Crosscurrents in Australian First Nations and Non-Indigenous Art

Sarah Scott is a lecturer at the Centre for Art History and Art Theory, School of Art and Design, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. She writes on non-Indigenous engagement with First Nations art and culture, art patronage, and the representation of Australian art overseas. Helen McDonald is an art historian and an associate of the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of Erotic Ambiguities: The Female Nude in Art (2001) and Patricia Piccinini: Nearly Beloved (2012). Her recent research focuses on Australian rock art and art about climate change.Caroline Jordan is an art historian and adjunct honorary research officer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences in La Trobe University, Australia. She is the author of Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists and the Amateur Tradition (2005) and recent articles in Australian Historical Studies and Gender and History.

• Introduction1. The Weight of Grief – Maree Clarke and Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll on Artist-centricity 2. On Working as an Aboriginal Museum Director and Curator of the Berndt Museum3. Price and Provenance: William Barak as an Artist in the Market4. The Duplicity of Emus and Kangaroos: Coats of Arms from the Australian Frontier5. The Toa of the Dieri6. ‘The Arts are where Cultures Meet’: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Aboriginal Art in Fashion and Textile Design7. Aesthetically Similar but Politically Far Apart: The Art and Designs of Bill Onus and Byram Mansell during the Assimilationist Era8. Shared Motives: New Art and Curatorial Collaborations in the 1980s9. Decolonisation and Conceptual Art: Collaboration, Appropriation, TransculturationIan McLean10. Widening the Aperture: Cross-cultural Collaboration – A Perspective from Borroloola11. Wrecking Culture: Australian Iconoclash 2020

‘Truth-telling and reconciliation between First Nations and those who have since arrived has become the priority for all Australians, in all aspects of our lives and work. Awareness of this fact has been two centuries, and more, in the making. Indigenous art has been crucial to this development. It is a vivid evocation of a sovereign culture, an offering to fellow Australians and the wider world. Non-Indigenous artists, curators and critics have responded in a variety of ways. The complexities of these exchanges are explored in unprecedented depth and detail in this book. There are fascinating chapters on the experiences of first nations artists and curators, given in their own voices. A precise profile of the life and art of William Barak in Coranderrk in the 1880s and 1890s is woven into an account of the recent sale of one of his works in New York. Interactions between Conceptual artists and leading Papunya painters during the 1980s are explored as are several recent examples of collaborative art making, exhibition curating, and fashion design. The challenges, and the triumphs, of transcultural exchange are on vivid display.’Terry Smith, Emeritus Professor of Art History, University of Sydney, Australia.