Urban Indigenous Art: Debates, photography and empowerment

Paul Wighton

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“Urban” Indigenous art:

Debates, photography & empowerment

Mervyn Bishop, Phyllis Orcher’s Niece, Bondi, 1989 Source: Moffatt, Tracey (1991) In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop, thirty years of photography, 1960-1990,

Australian Centre for Photography, Paddington, NSW.

October 2008 This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) through Warawara – Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW. Except where reference is made, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis or dissertation by which I have been awarded another degree or diploma. No other person's work, either published or unpublished, has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of this thesis. Similarly, this thesis has not been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any other university or tertiary institution. Copyright approval has not been granted to reproduce this work or any part of it by any means.

By Paul Wighton

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Acknowledgements Thanks to Tess Allas for her help in focusing my project and providing invaluable feedback and advice. Thanks also to Jill McPhillips for taking time out to assist with equally invaluable brainstorming sessions. A huge thanks to Joseph Pugliese for supervising my honours project. Despite a heavy workload, Joseph has put countless hours into meetings, readings and proofreading. Thanks for your unwavering support and guidance throughout the year. Thanks also to Kristina Everett for her tireless efforts in putting together this first honours course for students of Indigenous studies in Warawara. Additionally, Kristina’s support, suggestions, encouragement and advice have been very much appreciated. Without her hard work none of this year’s honours projects would have been possible. Thanks to Megan Cooper and Glenda Moylan-Brouff for stimulating engaging and thought-provoking discussions in our seminars and providing useful recommendations for improvement. Thanks to my fellow honours students, Elle Hummell and Gina Haggar, and of course Tammy Broom (the heart and soul of the honours room) for their interest, suggestions and friendship over what at times was a stressful and difficult year. Finally, thanks to Mum and Dad for well… everything.

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Table of Contents Introduction _______________________________________________________ pp. 4-13 Chapter 1: “Urban Art: That’s not traditional Aboriginal art” _____________ pp. 14-27 Chapter 2: The photography of Mervyn Bishop _________________________ pp. 28-43 Chapter 3: Ethnocide or Empowerment? _______________________________ pp. 44-52

Conclusion ________________________________________________________ pp. 53-56 References _______________________________________________________ pp. 57-65

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Introduction In this introduction I outline my positionality, purpose and methods. I then

respond to some of the most salient arguments (expressed by Indigenous Australians) against non-Indigenous people writing about Indigenous culture and address the problems of labelling and categorising. I also introduce whiteness and postcolonial theory which will be used to frame many of my arguments and conclude with an outline of the thesis. Positionality

I am a non-Indigenous student. My father was born in Australia with Irish heritage and my mother was born in Egypt. I was born and have lived in Sydney my whole life. I acknowledge that my subject position is raced (“white”), gendered (male) and classed (student). I acknowledge my position as a member of the majority/dominant Australian society and the problematic nature of terminology such as:

• “dominant” (implies “we” have power over “others” and that they therefore have little or no agency),

• “non-Aboriginal”/ “non-Indigenous” (extremely broad and a negative descriptor i.e. not something),

• “white” or “European” (not always accurate in multicultural Australia), • “settler” (anachronistic) • “colonial” (since Federation, Australia is no longer a British colony but the effects

of colonialism are still felt) and • “invader” (embarrassing) (Macintyre, 1999, p263).

I acknowledge my own cultural history as a non-Indigenous Australian and recognise that I bring a particular cultural lens to my work through which I view my data and subjects.

In my project I do not pretend to speak for Indigenous people, but rather wish to engage with them in respectful, constructive discussions about the reception, categorisation, significance and purpose of their art and various artmaking techniques. Similarly I do not pretend to speak for all non-Indigenous Australians in describing my individual point of view and interpretations of artworks.

In no way do I assume my arguments or interpretations are more or less valid because of my positionality. The strength of my thesis will come from the way it is conducted and argued (respectfully, reflexively, extensively researched and well-informed, critically aware and engaged).

I am aware that my written work is a translation of the data and information I collect, influenced by my thoughts, experiences, upbringing and positionality and shaped by academic protocols. I acknowledge that data and “facts” are the constructions or results of interpretations (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000, p1).

Having studied Indigenous studies over a number of years I am well aware of the power of the researcher over the research subject. As Ramazanoglu and Holland (2002, pp. 105-6) point out, social researchers have the power to represent the lives and ideas of the researched as similar or different across any divisions between them. Making knowledge claims across differences means taking responsibility for interpreting the social existence of others, and so is normative, personal and political as well as epistemological (Ramazanoglu and Holland 2002, p106).

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I am aware of the long history of “white” privilege (and conversely Indigenous disadvantage) in Australia and how discourse/s can be used to construct knowledge about an “other” and maintain power over “them”. As Grossman (2003, p4) points out, “non-Indigenous intellectuals have historically had free rein across a range of Indigenous Australian matters, without the obligation of engaging with the scholarship, arguments or analyses of Indigenous Australian intellectuals themselves”. Even today, Cowlishaw (2004, p69) notes the freedom with which non-Indigenous Australian “intellectuals” talk about or argue over any aspect of Indigenous history (a popular one being massacres) with little consideration of the ethics of public “enjoyment” or the distress such debates can cause for victims or descendants of victims. Cowlishaw (2004, p65) also mentions how the presence of an Aboriginal person in a social science seminar room is still “sufficiently unusual to ensure a degree of awareness, even discomfort, which itself is a testament to the difference between talking about and talking with Indigenous people”.

By writing in the academy and using its theories, there is the danger that a thesis such as mine could reproduce discursive relations of power over Indigenous subjects. However, it is my aim to engage with the arguments of Indigenous artists, curators and writers and critique Eurocentric, non-Indigenous discourses on Indigenous art in order to attempt to disrupt colonial/neo-colonial relations of power.

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Much of what has been written about Aboriginals by non-Aboriginals has been patronising, misconstrued, preconceived and abused. We’ve had so much destructive material written about us that we must hold together the very fabric of the stories which created us.

Jackie Huggins (1997, cited in Heiss, 2001, p3) Due to a long history of racist, ill-informed, destructive and exploitative writings

about Indigenous Australians, non-Indigenous people writing about Indigenous Australia have (rightly) been met with increasing scrutiny, wariness, scepticism and disdain. In the field of Indigenous art, many Indigenous artists and curators have written against the involvement of “white” art dealers, curators, critics and institutions in the Indigenous art industry. Some of the reasons for this include the exploitation of artists, institutional neglect of particular art styles and regions, inappropriate, insensitive display of Indigenous artefacts and artworks and the harmful framing of Indigenous art as primitive and traditional on the one hand, or inauthentic, too Western1, too political and half-caste (art) on the other. Being a non-Indigenous student writing about urban Indigenous art it would be easy to ignore these critical issues and simply focus on writing about particular artists and artworks. After having my intentions openly questioned I think it is necessary to first state these clearly. Secondly, I will not only acknowledge but attempt to critically engage with some of the complicated and often confronting concerns of Indigenous people regarding non-Indigenous writers writing about Indigenous art and culture. Purpose

1 “Western” in this context refers to (art which resembles that from) the West, particularly Europe. This criticism is extremely problematic however because there is no single, generic form of European art. Later in the thesis, “Western art history” refers to the history of art in Europe, and to a lesser extent, America.

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In writing about urban Indigenous art for my honours thesis, generally, I aim to contribute some original arguments to the literature and argue for the recognition and acceptance of urban Indigenous art by the wider Australian art community. Specifically, I wish to engage with the important debates surrounding urban Indigenous art, analyse some of the published criticisms of urban Indigenous art and find out whether the work of particular urban artists can be best understood within a post-colonial framework. I aim to provide some critical analysis of the work of Esme Timbery, Mervyn Bishop, Fiona Foley and Gordon Hookey, highlighting the importance of urban Indigenous art to urban Indigenous communities. In emphasising the importance of urban Indigenous art (e.g. why it matters to the artist, what functions it performs in the life of Indigenous people) I aim to counter the concerns of Ian Anderson (1994a, p51) who has written:

The experience of ‘non-traditional’ Aboriginal communities is represented as fragmented, as standing only between two worlds. What is lost is any sense of the humanity of these Aboriginal people. As human beings we need to eat, to experience emotion, to find relief for distress. … Yet in the ethnographic context, this widespread and contemporary Aboriginal experience is portrayed only as a titanic struggle between the opposing black and white bits.

Also, Parry (1994, p25) believes that in the euphoria of celebrating the postcolonial, certain [Indigenous] people “are too often forgotten”.

My hope is that the artists whose work I discuss in my thesis will benefit from (and not be disadvantaged by) my work through the generation of greater awareness and interest in their work and the provision of a platform for intercultural dialogue about their views and intentions (see AIATSIS, 2000). This is especially important since urban Indigenous art has not received as much attention in the general art literature compared to other forms of Indigenous art. Wally Caruana’s (2003) Aboriginal Art for example, devotes only one of six chapters to urban Indigenous art.2 If we were to examine books on Australian art more generally, we find Christopher Allen (1997, Art in Australia: From Colonization to Postmodernism) only mentions Aboriginal art in the last two pages of his book (pp. 214-215) with no reference to urban art. Similarly, Andrew Sayers’ (2001) Australian Art makes no mention of urban Indigenous art or artists except for one brief mention of Tracey Moffatt.

