Beyond the Aesthetic a STUDY OF
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Beyond the Aesthetic A STUDY OF INDIGENEITY AND NARRATIVE IN CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN ART – VOLUME ONE – Catherine Slocum December 2016 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University © Copyright by Catherine Slocum 2016 All Rights Reserved INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS NAMES AND IMAGES OF DECEASED PERSONS. ii THE TERM ‘INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS’ HAS BEEN ADOPTED AND MAINTAINED THROUGHOUT THIS THESIS. THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT DISPLAYS OF THIS TERM, HOWEVER THIS TERM IS USED AS IT INCLUDES THOSE WHO IDENTIFY AS ABORIGINAL, TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER AND ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER. iii DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is wholly my own original work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. ………………………………………… Catherine Slocum December 2016 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Professor Paul Pickering for the continuous support of my PhD study and research. His insightful comments and valuable discussion are gratefully acknowledged. My sincere thanks are extended to Dr Thuy Do for her useful comments in the final stages and Dr Lan Tran for her valuable assistance during the course of my study. A very special thanks to Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Brook Andrew, Daniel Boyd, Dianne Jones, Christopher Pease and Christian Thompson whose work I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to study at length. The project would not have been possible without the specialist Indigenous Australian collection at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Library in Canberra. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University. v ABSTRACT Over the past decade, some of the most celebrated art to emerge from Australia has been the work of a group of Indigenous artists whose practice has been instrumental in relocating Indigenous experience and establishing an Indigenous sense of place within the complex social, political and cultural landscape of contemporary Australia. Their work is rooted in the urban Indigenous art movement that swept across the southeast of Australia in the mid-1980s. Like many artists once on the periphery of mainstream artistic narratives, however, these artists have benefited from globalisation, and they now find their work in the evolving discussions of contemporary art worldwide. No other group of artists has offered a more thorough or far-reaching artistic investigation of the history and lived experience of Indigenous Australians since colonisation, yet their work continues to be overlooked as a core area of academic inquiry. This thesis seeks to both illuminate its cultural significance and to state the case for continued art historical research on work tied to the narrative of Australia’s shared history. It does so through an in-depth reading of artworks produced by Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Brook Andrew, Daniel Boyd, Dianne Jones, Christopher Pease and Christian Thompson since 2000. At the forefront of these pieces are narratives underlining the subjugation of Australia’s Indigenous history, the intergenerational impact of colonisation and its legacy and the continued misrepresentations by others of Indigenous people and culture. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AAMU Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht (The Netherlands) ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation AFL Australian Football League AIATSIS Aboriginal Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies ANZAC Australian and New Zealand Army Corps ARC Australian Research Council ARU Australian Rugby Union COFA College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (Sydney) — changed to UNSW Art and Design in 2014. DAAO Design and Art Australia Online ISCP International Studio and Curatorial Program (New York) MCA Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) NADOC National Aborigines Day Observance Committee — changed to NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) in 1991. NATSIAA National Aboriginal Torres Strait Island Art Award NORFORCE North-West Mobile Force NGV National Gallery of Victoria NITV National Indigenous Television RAKA Ruth Adeney Koori Award RMIT Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology SBS Special Broadcasting Service TAFE Technical and Further Education UNESCO United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNSW University of New South Wales (Sydney) vii TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME ONE Cultural Notification .................................................................................................... ii Statement of Terminology .......................................................................................... iii Declaration ................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... v Abstract ........................................................................................................................ vi List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................. vii Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 PART ONE: THE RESEARCH IN CONTEXT .............................................................. 8 Chapter One: Situating Urban Indigenous Art ............................................................. 9 1.1 The History of Urban Indigenous Art ............................................................. 9 1.2 The Cultural Dilemma in Australian Art ...................................................... 20 1.3 Reviewing the Existing Literature ................................................................ 23 1.4 The Disciplinary Approaches to the Study of Indigenous Art ..................... 29 1.5 Marginalised and on the Periphery ............................................................... 33 PART TWO: THE WORK ............................................................................................ 41 Preface to the Work .................................................................................................... 42 Chapter Two: Vernon Ah Kee .................................................................................... 44 Chapter Three: Tony Albert ........................................................................................ 71 Chapter Four: Dianne Jones ........................................................................................ 95 Chapter Five: Christopher Pease ............................................................................... 117 Chapter Six: Daniel Boyd ......................................................................................... 141 Chapter Seven: Brook Andrew ................................................................................. 162 Chapter Eight: Christian Thompson ......................................................................... 185 viii PART THREE: OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS ................................................. 208 Chapter Nine: The Art Object and Its Message ........................................................ 209 9.1 Creative Processes Employed to Convey Narrative ................................... 209 9.1.1 Narrative and Works of Art ............................................................ 209 9.1.2 Appropriation, Mimicry and Bricolage .......................................... 212 9.1.3 Satire, Scale and Emotive Language .............................................. 216 9.1.4 Costumes, Props and Staged Sets ................................................... 218 9.2 Key Themes and Narratives in the Work ................................................... 220 9.2.1 The Resurgence of Narrative in Contemporary Art ....................... 220 9.2.2 Hidden Histories, Obscured Pasts and Social Injustice .................. 222 9.2.3 Regimes of Representation ............................................................. 227 9.2.4 Cultural Alienation and Displacement ........................................... 231 9.2.5 Heroism, Idolisation and Familial Connections ............................. 235 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 240 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 244 Appendix: Artist Biographies ................................................................................... 286 VOLUME TWO List of Illustrations Illustrations ix INTRODUCTION We tend to think of narrative as a written or spoken account of events or experiences. This thesis demonstrates an example of how art is an effective means of telling stories, documenting history and recounting lived experience. The research emerged from an interest in art produced by Indigenous Australian artists living in the towns and cities of Australia. The work of these artists is sometimes referred to as “urban Indigenous art,” however the term has its difficulties because the practices of urban-based Indigenous artists flow into different, and increasingly global, networks. It is also a form of categorisation some of the artists refute. While the discourse and debates that surround the work of urban-based Indigenous artists forms part of this