew up learning the jukurrpa (stories) of his Elders being spoken, sung and painted. Early on Taylor chose a different medium to begin telling his own jukurrpa. Drawn to the limitless potential of film and digital media to be distributed, shared and stored for future generations, he started writing and directing short films that presented narratives which spoke directly of Martu knowledge and experience. Producing stories in Martu Wangka dialect for his community and younger generations is fundamental to Taylor's practice. He has a collective approach to filmmaking often working with collaborators and finding opportunities for younger generations and community members to build skills and discover their own practices and methods of storytelling. His films have been shown at The National 2019: New Australian Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney alongside collaborator Ishmael Marika, and The Sydney Film Festival 2019 with film making partner Nathan Mewett. Taylor is an integral member of a generation of artists from the Pilbara Region who have asserted the strength of their culture and ongoing connection to country through vital projects such as Yiwarra Kuju: the

Resum: Confondre ambdos nivells d’intervencio –estetica i poetica– implica sovint tot uncumul de perillosos equivocs, en no tenir en compte des de quina perspectiva i ambquines consequencies efectuem les nostres propostes teoriques, aixi com les seves ineludiblesprojeccions i influencies sobre l’ambit de la propia practica. Ates que ens movemdes d’una optica propia de l’estetica general, ens centrarem en dos aspectes: principi defuncionalitat vs. principi d’autonomia. Plantejarem en quina mesura no es tractara d’interpretar-les com els dos possibles extrems d’un continuum, que, en si mateixos, no fan–amb la seva necessaria tensio i copresencia– sino delimitar i definir, de fet, la totalitatde l’espectre global de les plurals opcions operatives a que pot acollir-se la vitalitat del’afer artistic, a traves de la marcada fluencia i diversificacio de les seves multiples iparticulars poetiques. Abstract: Confounding both levels of intervention –aesthetic and poetic− implies frequentlya g...

When the enormous drapes that had been covering a new building in central Melbourne were thrown off in early 2015, an extraordinary sight was revealed: a colossal image of a face staring down the city's civic spine. This moment of unveiling marked a fascinating moment for Indigenous-settler relations in Australia, but especially urban, densely settled Melbourne. For the face is that of William Barak, ancestor and leader of the Wurundjeri people, whose country was stolen and remade into what we now know as Melbourne. That an early land rights champion is represented in the built form at such a pivotal location in the city that dispossessed his people offers an opportunity to consider the forms of violence, appropriation and misrepresentation that are perpetually constitutive of settler-colonial cities. Drawing together critical Indigenous scholarship, settler-colonial studies and geographies of memorialisation, the paper analyses the building to demonstrate the contemporary workings of settler-colonial urbanisation. The paper analyses the representational politics the building performs, the history of land sales since contact, and the role of the site in a wider imperialist planning project to reveal the intimate nexus of land, property and recognition politics that work to continuously secure white possession of Indigenous lands.

En un esfuerzo por exaltar los valores nacionales algunos investigadores e historiadores del arte en Australia se empeñan en describir como aborígenes algunas obras o artistas que difícilmente encajan en esta clasificación. Pero, ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre el arte aborigen y el arte australiano? Parece una pregunta fácil pero en ocasiones no es tan sencillo para los autores separar ambas nociones. ¿Debe nombrarse aborigen a toda obra de arte elaborada en Australia? ¿Es necesario establecer criterios para la clasificación del arte nativo tradicional? En este apartado revisaremos las facetas de la aboriginalidad por medio de tres artistas completamente distintos. Esto nos ayudará a tener una perspectiva más amplia del término y de su importancia en la transición del arte nativo australiano.

We would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are the Traditional Custodians of this Country of Narrm (Melbourne). We would also like to pay our respects to the Elders of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Marramb-ik Wurundjeri-wilam baggarrook, Wurundjeri-baluk-ut, Dja Dja wurrung, Ngurai illum wurrung, German and Irish, dhumba-njan Woiwurrung. Wurundjeri mundagat Narrm-djak. Mundani-njan murrup galada Birrarung, ba Liwik-bulok-nugel-ik, Lalal ba Gugung nugel-ik. Mundanai-njan bubup narrkwarren-ik, ba kirrip-ik. Mundani-njan Biik-ut, Biik-dui, Baanj Biik, Murnmut Biik, Wurru wurru Biik ba Tharangalk Biik-Bunjil-al Wilam-u. Ngoon godgin Gulinj-marram ngada. Ngoon godgin meymet nugel-ik ba kirrip-ik David. I am Mandy Nicholson, a Wurundjeri-wilam woman within the Wurundjeri-baluk patriline, Dja Dja wurrung, Ngurai illum wurrung, German and Irish, and I speak Woiwurrung. Wurundjeri are the Traditional Custodians of greater Melbourne. I embrace the Spirit River, Birrarung, and my many grandfathers and grandmothers (Elders). I embrace my family and friends. I embrace the Below Country, On Country, Water Country, Wind Country, Sky Country and Bunjil's home, the Forest Country above the clouds. I thank my people of the Gulinj (Kulin). I thank my non-Kulin friends and my friend, David.