My contact with Indigenous artists and curators has been facilitated by a consultative approach with Tess Allas, Indigenous art curator and researcher at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. Although Ms Allas has been working with Indigenous artists for many years I do not pretend to regard her as a representative of all Indigenous people or in this case, all urban Indigenous artists. This is especially the case since Aboriginal communities are very diverse and dynamic.

More explicit explanations and justifications of my purpose are presented throughout the remainder of the introduction. Non-Indigenous writing about Indigenous culture

Speaking about the literary field, Sandra Phillips believes non-Indigenous authors should never write about Indigenous subject matter or use Indigenous characters because

2 This is also the last chapter and one of the shortest in the book. After devoting chapters 2-5 to the geographical areas of Arnhem Land, the desert, the Kimberley and North Queensland/the Torres Strait, a proceeding chapter entitled “Artists in the town and city” could give the impression that this is a discrete geographical area when towns and cities (or urban areas) are neither discrete nor homogenous spaces.

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for a non-Indigenous author to achieve a true feel to their representation on Indigenous subject matter and…character…they would need to be very enculturated with Indigenous culture. And if they are not, they are writing as outsiders to that culture and their representation would be vastly different to the representation defined, developed and refined by an Indigenous writer. (Phillips, 1997, cited in Heiss, 2001, p2) While Phillips’ argument seems straightforward, it could be argued that

representations of Indigenous subject matter by non-Indigenous authors are exactly that: representations – not objective, definitive, historically accurate descriptions of reality (if this is even possible). Phillips’ stipulation that non-Indigenous authors be “very enculturated with Indigenous culture” raises some important questions about culture and Indigenous (authors and more generally Indigenous) people: What exactly is enculturation? Are all Indigenous people fully enculturated in Indigenous culture? Is anyone “fully enculturated” in their culture? And most critically, who decides this? Individuals? Groups? Community elders? Historians? Anthropologists? The State? And are these people who decide even from the same culture? Attwood (1992, pxiii) for example, makes clear

It is one thing to recognise the Eurocentric and colonial origins of … knowledge, but it is quite another to contend that an outsider might not know something about other peoples (and, conversely, that it is mistaken to assume that the insider will necessarily provide ‘better’ accounts of themselves). As Said has noted “it is often the case that you can be known by others in different ways than you know yourself, and that valuable insights might be generated accordingly” (Said, 1985, p7 cited in Attwood, 1992, pxiii). Furthermore, Phillips’ notion of enculturation alludes to a definition of culture as

a complex system of knowledge, customs, laws etc. that is acquired by an individual through participating in (or studying) a society (Deifelt, 2007, p112). The notion of enculturation could be seen to reveal a unidirectional approach, operating with the presupposition that cultures merely inform and equip human cognitive capacity (Deifelt, 2007, p112). As Deifelt (2007, p112) forcefully points out, “It is true that human beings are formed by culture, but human beings also form and shape cultures” [my emphasis].

Fiction writer Melinda Lucashenko (pers. comm. to Heiss, cited in Heiss, 2001, pp. 4-5) goes even further than Phillips and declares:

When non-Indigenous people come in and write about us they are writing in ignorance. Ignorance of us and our lives, and ignorance of Aboriginal Law. … Who asked you to write about Aboriginal people? If it wasn’t Aboriginal people themselves, I suggest you go away and look at your own lives instead of ours. We are tired of being the freak show of Australian popular culture. Similarly, in his theorem entitled “Aboriginal Art – It’s a White Thing” urban

artist Richard Bell (2003) implies all non-Indigenous Australians have a paternalistic if not racist view towards Aboriginal people and rallies against anthropologists claiming they are “stuck … up the arses” of Indigenous people and “on first name terms” with “intestinal parasites”. Bell (2003, p8) declares “it is felt among Indigenous peoples, that the anthropologists really have better things to do than to delve into our cultures”.

Given the history of the “study” of Indigenous Australians, it should be easy for one to sympathise with Lucashenko and Bell, however, the tone of their argument serves only to discriminate against all non-Indigenous Australians in a manner that is likely to cause offence rather than bring about a change of attitude or practice. After taking into consideration the arguments of Bell and Lucashenko, it is essential that students and teachers of Indigenous studies find an in-between space where non-

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Indigenous people can write about Indigenous issues in a way that is appropriate, constructive, respectful, well-informed, culturally sensitive and beneficial to Indigenous people. If non-Indigenous writers were to simply remain silent on Indigenous issues it would hardly serve as a decolonising action (Cowlishaw, 2004, p66). It also “misses the point” because “the problematic of our representations lies not in the fact that we speak but in the particular nature of how and what we speak” – this is what determines whether the effects of non-Indigenous representations are reprehensible or not (Attwood, 1992, pxiii). Furthermore, Cowlishaw (2004, p72) argues that by not engaging with Indigenous academics and writers out of fear of causing offence is itself offensive “because it deems Aboriginal people so fragile or fierce that they cannot be dealt with like other disputants”.

In my work, I have made a concerted effort to not write in ignorance of the published arguments and conceptual and methodological frameworks of Indigenous authors. My research has been extensive and I acknowledge where there are gaps in the existing literature. Where possible, I have approached Indigenous artists and curators relevant to my thesis to give them an opportunity to express their point of view, provide historical context and engage in key debates. The need for intercultural dialogue is underscored by the work of Marcia Langton who observes

‘Aboriginality’ arises from the subjective experience of both Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people who engage in any intercultural dialogue, whether in actual lived experience or through mediated experience… ‘Aboriginality’, therefore, is a field of intersubjectivity in that it is remade over and over again in a process of dialogue, of imagination, of representation and interpretation. (Langton, 1993, p31 & 33)

Sadly, both Lucashenko and Bell leave little room for intercultural dialogue. My project however, will be an example of intercultural dialogue where both Indigenous and non-Indigenous views will be presented and respected, providing an opportunity to engage with and learn from each other.

Labelling, categorising

Even before I begin to write or talk about Indigenous art, I need to acknowledge the problematic nature of how Indigenous art is spoken about, specifically the labelling of Indigenous art as remote, rural, traditional or urban. According to Onus (1990, p14) “urban” refers to a city-dweller and evokes thoughts of a chromium and glass environment; whereas “traditional” seems to refer to a practitioner in a remote area, untainted by external influence. In Onus’ opinion, these two categories are obviously inadequate since there are large numbers of Indigenous artists working in neither of these areas (Onus, 1990, p14). According to Caruana (2003, p194), “the descriptions ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ are at best, useful terms to denote not a style of art but the social milieu of the artists.” Noting the diversity of forms and multiplicity of styles of urban Indigenous art including painting (both realistic and non-representational), photography, sculpture, installation, digital media and video, it is difficult not to agree with Caruana’s observation that “urban” does not accurately denote a (single) style of art. Rather than using the term “urban”, regional generic labels are sometimes used by artists such as Koori for south-east Australia, Murri for northern New South Wales and south Queensland, Nunga for coastal South Australia and Nyoonga for south-western Australia (Morphy, 1998, p380). Morphy (1998, p380) believes “increasingly artists are happier with general labels, Aboriginal or Indigenous, or no label at all”.

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One of the major concerns regarding the labelling of Indigenous art is where the label comes from. When non-Indigenous people classify Indigenous art, Richard Bell (2003, p1) believes it is always done in an ethnocentric manner. According to Indigenous artist Brook Andrew (2006, p144)

labelling [Indigenous] art either urban or traditional creates a simplistic view of Aboriginality and art. These two labels separate the authentic and remote Aborigines from the non-authentic city Aborigines. Authenticity is further demarcated by prejudices around the colour of skin. This happens not only within the wider Australian community, but also within some Aboriginal groups. In describing “urban” Indigenous art, I do not intend to simplify Indigenous

culture, in fact in my project I will doing the very opposite, that is, I will be highlighting some of the diverse forms of art created by Indigenous artists from urban areas. Similarly, in describing artists as “urban” artists I recognise that the identity of these artists is often much more complex than this term would allow. Many Indigenous artists who are described as urban artists may not necessarily have been born, raised and permanently reside(d) in the city. Indigenous photographer Michael Riley for example was born and grew up in Dubbo, in far-west NSW and moved to Sydney at the age of 16. Despite moving to Sydney and later studying, working and exhibiting there, some of Riley's largest photographic and video projects took place in Dubbo and Moree, as well as Alice Springs, the south coast of New South Wales and many other non-urban parts of Australia (Croft, 2006). Similarly, Bronwyn Bancroft grew up in Tenterfield in northern New South Wales; Richard Bell was born in Charleville and grew up in outback Queensland; and Lin Onus grew up in Melbourne but often visited his father's country on the Murray River as well as Maningrida in the Northern Territory (Senate Standing Committee, 2007, p53, Morphy, 1998, p387). By referring to “urban” art, I make no implications about the authenticity of the artists – in fact this problematic category is something I will thoroughly interrogate in my thesis. In an interview with Peter Minter, Brook Andrew was asked “how do you speak differently about Aboriginal art so as to escape those agendas and take back control over its reception and distribution?” According to Andrew (2006, p144), the solution lies in “acknowledging the labelling of our artist- and community-managed movements and spaces. Labelling the birthplace of a movement is basic to both Western and Aboriginal declarations of ownership, and needs to incorporate family as well as organised cooperatives like that of the Timbery family in La Perouse or Balgo Arts, Boomalli Artists Co-operative and Cybertribe.” Similarly, Indigenous artist Fiona Foley has said “Instead of speaking generally of urban art, I believe it would be helpful and true to recognise different people’s countries. I am a Butchulla person. I think that artists working in the city should be identified in terms of their people’s country” (1991 cited in Croft 1999a, p111).

