"Beyond Dreamings: the Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in The
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BEYOND DREAMINGS The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States Cover top: Beyond Dreamings installation image at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection showing works by MICHAEL NELSON JAGAMARA, SHORTY LUNGKARTA TJUNGURRAYI, MICKEY DURRNG GARRAWURRA, CHRISTIAN THOMPSON, UNIDENTIFIED ARTISTS and REKO RENNIE. Photograph by Tom Cogill. Cover bottom: Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia installation image at the Asia Society Galleries, New York, 1988. Photograph by Roman Szechter. BEYOND DREAMINGS The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States APRIL 20, 2018 – JULY 7, 2019 exhibition curated by LUCIA COLOMBARI CECILIA GUNZBURGER ELIZA HODGSON AUDREY LI CLARA MA ELEANORE NEUMANN KELVIN L. PARNELL JR. LAUREN VAN NEST MEAGHAN WALSH catalog edited by HENRY F. SKERRITT Supported by the University of Virginia Office of Graduate and Post-Doctoral Affairs, and the McIntire Department of Art LISA UHL, Karrkapi, 2016. Acrylic on canvas. 59 1/16 x 59 1/16 in. (150 x 150 cm). Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection. Museum Purchase, 2017. 4 DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD Margo Smith AM 5 EDITOR’S PREFACE Henry Skerritt 9 INTRODUCTION 1988: The Scintillating Arrival of Aboriginal Australian Art in the U.S. Lucia Colombari 21 CHAPTER 1 Presence and Representation: The Rise of Indigenous Agency in 1980s Museum Exhibitions Audrey Li 29 CHAPTER 2 Making Their Own Mark: Collecting Indigenous Australian Art in the U.S. since Dreamings Eleanore Neumann 44 CHAPTER 3 Old Archive, New Curators: Responses to Museum Collections in Contemporary Indigenous Australian Photography Clara Ma 54 CHAPTER 4 The Politics of Painting and the Painting of Politics: Indigenous Australians Battle for Land Rights Meaghan Walsh 65 CHAPTER 5 Absence and Presence: Contesting Urban Aboriginality Kelvin L. Parnell Jr. 76 CHAPTER 6 Dismantling Dreamings | Involving Innovations Eliza Hodgson 84 CHAPTER 7 “The Stories Will Never Be Forgotten”: Reframing Contemporaneity and Authenticity in Western Arnhem Land Paintings Lauren Van Nest 98 CHAPTER 8 Batik to Abstraction in the Art of Emily Kame Kngwarreye Cecilia Gunzburger 108 AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES 110 IMAGE CREDITS DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD It is impossible to tell the story of Indigenous Australian art in the United States without mentioning what is commonly referred to as the Dreamings exhibition. In 1988, the Asia Society in New York partnered with the South Australian Museum in Adelaide to produce a groundbreaking touring show, Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia. For many Americans, this was their first exposure to Aboriginal Australian art. For John W. Kluge, the artworks in the exhibition generated such enthusiasm that he began building a world-class collection. I had several occasions to talk with John about why he chose to collect Aboriginal art. Foremost among his reasons was a profound appreciation of the exceptional talent of Aboriginal artists and the belief that the world should see their artworks. He also said, somewhat dismissively, “I could have collected post- Impressionists, but everyone has those.” If it weren’t for John’s wish to create something truly unique, Kluge-Ruhe would not exist and the University of Virginia would not be the home of the only museum dedicated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and culture outside Australia. During the thirty years since the Dreamings exhibition, and the twenty years that Kluge-Ruhe has been at UVA, much has changed in the world of Indigenous Australian art. Beyond Dreamings: The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States invites us to learn about Dreamings and its legacies. It positions us to reflect upon the moment when Aboriginal art entered the world stage and appreciate the expansive world of Indigenous art that exists today. We thank our many colleagues and friends who advised and consulted with Henry F. Skerritt and his students on the curation of this exhibition. We are also indebted to a number of private collectors, including Greg Castillo, John and Barbara Wilkerson, and James Wolfensohn, whose loans have enabled us to include iconic paintings from the Dreamings exhibition and works by artists who aren’t currently represented in the Kluge-Ruhe Collection. The nine graduate students who curated Beyond Dreamings as part of Henry’s course, History, Modernity, Indigeneity, knew very little about Aboriginal Australian art at the beginning of the semester. The exhibition and their essays in this catalog show how far they have come in a very short time. While gratified by their accomplishment, we hope this is but a beginning to a lifelong engagement with Indigenous Australian art and culture. MARGO SMITH AM, Director of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 4 EDITOR’S PREFACE The nine essays in this volume were produced as part of the graduate seminar History, Modernity, Indigeneity held in the