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Indigenous Australian Art: An Analytical and Cultural Survey

Class code ANTH-UA 9038 or SCA-UA 9836

Instructor Details Stephen Gilchrist [email protected] 0409 684 687 (mobile) Office Hour: Thursday 5-6pm

Class Details Indigenous Australian Art: An Analytical and Cultural Survey

Thursdays, 2pm-5pm Room 304 NYU Sydney Academic Centre Science House, 157 Gloucester St, The Rocks

Prerequisites None

Class Description This course is a survey of the principal themes and issues in the development of Indigenous art in Australia. It focuses on some of the regional and historical variations of Aboriginal art in the context of the colonization of Australia, while considering the issues of its circulation and evaluation within contemporary discourses of value. Topics include the cosmological dimensions of the art, its political implications, its relationship to cultural and national identity, and its aesthetic frameworks. Students will visit some of the major collections of Indigenous Australian art as well as exhibitions of contemporary works. There will also be guest presentations from Indigenous artists and Indigenous art curators.

Desired As a result of successfully completing this course, students will be able to: Outcomes  Demonstrate knowledge of the diversity of Indigenous arts in Australia—ranging from acrylic paintings of the Western Desert to bark paintings of Arnhem Land to urban, politically motivated works in various media (including photography, sculpture, print-making, etc)

 Think about these works both as objectifications of cultural expression (Aboriginal histories, religious beliefs, cultural/linguistic practices) and as political interventions

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 Appreciate the role of anthropology/anthropologists in defining “Aboriginal art” as a genre of high art; think about “Aboriginal art” as itself an intercultural production, and be able to thoughtfully address our own participation in defining this category on various markets/multiple regimes of value

 Relate case studies in Indigenous arts to broader anthropological themes, including the definition of race/Aboriginality in Australia; the recognition and representation of Indigenous Australians in various forms (the constitution, art museums, media); how value is understood/accrued on markets; destabilizing dichotomies between remote/urban, art/craft, ethnography/art, prehistory/history; defining and problematizing “authenticity,” and “appropriation;” and many more

Assessment Class participation: including two components: Components 1) active engagement in discussions and respectful listening; collaborative group work, as occasionally assigned (10% of final grade); and

2) 10-15 minute presentation of course materials during the semester (to be decided via student sign-up on the first day of class). You will be asked to summarize authors’ arguments, present major themes, and raise questions for further discussion. Film/video/web clips and/or PowerPoint support are welcome but not required (10% of final grade).

Review of a current exhibition of Indigenous Australian art. 4-5 pages; 15% of final grade. Due Thursday October 3, session 5

Artwork Presentation: Visit the Art Gallery of New South Wales and select and research one work of art by an Indigenous artist that is on display and prepare a 10 minute, object-centered talk on this work. This will be 10% of final grade. We will be presenting in front of the selected works in the Art Gallery of New South Wales on Thursday November 7, session 9.

Biographical essay of an Indigenous artist in which you examine their stylistic and cultural influences, the relationship between the artist’s life, work and interpretations of that work. 4-5 pages; 15% of final grade. Due by 5pm Thursday November 21, session 11.

Research paper on a significant topic/issue in Aboriginal art. 10-12 pages; 40% of final grade. Due Monday December 16, at 12pm. Assessment criteria and a list of suggestions will be distributed in session 10; you may also choose your own topic/issue in consultation with the professor (please schedule an in-person conversation; email is not sufficient.

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Written work must include appropriate citations and references (reference lists are not included in the required number of pages); please follow the American Anthropological Association Style Guide, available on the NYU Classes site for our course (check under “Resources”).

Failure to submit or fulfil any required course component results in failure of the class.

NYU Sydney has a strict policy about course attendance and late submission of work. Make sure you familiarise yourself with the policies on attendance and late submission of work in the NYU Sydney Student Handbook.

Assessment Grade A: Excellent performance showing a thorough knowledge and understanding of Expectations the topics of the course; all work includes clear, logical explanations, insight, and original thought and reasoning. Creative work is of a highly sophisticated standard.

Grade B: Good performance with general knowledge and understanding of the topics; all work includes general analysis and coherent explanations showing some independent reasoning, reading and research. Creative work is of a superior standard.

Grade C: Satisfactory performance with some broad explanation and reasoning; the work will typically demonstrate an understanding of the course on a basic level. Creative work is of an acceptable standard.