These were bad times, doing anthropology under McCarthy … What happened with McCarthy in the U.S. happened everywhere in the 1950's. It was awful and we thought they were going to arrest all the Communists. I buried my C.P. [Communist Party] literature in the garden. (Worsley et al. 1989:00:50:51) Worsley feared that his academic career was in ruins 'because you couldn't become an anthropologist without doing fieldwork of course, it's the end …' (Worsley et al. 1989:59.07).

Within certain settler colonial nations, Indigenous peoples are increasingly becoming present and influential in the agencies legally responsible for the management of their ancestral territories, their environments and their hazards. On the Australian continent, for example, Aboriginal peoples are becoming more formally involved in the management of bushfire (or 'wildfire' elsewhere). This environmental phenomenon is at once of profound cultural significance to many Aboriginal peoples and a major natural hazard to human life and property, managed by an extensive professional bureaucracy of settler government agencies. Drawing upon a case study of collaborative bushfire management between Dja Dja Wurrung peoples and settler bushfire management agencies on Dja Dja Wurrung country (or, ancestral territory) in the southeast Australian state of Victoria, this article argues for an understanding of such collaborations as 'decolonising experiments'. For geographers and others, this means paying attention to the open-ended character of collaborative initiatives, whether and how they materially improve the position of Indigenous peoples, as well as whether and how they give rise to new resources and strategies for the creation of other decolonising futures.

Up close and personal. The management of sensitive Indigenous objectsatthe National Museum of Australia Australian collecting institutions have developed increasinglyc lose relationships with Aboriginal and To rres Strait Islander people in the managementof Indigenous collections, particularly over the past 30 years. This engagementhas seen an increased awareness of the varietya nd place of sensitiveo bjects in Indigenous cultures and in their coexisting traditional and contemporaryd omains. The outcomeh as improved representations of Australian Indigenous cultures in Australian museums and the developmento fc ontinuing and mutually beneficial relationships. This paper discusses howt he experiences and responses of Australian collecting institutions can informo ther international collecting institutions in their developmentofcollection managementstrategies.

The Aboriginal painting movement has long been characterised by 'remote stars' whose seniority connotes the last generation to embody the full lexicon of pre-contact experience of language, law (tjukurrpa) and Country. Witness, for example, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, whose career-launched in her eighties-was all 'late'; the taciturn old men guiding the middle-aged painters at Papunya in the early 1970s; or the last Nyikina speaker, Loongkoonan, who started painting in her nineties and is now brushing her second century. Much contemporary writing on the movement-that-has-become-an-industry barely conceals nostalgia and despair for what is being lost with this changing of the guard, but The Wanarn Painters of Place and Time: Old Age Travels in the Tjukurrpa by David Brooks and Darren Jorgensen has no truck with such tendencies. The book opens with the metaphor of

Intangible Cultural Heritage is broadly defined in terms of "oral traditions, expressive culture, the social practices, ephemeral aesthetic manifestations, and forms of knowledge carried and transmitted within cultural communities" (Kurin, 2007). The approximately 250 separate Australian Aboriginal language groups inhabited a continent of great climatic and environmental diversity. These separate societies developed socio-economies specific to their own environments, affected by both attributes and limitations (Builth, 2006). Despite the consequent vast regional differences in the tangible material culture, there is an underlying thread that joins these groups via shared spiritual values. In essence, their relationship with their environment is based on a highly evolved awareness of the non-material world, the spirit of their country, and it has nurtured them via language, stories, song, dance and ceremony through climatic extremes and more recently, invasion. A spiritual and ecological knowledge base pertaining to each language landscape, plus a national communication network, evolved over thousands of years to a level that is yet to be understood by non-Aboriginal people in this country. (This direction for the Australian societies proceeded at the expense of material and monumental development which occurred in many other societies.

Confondre ambdós nivells d'intervenció-estètica i poètica-implica sovint tot un cúmul de perillosos equívocs, en no tenir en compte des de quina perspectiva i amb quines conseqüències efectuem les nostres propostes teòriques, així com les seves ineludibles projeccions i influències sobre l'àmbit de la pròpia pràctica. Atès que ens movem des d'una òptica pròpia de l'estètica general, ens centrarem en dos aspectes: principi de funcionalitat vs. principi d'autonomia. Plantejarem en quina mesura no es tractarà d'interpretar-les com els dos possibles extrems d'un continuum, que, en si mateixos, no fan-amb la seva necessària tensió i copresència-sinó delimitar i definir, de fet, la totalitat de l'espectre global de les plurals opcions operatives a què pot acollir-se la vitalitat de l'afer artístic, a través de la marcada fluència i diversificació de les seves múltiples i particulars poètiques.

In 1971 a small group of Aboriginal artists from Australia’s remote Central and Western Deserts changed the face of global art history. The township of Papunya was founded in 1959 as a settlement for Aboriginal people who were relocated from their homelands. Living in cramped conditions, the community brought together people of diverse backgrounds and languages. Painting offered a way of asserting authority: of explaining who the townspeople were and where they came from amid this chaotic mélange of strangers. Using ancient iconographies rarely seen by outsiders, an artistic renaissance sprang forth as artists defiantly asserted themselves against the uncertainty of colonial displacement.

Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past and Present Together) celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Papunya Tula Artists, from the very first experiments on scraps of cardboard, linoleum, and Masonite through to the epic abstract paintings that are showcased internationally today. Motivated by the artists’ desire to preserve and transmit their cultural knowledge, the movement quickly grew into a powerful medium for economic and social justice. From humble beginnings, a multimillion-dollar industry would emerge, changing the face of contemporary art and creating a powerful voice for Indigenous artists.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The authors wish to begin by paying their respects to the indigenous peoples of Palo Alto, California, on whose land this work was originally presented. We acknowledge that these First Nation peoples remain the traditional owners, spiritual and cultural custodians, and storytellers of these lands and that they continue to care for and nurture them for future generations.

Women were virtually invisible in Australian art in the nineteenth century but went on to become leaders in the Australian Modern Art movement between the wars. Here, we shall look at some of the changing social conditions and events that enabled women, who were mostly from the upper classes and unmarried, to forge successful artistic careers. These women had the ability or inclination to avoid the traditional female role in society and this chapter proposes one method of examination which reveals that lesbians were disproportionately represented in this cohort of successful artists. The women artists examined more closely are: Agnes Goodsir, Janet Cumbrae Stuart, Margaret Preston, Mary Cockburn Mercer, Grace Crowley, and Kathleen O'Connor.

Transcurridos más de doscientos años desde la llegada británica a Australia, el 13 de febrero de 2008 el primer ministro Kevin Rudd se dirigió en nombre del parlamento a la comunidad indígena australiana para pedir disculpas por los más de dos siglos de políticas segregacionistas, expolio e intento de genocidio cultural perpetrados por los sucesivos gobiernos australianos desde 1788 1. Se trató, y así fue interpretado, de un acto simbólico, un gesto enmarcado en el llamado Proceso de Reconciliación 2 iniciado formalmente en 1991 con la creación del Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation: un consejo encargado de reducir la fractura social existente entre indígenas y australianos de otros orígenes 3. Sin embargo, a pesar de las recientes iniciativas institucionales, entrado el siglo XXI los indígenas sobreviven en una alarmante situación de inferioridad e invisibilidad

's Writings on Australia Naval officer, cartographer, town planner, explorer, missionary, Allen Gardiner's life encompassed many of the roles afforded within the framework of the British Empire. This article explores his engagement with Australia through a discussion of two texts: a series of letters that he wrote to his father in 1821-1822, and a pamphlet of 1833 advocating the further exploration and settlement of the continent. It explores the overlap between the two texts and their underlying ideological coherence within the context of colonial appropriation. The Europeans 'produced and reproduced' the landscape in so far as it was defined as having a particular relationship to Europeans: the relationship took place at two levels: one as an idealised and symbolic 'gaze' which constructed the land as landscape, and two, in the material construction of land as a foundation for the social relations of production.

Within certain settler colonial nations, Indigenous peoples are increasingly becoming present and influential in the agencies legally responsible for the management of their ancestral territories, their environments and their hazards. On the Australian continent, for example, Aboriginal peoples are becoming more formally involved in the management of bushfire (or 'wildfire' elsewhere). This environmental phenomenon is at once of profound cultural significance to many Aboriginal peoples and a major natural hazard to human life and property, managed by an extensive professional bureaucracy of settler government agencies. Drawing upon a case study of collaborative bushfire management between Dja Dja Wurrung peoples and settler bushfire management agencies on Dja Dja Wurrung country (or, ancestral territory) in the southeast Australian state of Victoria, this article argues for an understanding of such collaborations as 'decolonising experiments'. For geographers and others, this means paying attention to the open-ended character of collaborative initiatives, whether and how they materially improve the position of Indigenous peoples, as well as whether and how they give rise to new resources and strategies for the creation of other decolonising futures.

This article examines artworks by three emerging Australian Indigenous artists who are revitalizing Indigenous cultural traditions. The author argues that their work is reparative in the manner described by queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; that is, their art addresses the damage of traumatic colonial histories while being open to pleasure, beauty and surprise. The artists are all based in Brisbane and completed a degree in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art at Queensland College of Art-the only degree of this nature in Australia. The artists are Carol McGregor, Dale Harding and Robert Andrew. McGregor's work draws on possum skin cloak making, Harding has incorporated the stencil technique of rock art into his practice and Andrew uses a traditional pigment ochre and Yawuru language.

Most of the records of the Aboriginal languages of Victoria were written down by untrained people in the 19th century. One of the most prolific was the Rev William Thomas (1793-1867), who was Assistant Protector of the Aborigines in the early days of colonisation of what is now Victoria. This article and the thesis upon which it was based closely examine for the first time the linguistic data collected by Thomas in two main sources - his manuscript notes now in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, and a manuscript entitled A lexicon of the Australian Aboriginal languages in the six dialects of Ballarat, Bacchus Marsh, Melbourne, Gippsland, Mount Gambier and Wonnin..., now in the State Library of Victoria. The valuable linguistics data about the various languages in these sources is exemplified, discussed and compared with modem linguistic studies of the languages concerned.