McIntire Department of Art at the University of Virginia in Spring 2018. The sem- inar set out to critically examine the position of Indigenous arts in our current historical moment. Over the past three decades, a growing number of theorists have begun to discern that the changed cultural conditions of globalization have led to radically different models for understanding the world in which we live. Far from creating homogeneity—or “the end of history” that Francis Fukuyama predicted in 1989—our epoch has seen the rise of powerful counter forces, including post-colonial and Indigenous movements around the globe. Over the course of the semester, we attempted to critically situate Indigenous Australian art within the discourses of modernity and contemporaneity with the hope of developing a sharper understanding of the time in which we live. One clear development of our time is the newfound appreciation of “curation” as a rigorous form of academic research. To this end, the students were asked to test their critical ideas through curating the exhibition that would become Beyond Dreamings: The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States. The prompt for the exhibition was to respond to the seminal exhibition Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, staged in 1988 by the Asia Society Galleries in New York in conjunction with the South Australian Museum. Dreamings holds an important place in the institutional history of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, being the exhibition that introduced many Americans—and in particular, John W. Kluge— to Indigenous Australian art. Although it was something of a fortuitous coincidence that our seminar occurred in the lead up to the thirtieth anniversary of Dreamings, we could not have found a more per- tinent subject for our endeavor. In 1988, the world stood on the precipice of global realignment—within the next year, the Berlin Wall would fall and the World Wide Web would be launched. In Australia, the bicentennial of the British invasion caused a profound reassessment of Australian identity. It is in this turbulent historical context that the legacies of Dreamings must be understood. In reexamining Dreamings, our aim was not to produce an empty hagiography. Elements of the exhi- bition were clearly radical: most notably, its insistence on rejecting the false dichotomy of “art” and “ethnography.” Although curated by a team of non-Indigenous anthropologists, Dreamings set new benchmarks for community consultation and its catalog remains a foundational reference in the field. While recognizing these legacies, the essays in this volume also consider some of the exhibition’s blindspots. Like any significant exhibition, time has served to both clarify its curators’ foresight, while also revealing those developments that they either did not, or could not, have predicted. This in no way lessens the historical significance of Dreamings. In fact, I would argue, it is indicative of the complexity of the moment that Dreamings inhabited. 5 CHARLIE NUMBLEMOORE, Untitled (Wandjinas), c.1970. Natural pigments on cardboard, 23 1/4 x 36 in. (59 x 91.5 cm). Collection of an anonymous charitable foundation. As part of the programming around Dreamings, the artists Billy Stockman Tjapaljtarri and Michael Nelson Jagamarra created a sand painting in the auditorium of the Asia Society. During the performance, a befuddled viewer asked: “I’m going crazy. What am I viewing? Is this religion or art? Or a combination … I’m in shock here.” In considering the legacies of Dreamings after three decades, the comments of this anonymous New Yorker seem particularly apt. When re-reading the catalog and reviews of Dreamings, and speaking to its curators and key interlocutors, a clear picture emerges. Everyone involved in the exhibition could feel the “historic” nature of the moment, but few could put their finger on exactly why. This is not surprising: the world was changing in ways that few could have imagined. It is only now coming into focus that this moment signaled not just the emergence of the new discursive paradigm of “contemporary art,” but also a new global condition of contemporaneity. If the essays in this volume suggest that this moment was neither stable nor singular, it is perhaps because the very terms of this new discourse were not only far from settled, but necessarily aporetic. If there is a defining feature of the contemporary epoch, it is our acute awareness that our world is composed of infinite and irreconcilable difference. The legacy of Dreamings might, then, lie less in its inherent radicality or conservativeness, than in its role in ushering a new era of indecipherability. “What am I viewing?” is a question whose relevance has only increased as contemporary art has become the paradigmatic art of our time. As we reflect on the past three decades of Indigenous art, we might consider how Indigenous Australian artists 6 have themselves embraced this paradigm, producing works that have expanded the boundaries of both Indigenous and global contemporary art. I am deeply indebted to the nine graduate students who curated Beyond Dreamings for their commit- ment, energy and passion.