Grade D: Passable performance showing a general and superficial understanding of the course’s topics; work lacks satisfactory insight, analysis or reasoned explanations. Creative work is of a basic standard.

Grade F: Unsatisfactory performance in all assessed criteria. Creative work is weak, unfinished or unsubmitted.

Plagiarism Policy The academic standards of New York University apply to all coursework at NYU Sydney. NYU Sydney policies are in accordance with New York University’s plagiarism policy. The presentation of another person’s words, ideas, judgment, images or data as though they were your own, whether intentionally or unintentionally, constitutes an act of plagiarism.

Any course work must to be submitted asa hard copy AND in electronic form. All students must submit an electronic copy of each piece of written work to www.turnitin.com. Instructions will be provided to you in class.

Penalties for confirmed cases of plagiarism are severe and are dealt with by the Director, NYU Sydney, not your instructor. Your home school will be notified and you will be dealt with according to the standards of that school. The codes of conduct and academic standards for NYU’s various schools and colleges are outlined in the respective school’s academic resources.

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Required Text Morphy, Howard. Aboriginal Art. London: Phaidon Press, 1998

Supplemental  Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 1st ed., 2007 Texts  Sutton, Peter, Dreamings, The Art of Aboriginal Australia, 1998  Neale, Margo, The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture  Genocchio, Benjamin. Dollar Dreaming: Inside the Aboriginal Art World. Hardie Grant Books, 2008  Myers, Fred. Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Duke, 2002.  Perkins, Hetti. Art and Soul  Perkins, Hetti One Sun One Moon  Meerreeng-An: Here is My Country, 2010  When the Wattles Bloom Again: The Life and Times of William Barak, Last Chief of the Yarra Yarra Tribe, by Shirley W. Wiencke (1984)  Ian McLean, How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art (2011)  Yalangbara: Art of the Djang'kawu (2009)  Half Light: Portraits from Black Australia, Hetti Perkins and Jonathan Jones  Painting the Land Story, Luke Taylor 1999  Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art, Seattle Art Museum  Fine Early Aboriginal and Oceanic Art, Mossgreen Auctions 2009  The Moving Images of Tracey Moffatt, Catherine Summerhayes  Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye  Alison French, Seeing the Centre: The art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959 (2002), National Gallery of Australia  Lane, Carly and Franchesca Cubillo (eds) Undisclosed: 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial. National Gallery of Australia (2012)  Bardon, Geoffrey and James Bardon. Papunya: A Place Made After the Story. The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement. (2007) [2004] The Miegunyah Press.

Session 1 What is Indigenous Art? A Journey to Recognition. September 5 Required Reading:  Morphy, Aboriginal Art, pp. 13 – 65

Recommended Reading:  Jolene Ricard “Absorbing or Obscuring the Absence of a Critical Space in the Americas for Indigeneity: The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 52 (Fall 2007). Harvard University: Peabody Museum Press, Boston, pp 85-93.

In Class Media: Art + Soul episode 1 (2010), dir. Hetti Perkins (55 mins)

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Homework Assignment: Research the Indigenous peoples from your home town or city and write one or two paragraphs based on your findings. Please be prepared to present and discuss briefly in class on Thursday September 12.

Required Field Trip to The Deadly Awards, Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, 7.30pm September 10 in Week 2. (Meet at Sydney Opera House at 7pm). Celebrate the achievements of Indigenous people over the last year across the fields of art, sport, health, education and community development.

Session 2 Tallawoladah (The Rocks) and the Colonization of the Place now termed Sydney September 12 Required Reading:  Val Attenbrow, Sydney’s Aboriginal Past (2010): pp. 1-36;  Marcia Langton, (2008) First Australians. Marcia Langton and Rachel Perkins eds. pp. 3-25 “They made a Solitude and Called it Peace”.

Optional Field Trip to Tracey Moffatt’s Exhibition Opening Spirit Landscapes at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 8 Soudan Lane (off Hampden Street) Paddington NSW 2021 (12 September –12 October 2013)

Homework Assignment: Please visit the rock art site at Bondi Golf Links (Sydney’s inner-city rock engravings) before September 19.

Session 3 The Memory of Place: Aboriginal rock engravings of Sydney and Murujuga September 19 Required Reading:  Val Attenbrow, Sydney’s Aboriginal Past (2010): pp. 143-151 (read carefully); 161-188 (focus on Bondi and Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park)  “The Survival of the Murujuga (Burrup) Petroglyphs,” (2002) Rock Art Research 19(1): 29-40.