While naming specific communities, cooperatives or families is considered acceptable by some, the danger still exists of generalising further and classifying Indigenous art based on geographical areas – for example the Western Desert, Eastern Arnhem Land and urban. If we refer to art from geographical areas we risk re-enforcing what Richard Bell (2003, p4) terms the Regional System of classification. Bell (2003, p4) contends, “Within this system… the racial purity of the artists is a serious consideration” and asks “Given… issues of spirituality and noble savages… Then, is this system of classification not therefore racist? Or, should we believe that it is a coincidence and purely accidental? That it is not a postcolonial plot to divide and rule.” If we were to

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generalise further and talk about Aboriginal art as a whole we might again meet opposition. As Andrew (2006, p146) argues, “‘Aboriginal art’ is an easy pan-national label attached to Indigenous Australia by settler Australia. The label homogenises the Aboriginal experience and does not allow for diverse autonomy in language, ceremony, design and expression, let alone other cultural and ancestral connections.”

These debates over the labelling and categorising of Indigenous art make it clear that urban Indigenous art is a field of fierce contestation. Earlier, when he suggested acknowledging the birthplace of artistic movements, Brook Andrew should be commended for suggesting a new way of doing things. In discussing the labelling of “Aboriginal art” however, it could be regarded as much easier to simply problematise than suggest solutions. If a non-Indigenous academic were to suggest new labels there might always be a handful of people who meet this with suspicion, wary of it denying self-determination and so becoming a form of neo-colonial control. In Andrew’s case, (just like Tracey Moffatt) he says he prefers his art “to be thought of as works created by myself as an artist, not simply as “Aboriginal art” (Andrew, 2006, p146). Whiteness

Since the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the white Cartesian male subject traditionally formed the dominant epistemological position, whose way of knowing was positioned in conflict with that of white women’s and Indigenous people’s production of knowledge (Moreton-Robinson, 2004, p76). In the Western world, whites were placed at the centre, as the norm, the ordinary, the standard (Moreton-Robinson, 2004, p78). At the level of racial representation, whites were not considered as being of a certain race, but rather just as the human race (Dyer, 1997 cited in Moreton-Robinson, 2004, p78). Moreton-Robinson (2004, pp. 75-6) describes whiteness as an “invisible regime of power that secures hegemony through discourse”; an “epistemological a priori which provides for a way of knowing and being that is predicated on superiority, which becomes normalised and forms part of one’s taken for granted knowledge”. In the academic arena, studies of whiteness focus on the power and privilege of the white race (Frankenburg, 1993 cited in Haggis, 2004, pp. 50-2). The task today, according to Moreton-Robinson (2004, p87) is to name and analyse whiteness in all texts to make it visible in order to disrupt its claims to normativitiy and universality.

Throughout the twentieth century non-Indigenous people have played a major

role in the existence (or pre 1950s, the non-existence of) the Indigenous art industry in Australia. Even nowadays, Richard Bell (2003, p1) contends “There is no Aboriginal Art industry”. According to Bell (2003, p1), “There is, however, an industry that caters for Aboriginal Art. The key players in that industry are not Aboriginal. They are mostly white people whose areas of expertise are in the fields of Anthropology and ‘Western Art’.” With a hint of flippancy, Djon Mundine (2006, p61) has also questioned the involvement of white academics in the Indigenous art industry by asking, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to witness it, does it still make a sound? … If a group of Aboriginal artists meets in a forest and no white academic is present, did it still happen and does it have relevance?”

Along with Bell and Mundine, the non-Indigenous academic Fiona Nicoll has made an important contribution to the illumination of the effects of whiteness in the

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Aboriginal art industry. According to Nicoll (2006, p1) the living heritage of white Australian nationalism continues to shape political agendas, cultural practices, industries and everyday life within the literal and curatorial frames of Aboriginal art. Nicoll (2006, p2) warns against framing Aboriginal art as a window to Aboriginal culture because she believes this window trope renders the white institutional decisions, critical frameworks or curatorial approaches responsible for these framings invisible and unaccountable. Framing Aboriginal art as a window into Aboriginal culture assumes 1) this place is ours, 2) the art belongs to our national tradition and 3) it delivers insights about Aboriginal culture that we should appreciate and celebrate as valued assets of our common heritage as Australians (Nicoll, 2006, p2). In other words, the cultural significance of Indigenous art is neglected and the individual brilliance of Indigenous artists is simply absorbed into the success of the Australian nation as their Aboriginality becomes invisible. Nicoll (2006, p2) also argues that this window approach completely disregards questions of Indigenous sovereignty and histories and present practices of state-sanctioned violence against Indigenous Australians. In my thesis, the use of a critical whiteness framework will assist in interpreting reasons for the criticisms of urban Indigenous as inauthentic. In Cowlishaw’s opinion, bringing whiteness and its effects into salience is an anti-racist strategy which forces the meanings of race into view (Cowlishaw, 2004, p61). By challenging reviews of urban Indigenous art that might pass by as commonsense, taken-for-granted knowledge, I aim to make whiteness visible, named and marked (see Moreton-Robinson, 2004, p77). Postcolonialism

Put simply, postcolonial theory deals with the effects of colonisation on cultures and societies (Ashcroft et al., 2000, p186). Postcolonialism has been used to study and analyse European territorial conquest, the institutions of colonialism, discursive operations of empire, subject construction in colonial discourse and the resistance of these subjects in both pre- and post-independence nations and communities (Ashcroft et al., 2000, p187). When applied to Indigenous studies, postcolonialism can highlight the agency of Indigenous people in resisting the effects of colonialism, expose the binary logic inherent in the construction of the colonised/Indigenous subject, investigate the mimicry and hybridity of cultural forms produced by colonisation, reveal colonial efforts to marginalise Indigenous subjects and dispel racial myths (Ashcroft et al., 2000). Ultimately, in the context of Indigenous studies postcolonialism aims to achieve decolonisation, revealing and dismantling colonialist power in all its forms (Ashcroft et al., 2000, p63).

Primarily because postcolonial studies can highlight the agency of Indigenous people and work towards decolonisation, in my thesis I utilise key concepts from postcolonial theory to frame my discussion of debates over the authenticity of urban Indigenous art and the work of particular urban artists. Problems with postcolonialism (in an Australian Indigenous context)

Firstly, Smith (1999, p24) relates how amongst Indigenous academics there is the sneaking suspicion that the fashion of postcolonialism has become a strategy for reinscribing or reauthorising the privilege of non-Indigenous academics because the field of ‘post-colonial’ discourse has been defined in ways which can still leave out indigenous peoples, our ways of knowing and our current concerns.

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Rather than reauthorising the privilege of non-Indigenous academics in my thesis I aim to expose the assumed privilege of non-Indigenous academics, critics and writers who talk about, define and judge urban Indigenous art. As much as possible, I also engage with the concerns of Indigenous artists, curators, academics and writers.

Another concern with postcolonialism is that as Loomba (2005, p12) sets out, the prefix “post” in postcolonial implies both a temporal (as in coming after) and an ideological aftermath (as in supplanting). However, if the inequities of colonial rule have not been erased, it may be untimely and ill-considered to describe a nation state as postcolonial and hence proclaim the demise of colonialism (Loomba, 2005, p12). In Australia for example, struggles for land rights, unpaid wages and compensation for the forced removal of children continue, while the state refuses to recognise Indigenous sovereignty and paternalistic “interventions” into Indigenous communities reveal the overarching power of the state to control the lives of Indigenous people. As Loomba (2005, p12) also points out, a country may be both postcolonial (by being formally independent) and neo-colonial (by remaining economically and/or culturally dependent) at the same time. Because of this problem, it may be more useful to think of postcolonialism not just as coming after colonialism, but more flexibly, as “the contestation of colonial domination and the legacies of colonialism” (Loomba, 2005, p16). In using key concepts and theories from postcolonialism, I do not imply that Australia is a postcolonial state. The idea of Australia as postcolonial cannot hold true for Indigenous Australians because as Moreton-Robinson (2002, cited in Haggis, 2004, p54) makes clear, “Australia is not ‘postcolonial’ in the same way as say India because in Australia the colonials did not go home and ‘postcolonial’ remains based on ‘whiteness’”.

One final criticism is that by constructing colonialism as “a matter of the past”, postcolonialism has the effect of shutting out “colonialism’s economic, political and cultural deformative traces in the present” (Shohat, 1992 cited in Parry, 1994, p246). Furthermore, some argue that analyses of postcolonial societies too often work with the sense that colonialism is the only history of these societies (Loomba, 2005, p20). As Loomba (2005, p20) asks, “What came before colonial rule? What indigenous ideologies, practices and hierarchies existed alongside colonialism and interacted with it?” By utilising a postcolonial framework I do not assume that colonialism is the only history of Aboriginal people, but rather the history which needs greater (scrutiny and) redress.

Thesis Outline

The arena of urban Indigenous art is highly contested. Urban Indigenous art has been criticised as being “too Western”, “half-caste art”, “inauthentic” and its artists accused of having “lost their culture”.

In Chapter One I firstly trace the historical emergence of urban Indigenous art and critically analyse examples of the discourses surrounding urban Indigenous art, interrogating the meanings and implications of key concepts of “tradition”, “authenticity” and “culture”. Through this interrogation I explore the implications of these categorisations for urban Indigenous communities and aim to persuade readers to rethink the categories historically and contemporarily imposed on Indigenous art and artists. To demonstrate how intercultural contact can be seized by artists as an opportunity to adapt and innovate their art I discuss the work of La Perouse artist Esme Timbery. In this first chapter I utilise a postcolonial and critical whiteness theoretical

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framework to elucidate some of the reasons for and effects of the criticism of urban Indigenous art.

In Chapter Two I examine the work of Indigenous photographer Mervyn Bishop in the context of the historical/colonial representation of Indigenous peoples in Australia through photography. After outlining how Indigenous peoples have been represented as primitive, savage, a scientific curiosity and the last remnants of a dying race, I then critically analyse a selection of Bishop’s works from 1966-1988 highlighting how Bishop often provides a direct counter to these colonial representations and thereby challenges negative stereotypes of Indigenous people. Applying a postcolonial framework to Bishop’s work, I also ask whether Bishop’s work can be interpreted as an example of the colonised “speaking back” and whether we should emphasise the similarities or differences between the “subaltern” and the dominant culture.

In Chapter Three, my final chapter, I tackle the thesis of Willis and Fry (1989) which perceives the production of Indigenous art as contributing to cultural destruction. After critically analysing the central arguments of Willis and Fry’s thesis, I discuss the work of Batjala artist Fiona Foley and Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey to highlight how art can be used for political expression, to undermine dominant society and hence empower urban Indigenous people.

In my Conclusion I draw together all the threads of the ideas presented throughout my thesis. I offer some solutions to the problems raised, acknowledge limitations, suggest some areas for future research and provide a coherent reiteration of the thesis.

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Chapter 1 Urban Art: “That’s not traditional Aboriginal Art” In its mix of so-called “traditional” and “non-traditional” elements, the work of urban Indigenous artists has been rejected on numerous occasions by purist art-historians as not truly Aboriginal (Borum, 1993). According to Morphy (1998, p380), when referring to urban Aboriginal people the very term “urban” also carries connotations of being not real or inauthentic. With this context in mind, this chapter will explore the origins and reception of urban Indigenous art in Australia, critically analyse examples of the discourse of authenticity and investigate possible reasons for urban art being criticised as inauthentic. Some of these reasons include urban art’s so-called conflict with “tradition”, the media and materials used, the categorical thinking inherent in Western art discourse, the ability to subordinate and marginalise urban Indigenous people through criticism and the challenge that the artists present to the invisibility of Indigenous people in urban areas and the myth of terra nullius. Origins The origins of contemporary urban Indigenous art can be traced to the exhibition Koori Art ’84, held at Sydney’s Artspace featuring works from twenty-five Indigenous artists including Banduk Marika, Euphemia Bostock, Fiona Foley, Raymond Meeks, Trevor Nickolls, Lin Onus, Avril Quaill and Gordon Syron. Despite some disparaging reviews, the exhibition opened a new chapter in Australian art history, with the “adventurous young artists beginning on a mission that went beyond the aesthetic to tackle cultural and political concerns” (Neale, 2000a, p267). Koori Art ’84 was followed by Urban Koories, held at the Workshop Arts Centre in Willoughby in Sydney in 1986, and the formation of Boomalli Artists Co-operative in Chippendale in late 1987. Boomalli stands as a landmark moment in the history of Aboriginal art because it was founded by ten urban Indigenous artists, determined to create and exhibit their own work on their own terms (Croft, 1999a, p106). The ten artists and their nations included Bronwyn Bancroft (Bundjalung, northern New South Wales), Euphemia Bostock (Bundjalung), Brenda L. Croft (Gurindji, Northern Territory), Fiona Foley (Badtjala, Thoorgine [Fraser Island]), Fernanda Martins (Sydney), Arone Raymond Meeks (north Queensland), Tracey Moffatt, (Queensland), Avril Quaill (Noonuccal, Stradbroke Island), Michael Riley (Wiradjuri and Kamileroi) and Jeffrey Samuels (western New South Wales) (Croft, 1999a, p108). In practical terms, Boomalli provided a meeting place, support systems and exhibition opportunities (Neale, 2000a, p271). In philosophical terms, Boomalli represented Indigenous “agency and the right to define Aboriginality … as a fluid and multiple identity, severing it from the colonial view of Aboriginality as something fixed and singular” (Neale, 2000a, p271). Reception Despite the historical significance of Koori Art ’84, the formation of Boomalli Artists Co-Operative and the interest in Indigenous arts fuelled by the 1988 Bicentenary, by 1990, urban artists still remained largely invisible to non-Indigenous communities (McLean, 1998, p130). When the prominence of urban artists increased through the 1990s, criticisms of the “authenticity” of urban art continued nonetheless.

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In 1989, art critic Christopher Allen declared Michael Riley’s Another Lovely Day “inappropriate because the artistic tradition which it seeks to emulate belongs precisely to the historical and dialectical work of Einstein and Hawking, and not to the timeless world of the Dreaming” (Allen, 1989, emphasis added). In 1993 Perkins and Lynn reiterated how Indigenous art made in metropolitan centres had been rejected as an “inauthentic” hybrid because it did not fit into the prescribed notions of Aboriginal context (Perkins and Lynn, 1993, pxi). In 1994 a non-Indigenous anthropologist stated that there was “no ‘real’ Aboriginal art in New South Wales” (related to Perkins, 1994, p100). Also in 1994, Djon Mundine (cited in Langton, 1994, p14) described how gallery owners and curators often refused to accept urban-based contemporary art as “true” or “authentic” Indigenous art. While desert painting using acrylic on canvas was regarded as somehow “traditional” and had an aura of “authenticity”3, Perkins (1994, p99) observed how “successful forays into new mediums, such as printmaking and oil painting, [were] considered as ‘inauthentic’ or a novelty rather than as further extensions of an artist’s repertoire”. Even when decorated artefacts such as boomerangs, carved emu eggs and paintings were created in urban areas they were dismissed as kitsch or transitional art and hence their urban Indigenous makers rejected as not “authentic” Aboriginal people (Caruana and Mundine, 1997, p29). In more recent times, Indigenous artist and curator Jonathan Jones has related how many urban Aboriginal artists are often told, “you have lost your culture” (cited in Verghis, 2002). In Jones’ view (a view also shared by the author), “urban Aboriginal culture is just as legitimate as any other culture and deserves the same respect and acknowledgement” (Jones cited in Verghis, 2002). Brenda Croft, one of the founding members of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative in Sydney, most clearly summarises the reception of urban Indigenous art in Australia in the 1980s and early 90s:

“…Boomalli (a Wiradjuri word meaning ‘to strike, to make a mark, to light up, to fight’) arose from the artists’ frustration at dealing with the inherent racism and ignorance in the mainstream arts industry over the classification of our work. We did not fit the stereotypical image of what then was expected of Aboriginal artists – neither in the work we were creating, nor in our appearance, educational backgrounds and politicism. The work we were creating was considered by some as ‘second-rate “white” art’, a passing fad, not ‘the real thing’ (as in truly ‘authentic’ Aboriginal art).” (Croft, 1999b, pp. 74-5)

The consequence of this was that urban artists who did not fit into preconceived categories were denied the opportunities open to other Australian artists, and their work was largely ignored (Caruana, 2003, p194). While the discourse of authenticity has been subject to much scrutiny in the field of Indigenous art4, its presence continues to linger. One example of this is an article from 2006 about investing in Aboriginal art which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. Surveying a number of artists and artworks from around Australia, the article offers a starter guide for people looking to spend over $6000. It reads,

“For those who prefer a more authentic style, a work like The Stingray Hunters, circa 1960, is very desirable. Painted in earth pigments on bark, the artist is Nandabitta from Groote Eylandt” (emphasis added, Cockington, 2006).

3 This is one point of view. Myers (2005, p8) takes a different view noting the ambiguous status of Papunya Tula acrylic painting as “art or artefact, as tourist souvenir or fine art, as ethnographic object or painterly achievement… Produced largely for non-local and non-Aboriginal buyers” Myers (2005, p8) asks, “are the paintings an authentic expression? Of what? Traditional culture? Traditional painters?... Or are they ‘a product of non-Aboriginal culture?” 4 See for example Perkins and Lynn (1993), Mosby (1995), Croft (1999a) and (1999b), Neale (2000), Verghis (2002), Borum (1993), Morphy (1998), Caruana (2003) and Mundine (1998).