Required Field Trip to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and guided tour of Aboriginal rock art sites with curator Matt Poll from the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney. This excursion will be instead of regularly-scheduled class time at the Academic Centre.

Homework Assignment: Visit the Art Gallery of New South Wales and select and begin research on one work of art by an Indigenous artist that is on display. This research will form the basis of a 10 minute talk that you will deliver in front of the selected work and in front of your class mates on November 7, session 9. Please email me your selection by October 3, session 5 to avoid duplication and to ensure that the work will still be on display for our presentations. Every day at 11am, the Art Gallery of New South Wales offers free guided tours of its Indigenous collection in the Yiribana Gallery, departing

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from the main Information Desk. Consider joining one of these or other free guided tours. Please note that Indigenous art is hung throughout the Gallery.

Session 4 Indigenous Art in the 19th Century: William Barak and Tommy McRae September 26 Required Reading:  Morphy, Howard, 1998 Aboriginal Art. London, England: Phaidon Press Limited. “Chapter Ten: Documents of Change The Art of William Barak and Tommy McRae”, pp. 353-368  Fran Edmonds with Maree Clarke, Sort of Like Reading a Map (2009): 13-15 (“Two Artists: William Barak and Tommy McRae”).

Recommended Reading:  Shirley Wiencke (1984), When the Wattles Bloom Again: The Life and Times of William Barak, Last Chief of the Yarra Yarra Tribe. (Available on reserve in Academic Director’s office).

In Class Media: First Australians Episode 3, “Freedom For Our Lifetime,” (~50 mins), and clips from Culture Victoria website on possum-skin cloak project; kangaroo-teeth jewelry-making; and Joy Murphy on her uncle, William Barak.

Session 5 First Citizen: Albert Namatjira and the Hermannsburg School October 3 Required Reading:  Howard Morphy, Aboriginal Art, p. 261 - 282  Brenda L Croft “Albert’s Gift,” in Australian Aboriginal Art (2009): pp. 70-85.

Recommended Reading:  Alison French (2002), ed. Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira 1902- 1959. Pp. 1-35.  Philip Jones, “Namatjira: Traveller between two worlds,” in The Heritage of Namatjira: The Watercolourists of Central Australia (1992), J. Hardy, J.V.S. Megaw, and Ruth Megaw, eds. pp 97-136.

In Class Media: Jedda (1955), dir. Charles Chauvel (101 mins); and Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1989), dir. Tracey Moffatt (17 mins).

***Exhibition Review Due*** Review of a current exhibition of Indigenous Australian art. 4-5 pages; 15%.

No classes scheduled October 7-11, 2013

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Session 6 Papunya: Genesis and Genius? October 17 Required Reading:  Morphy, Aboriginal Art, p. 282 – 316  Myers, F. “Truth, Beauty and Pintupi Painting.” Visual Anthropology (1989)  Geoff Bardon, “The Money Belongs to the Ancestors.” In Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius (2000), pp. 199-203

Recommended Reading:  Myers, F. “Representing culture: The production of discourse(s) for Aboriginal acrylic paintings”, Cultural Anthropology, 6,1 1991, pp 26-62.

In Class Media: Mr Patterns (2004), dir. Catriona McKenzie (55 mins)

Session 7 Across the Desert: The Art Producing Communities of Balgo, Utopia, and Yuendumu. October 24 Required Reading:  Dussart, F. “A Body Painting in Translation.” In Morphy and Banks, eds. Rethinking Visual Anthropology. pp. 186- 202.  Biddle, J. Country, Skin, Canvas: The Intercorporeal Art of Kathleen Petyarre. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. (2003) pp. 61-76.

Recommended Reading:  Roger Benjamin. “A new modernist hero”, in Margo Neale (ed.) Emily Kam Kngwarreye: Alhalkere: Paintings from Utopia, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, and Macmillan, Melbourne, 1998, pp 47-54.

Session 8 Northeast, Central, and Western Arnhem Land: From early contact to the distinctive October 31 styles and practices.

Required Reading:  Morphy, Aboriginal Art, pp. 181-218  Djon Mundine, (2008) “An Aboriginal Soliloquy” in They are Meditating Bark Paintings from the MCA’ Arnott’s Collection. pp. 15-31.