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The main problem with declaring this artwork as more authentic is that it implies Indigenous artworks not painted in this style, particularly those by urban artists – which are less likely to be painted in 1960 in earth pigments on bark – are somehow less authentic. Giles Auty, “Disputed territory” In August 1995, the visiting English art critic Giles Auty reviewed the National Aboriginal Art Award for the Weekend Australian. Held in Darwin, the exhibition also provided Auty with an opportunity to visit the Darwin Supreme Court Collection of Indigenous art as well as various communities and art centres on Bathurst and Melville Islands. In his article entitled “Disputed territory”, Auty emphasised the long, ancient past of Indigenous art. Auty (1995) wrote that even the tradition of religious painting in Tibet “cannot begin to compare in terms of antiquity with Aboriginal earth, rock or body painting, which comfortably preceded the last Ice Age.” In depictions of Indigenous Australians, Russell (2001, p13) has warned that one of the assumed consequences of deep antiquity is often the subsequent representation of Indigenous Australians as primitive and traditional. Later in the article, unsurprisingly, Auty discusses one of his trips where “At a remote community on Melville Island, amid conditions of material poverty, I glimpsed several aspects of living which ‘advanced’ societies are losing or have lost.” Despite Auty’s attempt to soften his assertion through the use of inverted commas on the descriptor “advanced”, by contrasting the Melville Island community with more “advanced” societies he therefore represents this Indigenous community as not advanced and hence primitive. While visiting Melville Island community, Auty also describes feelings of “communal warmth and mutual concern”, positioning these remote communities as exemplifying the noble savage ideal – primitive, living in untouched natural surroundings, free from the constraints of urban living, in perfect harmony with their fellows and nature (Broome, 2002, pp. 29-30). Having highlighted his reinforcement of notions of deep antiquity, primitivity and the noble savage, let us now examine Auty’s review of the art award. Auty (1995) described the works of the National Aboriginal Art Award 1995 as falling into “five main modes: painting on canvas in the mode initiated at Papunya …; figurative paintings in a semi-Westernised mode, often of a primitive nature; paintings on paper covering all other primary practices; three-dimensional objects and paintings on bark.” “For me” wrote Auty (1995),

the bark paintings remained the most aloof, mysterious and authentic of these categories, but even some of these seem to have been angled slightly towards the dollar-rich consumer, who may wish to recognise a turtle here or a fruit bat there in order to point these out to future guests at his dinner table.

In this excerpt Auty raises two significant notions, that of authenticity, and that of commercialisation/commodification tainting the artist product – the latter of which will be taken up in Chapter Three. In this quotation, Auty’s positioning of the adjectives “aloof” (connoting unfriendliness and detachment) and “mysterious” (difficult to understand) before “authentic” could be interpreted as a strategic move to support his claim. In other words, since the bark paintings were aloof and mysterious they were therefore the most authentic. This reasoning would suggest that if we do not understand something from another culture or cannot explain it then it must be authentic. Hence

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only the exotic “other” is (allowed to be) authentic. Of equal importance in this passage is Auty’s assertion by implication, that if the bark paintings were the most authentic, the other art styles such as paintings in a semi-Westernised mode and sculptural forms are somehow less authentic. Later in the article Auty (1995) expresses this sentiment more explicitly by saying, “The further Aboriginal art moves away from traditional forms, the more it becomes part of the shapeless mass of contemporary artistic practice in general.” Once again we have an example of a criticism of the authenticity of urban Indigenous art, one which privileges historical practices over contemporary ones. By warning artists not to move away from traditional forms and become part of the shapeless mass of contemporary art, Auty promotes an essentialised Aboriginality and does not allow Indigenous art and culture to change, to adapt, to renew, to revive, to resist, to appropriate and evolve. This issue is further complicated by the possibility that an artwork can be simultaneously traditional and contemporary. By favouring traditional forms over contemporary ones, and his lamenting of several aspects of living that “advanced” societies have lost, Auty could be seen to be attempting to lock Indigenous artistic practice in the past, perhaps to preserve Australian Aborigines as exemplars of prehistoric Europeans. A few weeks after Auty’s review was published, one of the Indigenous judges of the National Aboriginal Art Award, Tom Mosby, responded to Auty’s article in a letter to the editor by asking,

Are Aboriginal artists expected to continue a painting tradition which is the representation of only a part of the Aboriginal population, or are they expected not to paint at all because they no longer have a valid painting tradition…? … What Mr Auty ignores is the fact that Aboriginal artists are living in a Western society. Does he expect Indigenous people to remain static, to live within his utopia of “communal warmth and concern” so that he, and others like him, will continue to colonise through their foreign intellectualism? (Mosby, 1995).

Mosby (1995) also argued that the continual categorisation of Aboriginal art into “authentic”, “contemporary” and “art and craft” could be considered as creating terminologies of control, perpetuating a colonialist mentality. Responding in turn to Mosby, Darwin-based writer and historian, Anita Angel (1995) wrote a letter to the editor claiming there was “no vice in the terms ‘contemporary’ and ‘art and craft’” and that calling them ‘terminologies of control’ was “claptrap”. Certainly if decontextualised, terms such as contemporary and art and craft may appear quite harmless. When applied to the artistic production of urban Indigenous peoples however, they can have very different effects. Describing an Aboriginal artist’s work as “craft” for example, could imply that the work has little cultural or artistic validity – since craft is usually thought of as work created with only manual skill and possessing little conceptual strength or meaning. “Contemporary” also, although generally used to refer to work made at the present time, in Western art discourse [contemporary] breaks with what has gone before (Perkins and Lynn, 1993, pxi). As Perkins and Lynn (1993, pxi) assert, this is problematic for Indigenous art in which the distinctions between past and present are often blurred and where there is a living connection between the two. Furthermore, if acknowledged as a discursive practice, labelling Indigenous art (as urban, contemporary, traditional, craft and so on) takes on increased significance in the power relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This is because Foucault’s work has revealed that discursive practices make it difficult for individuals to think outside them – hence they can be seen as exercises in power and control

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(Loomba, 2005, p38). In other words, the apparent desire to label and categorise Indigenous art can be interpreted as an enduring colonialist practice aimed at controlling Indigenous peoples.5 As will be discussed later in this chapter, the identity of the individual, organisation or institution applying these labels onto Indigenous art can also affect whether they can be deemed terminologies of control. Rather than simply dismissing the ideas of terminologies of control as “claptrap” Angel needs to consider some of the negative effects of the categorisation of urban Indigenous art which are introduced in the following section. What is the effect of this questioning of authenticity? In her book Aboriginal Art, Identity and Appropriation, Coleman (2005) provides an argument for the centrality of Aboriginal art to Aboriginal identity. According to Coleman (2005, p1) many Aboriginal people believe that their art is intimately related to their identity and continued existence. Coleman (2005, p1) cites Djon Mundine who says “Having taken away the land, children and lives, the only thing left [to Aboriginal people] is identity through art” as well as artist Bunduk Marika who believes “stealing Aboriginal imagery is stealing identity, laws and spirituality”. If art is central to the identity of Indigenous people, it is clear that the categorisation of urban Indigenous art as inauthentic also reflects back on the individual as inauthentic, not a “proper” Indigenous person. As Croft asserts,

For so long, urban-based Aboriginal people were, and to a certain extent still are, viewed as different, as apart from not only non-Aboriginal people, but also tradition-oriented Aboriginal people. Along with this view was the inference that we were somehow ‘lesser’, not as worthy, not capable. (Croft, 1999b, pp. 75-6)

Since approximately 70 per cent of Indigenous Australians live in urban centres (DEH, 2001 cited in Senate Standing Committee, 2007, p54), the questioning of the authenticity of urban art could also be seen to be questioning the cultural “authenticity” of 70 per cent of Indigenous people. It must be noted however, that as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (2003, p3) points out, very few Aboriginal people (including urban Indigenous artists) live “non-Aboriginal” lives, divorced from their social and personal histories, origins, geographies, families, lifestyles, cultures and sub-cultural mores. In Djon Mundine’s opinion, Aboriginal artists cannot make “art that isn’t Aboriginal because it’s loaded with their own background; your own life and your own life history so it is about Aboriginal-ness in a sense, but it’s also about universal things” (cited in Museum of Contemporary Art, 2005). Ginsburg and Myers (2006, p33) contend that for Indigenous people living in urban areas, the inability to satisfactorily demonstrate “traditional attachment to the land” and their apparent lack of traditional Aboriginal culture all too often results in their being doubly dispossessed. As Fredericks (2004, p30) points out, images of the “authentic”, more “tribal” or “traditional” Aboriginal person

trap us and don’t represent the complex lives and situations in which we find ourselves as Aboriginal people. They also trap non-Indigenous people into a way of seeing us as Aboriginal people. In the trapping, the images and accompanying thoughts may keep us from honestly knowing each other. (Fredericks, 2004, p30)

5 Related to this, we should also think about whether non-Indigenous Australian artists are categorised as “urban” or “remote”, “contemporary” or “traditional” and “authentic” or “inauthentic”, for example.

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According to Gray (1996, p30), as well as being stigmatised for not being “real” or being “inauthentic” Aboriginal people, urban artists have suffered from social and economic deprivation associated with their Aboriginality. This is put most clearly by Bronwyn Bancroft who in 1993 declared, "For years we were punished for being black, now we’re punished for not being black enough” (Bancroft, 1993 cited in Perkins, 1994, p100). Authenticity… In its most common usage, questions over the authenticity of an artwork generally refer to the authorship of the work, i.e. Did the named artist create the work or is it a forgery/fake? In the context of Aboriginal art, two further concerns are also frequently raised: 1) Is the artwork an entirely individual product or a collaborative effort? And 2) Was the artist authorised to create the work (did they have permission or certain rights to paint particular designs or depict certain stories)? (Michaels, 1994, pp. 145-6 & 160-1) While still very relevant to the production, exhibition and sale of Indigenous art, these particular concerns about authorship and authorisation have been less frequently applied to urban art.6 Instead, the particular notion of authenticity invoked to question urban Indigenous art is one that challenges the cultural validity of the work (is it “real” Aboriginal art), its categorisation (fine art/high art or kitsch/contaminated hybrid/low art) and its stylistic variation (too Western). In critiquing colonialist notions of authenticity and defending urban art I am aware that I could be regarded as reconstituting the very binary designation I wish to obliterate. In other words, I acknowledge it is very difficult to argue that urban art is not inauthentic without redeploying the notion of authenticity, albeit from a different standpoint. While problematic, the concept of authenticity and its associated defining characteristics of Aboriginality can still be important for Indigenous peoples. When mobilised by some Indigenous people, the discourse of authenticity can form a strategic, transformative essentialism which does not simply duplicate non-Indigenous stereotypes but has the ability to subvert disempowerment and challenge the knowledge which has subjugated Aboriginal people (Anderson, 1994b, p13). Similarly, in the Australian Indigenous context, tradition has been used a vehicle for dividing Aboriginal people as well as empowering some (Myers, 2005, p5). For those who claim to possess tradition/s, often this is a claim of survival, persistence and connection to a past (Myers, 2005, p5). In her paper “Challenges to Authenticity in the Aboriginal Art Market” Alder (1999, pp. 4-5) problematises four criteria commonly used by consumers and others in the art market to determine whether a piece of art is an authentic Aboriginal product. Firstly, it is thought, there is usually a “story” associated with the artwork – most often related to the Dreaming. Second, the artist is Indigenous. Third, the artist is entitled, or has authority from the relevant members of the Aboriginal community, to paint in a particular style or use particular motifs or icons. And finally, the artwork “comes from and is within the bounds of traditional Aboriginal culture” (Alder, 1999, pp. 4-5). Of particular relevance to this discussion is this final criterion which Alder (1999, p5) notes

6 Less frequently applied to urban art compared to other non-urban Indigenous art - where a number of concerns over authorship have arisen e.g. forgery of the work of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Ginger Riley forced to sign forgeries, Eddie Burrup/Elizabeth Durack and WA Aboriginal art fraud reported by ABC in 2007.

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is a very complex issue that raises a number of not easily resolvable questions. To begin with, it needs to be asked what do we mean by the term “traditional”? Are we simply referring to the dictionary definition of “long-established customs or beliefs passed down from generation to generation” (Encarta, 2003) in line with Shils’ (1971, cited in Merlan, 2006, p87) definition of the “approximately identical form of structures of conduct and patterns of belief over several generations”? And how long is long-established? Is a 10 year-old custom “traditional”? Does it have to be 100 years old? What about 40,000 years old? Surely not. If “traditional” is inextricably linked with the past and long-established customs, does it therefore imply a perpetually unchanging civilisation (Perkins and Lynn, 1993, pxi) with connotations of primitivism? Or on the other hand should we follow Nisbet’s (1969, cited in Merlan, 2006, p87) claim that one of the central tenets of tradition is that change, or a succession of differences in time within a persisting identity, is continuous? If we use Nisbet’s definition then urban Indigenous art is certainly traditional and therefore “authentic” because it has always been changing over time. Ashcroft et al. (2000, p21) summarise some of the concerns with the concept of authenticity in a “postcolonial” context:

The problem with claims to cultural authenticity is that they often become entangled in an essentialist cultural position in which fixed practices become iconised and authentically indigenous and others are excluded as hybridised or contaminated. This has as its corollary the danger of ignoring the possibility that cultures may develop and change as their conditions change.

As previously alluded to, an emphasis on the past should not come at the expense of the present or deny the possibility of the adaptability or modernity of cultures. As Clifford (1990, p146) makes clear, “cultural authenticity has as much to do with an inventive present as with a past, its objectification, preservation or revival”. Perhaps just as important as exploring the definition of “authentic” and “traditional” is a recognition of who defines what is traditional (and hence authentic) and what is not? In the vast majority of cases it is a non-Indigenous person who through the authority of anthropology or simply as a member of the dominant culture is automatically afforded the “privilege” to talk about Indigenous tradition as if they are “all knowing” or “know best”. As Russell (2001, p11) argues, “defining and assigning authenticity is a fundamental component of the processes of subjectation, and in particular … ensure[s] that the European observer becomes the expert on the culture of the Other.” Because of this relationship between observer and subject, Indigenous people are automatically relegated to a subordinate position.

When the exhibition Aratjara: Art of the First Australians toured Dusseldorf, London and Denmark in 1993-4, Mundine (1998, p70) recalls how in Europe there was an overemphasis on the authentic. “When Europeans apply authenticity as a criterion, it is always to others, never to themselves” (Mundine, 1998, p70). This designation of urban Indigenous art as either authentic or inauthentic7 can be regarded as an example of Tony Birch’s (1992, p22) assertion that “Europeans continue to ‘make’ and ‘unmake’ Indigenous people”. In labelling urban Indigenous art as inauthentic, it is always the non-Indigenous curator, anthropologist, writer or visiting English critic who are able to “make” or “unmake” Indigenous people and their culture, with little or no say from the

7 Along with Giles Auty’s review.

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creator: the Indigenous artist. This situation is further exacerbated when one considers Clifford and Marcus’ argument that writing about culture is to create or invent a culture, not just represent it (1986, p2). What can “we” do? As Alder (1999, p5) points out, non-Indigenous consumers and members of the art market such as art-centre coordinators and gallery curators, face the difficult challenge of “working with Aboriginal people to ensure that we do not further destroy their heritage, while at the same time making sure we do not become the ‘culturally correct’ police who stymie artistic development and creativity”. To avoid continuing to disempower Indigenous people through (non-Indigenous society) seeking to define what is or is not appropriate, acceptable and authentic, it is advocated that the category of urban Aboriginal art be self-determined and self-defined in order to be able to evolve and develop over time, just as Western art has done for centuries. Taking this sentiment even further still, Fink (1999) contends that “a requisite of self-definition must be liberation not only from the incarcerations of stereotype and the burden of having to perform or translate a self for a nominal white audience, but freedom from the onus of having to define oneself at all”. But why label urban Indigenous art as inauthentic? The above discussions of Giles Auty’s article “Disputed territory” and the concept of authenticity introduced a number of possible explanations for the labelling of urban Indigenous art as inauthentic. In the following section I explain and elaborate four key reasons for the criticism of urban Indigenous art as inauthentic. 1. Use of “Western” materials, stylistic hybridity and Western art history’s categorical nature Rather than using “traditional” materials such as ochre, bark and wood carvings, urban Indigenous artists such as Brenda Croft, Michael Riley, Lin Onus, Destiny Deacon, Leah King-Smith and Tracey Moffatt have frequently used contemporary Western media such as photography, film and sculpture and techniques such as photo-realism, appropriation and humour to achieve their artistic aims. Yorta Yorta artist Lin Onus for example, utilised a unique style that juxtaposed the rarrk clan patterns of Maningrida with a photorealist style of landscape painting to explore themes of environmental degradation, dispossession and the reinscription of the Aboriginality of the urban landscape (Neale, 2000b, see for example Fruit Bats, 1991 and Balanda Rock Art, 1989). According to Kleinert (2000, p28), this visual disjunction between rarrk and photorealism created an enduring metaphor for the cultural destruction suffered as a direct result of colonisation. While Onus’ blending of styles could be considered remarkably modern and incredibly effective through the mobilisation of the language of the “coloniser”, the use of Aboriginal motifs such as rarrk meant Onus’ work resembled tourist or souvenir art and could hence never be regarded as “high” art (Neale, 2000b, pp. 16-17, Johnson, 1990, p20). As one former state art gallery director said, “This westernised, overtly political art continues to be written off as either Aboriginal kitsch or a sophisticated fabrication – a simulacrum of Aboriginality” (Neale, 2000b, p17). While the use of Western media and materials by urban Indigenous artists may have confused audiences and curators expecting to see work similar to that produced in

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more remote areas, the acceptance of urban art was not aided by the categorical nature of Western art history and theory. As Morphy elucidates (2001, p48),

Western art history creates pigeonholes. It tends to allocate individual works to single art-historical spaces, failing to recognise the fuzzy nature of the boundaries between the stylistic categories and the multiplicity of influences on a particular artists’ work.