Recommended Reading:  Luke Taylor (2004) “Fire in the Water: Inspiration from Country: pp. 116-130 Crossing Country: The Alchemy of Western Arnhem Land Art” Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

In Class Media: Dhakiyarr vs. The King (2004), dirs. Tom Murray and Allan Collins (56 mins) and Mimi (2002), dir. Warwick Thornton (13 mins). Clips from Yothu Yindi (“Treaty”); Garma Festival; Chooky Dancers; and Gurrumul Yunupingu

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Required Field Trip: to the Museum of Contemporary Art with Curator Keith Munro to view the Arnott's Collection of bark paintings.

Session 9 Class Presentations November 7 On Monday November 4, there will be a guest lecture given by Dr Lisa Stefanoff at 12.30-2pm in the NYU Sydney Auditorium. Students are required to attend.

This means that the session on November 7 will only be for 1.5 hours. We will be meeting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales for our class presentations.

***Class Presentations Due*** Presentations at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. 10 minutes; 10% of final grade.

Session 10 Eulogies in Ochre: Art from the East Kimberley and the Tiwi Islands November 14 Required Reading:  Marcia Langton, “Hungry Ghosts: Landscape and Memory,” in Bala Starr (ed.), Blood on the Spinifex, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2002, pp 12-14  Henry F Skerritt, (2012) "Strange Relatives: Negotiating the Borderlines in East Kimberley Painting," in Crossing Cultures: The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art ,Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, pp 93-103.

Recommended Reading:  "Pedro Wonaeamirri: In Conversation" in One sun one moon: Aboriginal art in Australia, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2007.pp 132-137

Optional Field Trip to the Opening Night of the inaugural Corroboree Festival on November 14. This festival will be the largest annual Indigenous cultural festival in Australia. More information will be provided when festival details are published.

Homework Assignment: Please attend the upcoming Bonham’s preview session before the auction as this is an important component of your learning and is the best opportunity to engage with the works of art. Preview hours will be shared as they come to hand.

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Session 11 Aboriginal Art on the Market Circulation and Value in/through Auctions, Art November 25 Centers, Galleries, Museums.

Required Readings:

 Fred Myers (2002), “Recontextualizations: The Traffic in Culture,” in Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art pp. 342-361.  Benjamin Genocchio (2008), Dollar Dreaming: Inside the Aboriginal Art World. Pp. 1-26; 213-219.

Required Field Trip to Bonhams Aboriginal Art Auction, Byron Kennedy Hall, Entertainment Quarter, 122 Lang Road, Moore Park NSW 2021 on Monday the 25th November at 6.30. This excursion will be instead of regularly-scheduled class time at the Academic Centre.

***Biographical Essay of an Indigenous artist Due***4-5 pages; 15% of final grade. Due by 5pm Thursday November 21, session 11.***

Session 12 Alternative Models: Aboriginal Artists’ Cooperatives and the Indigenous November 28 Avant-Garde Required Readings:  Brenda L Croft, 1999. Boomalli: From Little Things Big Things Grow. Painting the Land Story. Luke Taylor, ed. Pp. 95-118. Canberra: National Museum of Australia  Hannah Fink (2007), “Self-Evident: Indigenous Artists and the Photographic Image” in One Sun, One Moon: Aboriginal Art in Australia.

Recommended Readings:  Hetti Perkins, and Jonathan Jones, eds. 2008. Introduction, Half Light: Portraits from Black Australia. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales.

In Class Media: Colour Theory with Richard Bell, (25mins) Episode 8 Tony Albert.

Guest Speaker, Artist Tony Albert

Session 13 Indigenizing Museums: Repatriation, Activism and the Politics of Curation December 5 Required Reading:  Christina Kreps, (2008) “Indigenous Curation, Museums and Intangible Cultural Heritage” in Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa, eds Intangible Heritage, Routledge.  Elizabeth Willis (2008), “The Law, Politics, and ‘Historical Wounds:’ The Dja Dja Wurrung Bark Etchings Case in Australia,” The International Journal of Cultural Property 15(1): 49-63.

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Session 14 Art: Culture, Visibility, Survival. December 12 Required Reading:  Morphy, Aboriginal Art, p. 317-352  Mick Dodson (2003), “The End in the Beginning: Re(de)finding Aboriginality,” in Michele Grossman, (ed.), Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians (Melbourne University Publishing), 25-42.