In other words, because of its diversity and dynamism, the work of urban Indigenous artists could not be easily classified. Yet another problem with Western art history and anthropology has been its contradictory response to the work of Indigenous artists produced at the site of cultural encounter. According to Phillips and Steiner (1999, p9), the rejection of Indigenous art by both art historians and anthropologists on the grounds of stylistic hybridity is inconsistent with key aspects of these very intellectual traditions. Firstly, seeing the mixing of styles in a negative light contradicted commonly held views on progress and the imposition of colonial rule around the world (Phillips and Steiner, 1999, p10). As Phillips and Steiner (1999, p10) point out, until recently, the same scholars and collectors who complained about inauthenticity simultaneously supported the “civilising” of Indigenous peoples, aiming to increase their “industriousness” and transform them into both producers and consumers of Western “manufactures”. Secondly, the rejection of Indigenous art on the grounds of hybridity conflicted with the popular theory of cultural evolution whereby contact and cross-fertilisation were thought to be of utmost importance to the “advancement” of cultures (Phillips and Steiner, 1999, p9). This negative view of hybridity and stylistic pluralism also ignores the fact that intercultural contact and influence of artistic forms is age old. As Mundine (1989, p125) points out, “all art evolves and transforms itself from exposure to new influences and new perspectives on old ideas”. The art of ancient Greece for example, was influenced by Egyptian sphinxes, Scythian goldsmithing, Syrian love goddesses and Phoenician coin design (Freeland, 2001, p70). Similarly, many designs of peonies, roses, dragons and phoenixes on the most “Turkish-looking” form of art, the Iznik tile, were in fact borrowed from Chinese porcelains (Freeland, 2001, p71). And when Japanese watercolours shown at Far East exhibitions in Paris in the late 19th century influenced the compositions and palettes of Matisse, Whistler and Degas, there was no talk of their work being considered “inauthentic” (Freeland, 2001, p71). Rather than rejecting it as a cause of inauthenticity, the utilisation of a postcolonial approach allows the possibility of conceptualising intercultural contact as a direct challenge to the stereotypical, essentialised view of Indigenous art as “traditional”, “static” and “primitive”. As Crinson (2006, p456) elucidates, the idea of intercultural contact provides “a way of offering a critique of notions of the fixity and purity of subjecthood and identity… for the positive breaking down of monolithic thinking”. In The Location of Culture for example, Homi Bhabha (1994, pp. 2-6) offers a reading of intercultural contact which through “translation” offers a strategy for resisting oppressive, assimilationist technologies, reinscribes the social imaginary of a community and confounds our definitions of tradition and modernity. In Crinson’s view, Bhabha’s articulation of intercultural contact unearths and revalues the interactive and bricolage effects of double-voiced discourses as fundamental to cultural innovation (Crinson, 2006, p457). To illustrate these points, a discussion of the work of La Perouse artist Esme Timbery will provide an insight into the effectiveness of combining the

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(visual) language of the dominant and subordinated culture (double-voiced discourse) in conveying meaning to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences.

***** Indigenous people in La Perouse have been producing Aboriginal artefacts and

objects probably as early as 1882 (Vanni, 2000, p401). By the early twentieth century, catching the tram to “the Loop” on the weekend to go to La Perouse to buy Aboriginal artefacts and objects such as poker-worked boomerangs, shell-worked necklaces, brooches, booties, baskets, picture frames and miniature bridges had become a fashionable pastime (Vanni, 2000, p401).

Esme Timbery is one of the oldest and most famous La Perouse shell-workers who began collecting and sorting shells at the age of five in 1936 (Allas, 2006, p24). In the last ten years, rather than being regarded as mere souvenirs for tourist consumption, Timbery’s works have come to be recognised as art objects worthy of discussion and collection (Allas, 2006, p25). Some of Timbery’s most famous works are her shell-covered Sydney Harbour Bridges and the Sydney Opera House. Since its construction, the Sydney Harbour Bridge has been a popular motif used by La Perouse artists – one such work by an unknown artist from 1939 appears in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Esme Timbery, Blue Bridge, 2005, fabric, shells, glitter, cardboard. Parliament of New

South Wales Collection. Photo Sirenshan Pure Photography. Source: Art Monthly Australia, Number 187, March 2006, p24.

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Esme Timbery, Sydney Opera House, 2002, board, shells, glitter. Sydney Opera House

Collection. Source: Art Monthly Australia, Number 187, March 2006, p25.

In Timbery’s representation of these two famous Sydney landmarks she uses traditional Indigenous practices (shell-work) to depict subject matter which have become iconic of Sydney and the technological achievements of settler Australia. Through the use of varied and vividly coloured shells, Timbery draws attention to the Sydney coastal environment which despite European settlement, retains significant natural and cultural value. In Timbery’s works, the dazzling, reflective surfaces of the shells, combined with glitter and soft fabric provides a mesmerising, whimsical display of colour and texture (Allas, 2006, p26). One of the most important points about Timbery’s works is that they highlight the rich Indigenous heritage which underlays (or as Timbery does, overlays) contemporary Sydney. In viewing these works, while non-Indigenous audiences may instantly recognise the shapes of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House as symbolic of “their” culture, they are simultaneously encouraged to acknowledge the Indigenous heritage and the presence of traditional Indigenous artistic practices in an urban centre. By depicting instantly recognisable subject matter iconic of settler Australia, no non-Indigenous Australian viewer is isolated from engaging with the meaning of Timbery’s works. In examining these works, it is important to note that the wide variety of shell types used by Timbery such as “starries, buttonies, couries, conks and pennywinkles”, are all collected by her family members from the shores of La Perouse and Cronulla, as well as the south coast of New South Wales from Jervis Bay and Gerringong (Allas, 2006, p25). By using Indigenous shell-work to depict icons of settler Australia, Timbery ensures the survival of cultural integrity through the continuation of family-based traditional Indigenous practices and the retention of traditional Indigenous knowledge about the movement of shellfish and shells (Vanni, 2000, p402 and Allas, 2006, 26). Put another way, the kinship-patterned production process seems to carry pre-contact practices through to the twentieth century and beyond (Vanni, 2000, p402).

According to Allas (2006, p26), Esme Timbery’s works are symbolic of Aboriginal resistance – resistance to the forced segregation at the La Perouse reserve (through the sale of tourist objects and inevitable cross-cultural interaction). Vanni (2000, p401) also believes Timbery’s works are symbolic of Indigenous ingenuity in that the shell-workers recognised a demand for shell-worked objects and created an industry

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from their knowledge of the coast. By doing this, the workers were then better able to cope with the daily struggle to survive by complimenting the income raised from the creation and selling of boomerangs and shields alongside the boomerang-throwing demonstrations (Vanni, 2000, pp. 401-2). In this context therefore, Timbery’s shellworks function as both as a product of and commentary on intercultural contact. By combining both Indigenous materials (shells) and Western materials (fabric, cardboard and glitter) to depict the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House, Timbery clearly reconfigures the tourist object to “resist oppressive technologies”, “reinscribe the social imaginary of a community” and “confound our definitions of tradition and modernity” (Bhabha, 1994, pp. 2-6). 2. Reinforcing dominance over Indigenous people (Bourdieu) Just as Lin Onus’ work was written off by one gallery director as Aboriginal kitsch, Vivien Johnson describes how throughout the 1980s, the work of urban Indigenous artists who “experimented” with European styles and materials was similarly dismissed by the white establishment as kitsch (Johnson, 1990, p20). This dismissal of urban Indigenous art as low art or kitsch by the white establishment raises the important issue of taste. From the work of Bourdieu, we know that systems of classification used to describe cultural practices are embedded in unequal power relations – relations which are often unrecognised and thus accepted as legitimate (Johnson, R. 1993, p2). Because “taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier” (Bourdieu, 1979 cited in Johnson, R. 1993, p2), categories such as kitsch and ‘bad taste’ must be seen as a system of domination, in which groups in dominant positions struggle to reproduce and maintain their positions of privilege and dominance (Johnson, R. 1993, p2). Furthermore, by analysing artistic perception and knowledge as forms of cultural capital, Bourdieu’s work has also illustrated precisely how judgements of aesthetic taste contribute to the consecration of the social order (Bourdieu and Darbel, 1990, cited in Langton, 2001). In other words, by describing urban Indigenous art as kitsch, non-Indigenous consumers, critics and other members of the art establishment could be seen to be reinforcing the dominance of non-Indigenous society over Indigenous society in Australia. 3. Marginalisation and whiteness Building on the work of Perkins (1993, cited in Croft, 1999b, pp. 74-5), I argue that along with reinforcing the dominance of non-Indigenous society and culture, the questioning of the authenticity of urban Indigenous art also aims to marginalise urban Indigenous people from the wider Indigenous community and most importantly from Australian society as a whole. Before elaborating on this, Perkins’ (1993, cited in Croft, 1999b, pp. 74-5) analysis of marginalisation provides a useful background:

Marginalisation describes the relationship and position of certain groups within a society to a dominant hegemonic power. … This cultural majority has been termed the ‘centre’. Although all things are defined in relation to the centre, the centre itself avoids definitions … It is so accepted it is rarely questioned or even named and, in fact, it may be absurd to do so.

Based on this analysis, it follows that the very process of questioning one’s authenticity implies that the questioner is in a position of power, authority and supposed surety of identity. By asking questions, the focus is taken away from the centre (non-Indigenous Australian society) and perhaps its very own illegitimacy as invader, usurper of Indigenous land, perpetrator of genocide and destroyer of Indigenous culture. Rather

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than having to take any responsibility for perhaps being the cause of urban Indigenous artists’ disjuncture with ancient tradition, emphasis is redirected to the Indigenous, the “other”, the “inauthentic”. By undermining the “authenticity” of urban art, the “centre” is also provided with an opportunity to mourn the passing of the culture of the “other”, while at the same time concealing their own “complicity with often brutal domination” (Rosaldo 1989, cited in Birch, 1992, p22).

Earlier in the chapter I relayed the concerns of artist and curator Jonathan Jones who related how many urban Aboriginal artists are often told “you have lost your culture” (cited in Verghis, 2002). This notion of urban Indigenous people having “lost their culture” is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Langton (1994, pp. 3-4) observes,

…‘cultures’ are extraordinarily hybrid and change over time; they are heterogeneous and differentiated. What culture is depends on the viewpoint of the observer, for cultures are not objective ‘things’ able to be described by a ‘neutral and objective’ observer.

Secondly, Culture is constantly changing; it has to in order to survive. Our culture changes slowly and constantly as we find new ways of doing things, and through our exposure to other cultures. (Edwards et al., 2007, p48)

Since we “borrow and discard” from other cultures it means that we always have a culture. “It is not something we can lose; it is what we are living now” (Cadet-James, 2003, cited in Edwards et al., 2007, p49).

Describing urban Indigenous people as having lost their culture serves to iterate the construction of Indigenous people as, in Nakata’s (1995, p63, pp.68-9) terms, “culturally deficient” and “constituted by a condition of ‘lack’”. If perceived as not having a culture, Indigenous Australians could be subsequently positioned as less than human. This is significant because as Moreton-Robinson (2004, p76) makes clear, “The development of a white person’s identity requires that they be defined against other ‘less than human’ beings whose presence enables and reinforces their superiority”. In designating urban Indigenous peoples’ art as inauthentic, it is assumed therefore that the superiority and authenticity of “our” “white”, non-Indigenous culture is never in doubt. The idea of loss is also problematic because it often places blame on the owner. Although referring to Torres Strait Islander peoples, Nakata (1995, p71) asks, “Is it simply the case that that we just weren’t too good at holding on to our culture…?”, a sentiment which is astonishingly relevant to the situation of urban Indigenous artists. As Nakata (1995, p71) also emphasises, the inaccurate idea that Indigenous people have “lost” their culture obscures the colonial history of it being “taken from us very aggressively”. 4. Make urban Indigenous people invisible The presence of urban Indigenous art counters the idea that Indigenous people have assimilated and hence are “invisible” in urban areas. With this context in mind, criticisms of authenticity by individuals from the non-Indigenous arts community. In the late 1980s and early 90s could be regarded as an attempt to render urban Indigenous people and their culture invisible. As Djon Mundine (1989, p125) recounts, in 1987, an administrator in Aboriginal art asked him “if we’re really going to get into this urban Aboriginal art thing[?]” According to Mundine (1989, p125), this gave the impression

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that the administrator actually thought there was the option of denying the existence of urban Indigenous art. While it took many years for the dot paintings of the Central Desert and the bark paintings of northern Australia to break from the ethnographic mould into the art world, it is argued in line with Ginsburg and Myers (2006, p33) that these kinds of works created “an Aboriginal culture and identity acceptable for national recognition: the ‘traditionally oriented’ Aboriginal with religious and spiritual links to the land” but who was most importantly, “far from white settlement”. While the works of the Papunya artists for example, could be regarded by some as symbolic of a time and culture gone-by (Caruana, 2003, p194), the work of urban Indigenous artists could not be so easily dismissed. Australian artist Gordon Bennett for example, uses a postmodern style to present his own “black armband history” and challenge the “official” history of Australia and the place of Aboriginal people in it, particularly as stereotyped “others” (Baxter and Gallasch, 2000, p29 & Queensland Art Gallery, 2007). Palawa artist Julie Gough explores the erasure of Indigenous place names in Tasmania; Kamilaroi/Wailwan artist Rea the representation of the black female body and attitudes towards race; Kamilaroi artist Richard Bell covert and overt racism towards Indigenous people in Australian society; Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi photographer Michael Riley the negative portrayal of “otherness” in historical ethnographic portraiture as well as the destruction of the environment as a metaphor for the encroachment on Aboriginal culture (Baxter and Gallasch, 2000 & AGNSW, 2004). By also affirming their identity in their work, urban Indigenous artists challenge the myth of terra nullius – that the continent was empty (land belonging to no-one) when Europeans arrived. Since much urban Indigenous art is highly didactic and political, it remains uncomfortable for non-Indigenous Australians (Mundine, in Foley and Mundine, 1994, p4). Genocchio (1998) has suggested the origins of this discomfort could be a form of collective guilt about the past or perhaps a nervous acknowledgement of the failure of Australian society to redress structural problems of racism, social, political and economic inequality which are currently presented frankly in much urban art (Genocchio, 1998, p34). Whatever the reason, it is clear that the labelling of Indigenous art as inauthentic is convenient for those doing the labelling because it supposedly exempts them from having to critically engage with the meaning of the work.

***** After providing an overview and discussion of some of the most important

debates surrounding urban Indigenous art in this first chapter, Chapter Two will take a more narrow focus, providing a case study of the work of Indigenous photographer Mervyn Bishop.

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Chapter 2 The photography of Mervyn Bishop

The photographic depiction of Indigenous peoples by non-Indigenous explorers, settlers, anthropologists and others has a long history in Australia dating back to the early nineteenth century. Many of the photos taken of Indigenous peoples in the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century depicted them as primitive and savage; a scientific curiosity; and as the last remnants of a dying race. In the context of such negative depictions, the work of Indigenous photographers in the latter part of the twentieth century often provides a direct counter to this colonial history. As the first professional Indigenous photographer, Mervyn Bishop has created a remarkable archive of Australian life and particularly Indigenous life in the second half of the twentieth century (Fink, 2007, p311). Working for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and as a freelance photographer, Bishop’s work has spanned almost five decades and is unmatched in its sheer quantity and breadth of representation of the diversity of Indigenous experience. After firstly discussing the historical representation of Indigenous Australians through photography, this chapter will provide a case study of the work of Mervyn Bishop. Through the application of a postcolonial framework, this chapter will critically examine a selection of Bishop’s photographs and assess the significance of his work in challenging stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples and providing a form of social commentary. Photographic representations of Indigenous Australians

According to Dewdney (1994, p26), photography has always had the power to define and control. As Edwards (1988, p27) points out,

Photography, like other media, is rarely as objective as popular belief would have it but is intricately bound up with society’s perception of the world around it. Photographs are at the same time representations of the world and sources of information about the world. As representations they present a view of the world which is dependent on the unconscious cultural values of both photographer and audience.

In the last gasp of European colonisation in Oceania and the South Pacific, photography was blatantly used to label, control, dehumanise and disempower its subjects whose only response was often a defiant gaze at the lens controlled by someone else (Baxter and Gallasch, 2000, p29). In Australia in the nineteenth century, photography functioned as means of gathering knowledge, demystifying the continent, and bringing it subtly within the grasp of European settlers (Edwards, 1988, p24). Part of this knowledge-gathering and controlling of the continent involved photographing Indigenous peoples as “other” – those whom the settlers could define themselves against (Gidley, 1992, p2). While some photographic portrayals of Indigenous peoples have been described as sympathetic, this sympathy stemmed from an emphasis on difference, rather than commonality (Ennis, 2007, p32). As Ennis (2007, p33) elucidates, “A sympathetic response to Aboriginal people was … not dependent on the recognition of a shared humanity and the equality of different races, but on an appreciation of the plight of the race believed less evolved and doomed to extinction”.

This idea of Indigenous Australians as a dying race was based on the theory of social Darwinism, dominant in Australian cultural attitudes from about 1870 to the

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1920s (Quartermaine, 1992, p87). During this time many thousands of photographs were made which measured, documented and recorded Indigenous Australians as a scientific curiosity, as degraded, primitive in the extreme and a remnant of the childhood of mankind (Ennis, 2007, p36, Edwards, 1988, p34). In these cases, photography fulfilled a supposedly scientific function of accurately recording the likenesses of Aboriginal peoples before their extinction, a presumed inevitable fate which was to face nearly all Indigenous peoples as Western civilisation spread across the world (Quartermaine, 1992, p88, Newton, 1988, p50).

From the 1870s to the 1890s many photographs taken of Indigenous people were produced for the commercial market as curios for the tourist trade (Ennis, 2007, p34, Fink, 2007, p311). Often in a postcard size, these photographs stereotypically depicted Aboriginal people as “half-naked ‘belles’, ‘lubras’, ‘piccaninnies’ and bare-skinned ‘warriors’” (Ennis, 2007, p34). By reinforcing and reproducing taken for granted definitions and perspectives, these photographs were integral to the subjugation of Aboriginal people as part of the colonialist project (Dewdney, 1994, p26, Ennis, 2007, p34). As well as serving as a pseudo-scientific record of a dying race, Quartermaine (1992, p85) believes these photographs reflected the white settler population’s interest in learning about Aboriginal people, presupposed by a controlling position.

Along with these tourist targeted photographic souvenirs, another notable representation of Indigenous people in the latter nineteenth century was the staged portraits of Indigenous people produced by anthropologists J.W. Lindt and Charles Kerry. In these studio portraits of usually nameless subjects, aspects of traditional life were restaged as a spectacle, where the primitiveness of the Aborigines was never in question (Ennis, 2007, p36, Edwards, 1988, p35). As Ennis (2007, p36) explains, “Subjects were not identified by name, language or clan group and there was no concern with providing authentic or accurate information; the props and accessories used were generic and did not relate specifically to those being photographed.” In this way, these photographs also served to homogenise Indigenous culture while presenting Indigenous peoples as pre-modern and backward (Ennis, 2007, p36).

By depicting Indigenous peoples as primitive, Quartermaine (1992, p85) believes settler Australians found it reassuring to see Indigenous subjects forming no part of the “progress” represented by a fast-developing, industrial settler society and, indeed, by the technology of photography itself. Similarly, Edwards (1988, p44) argues that by codifying traits which Europeans found alarming, photographs in the ethnographic mode could be interpreted as defusing fears about the Aborigines. In Edwards’ (1988, p44) opinion, “Physical peculiarities, symbols of primitiveness such as weapons and skin clothing or aggressive stances, were reduced from the threatening to the amusing when encapsulated within the frame of the image in the photographer’s studio.” In assessing the impact of anthropological photography on representations of Indigenous peoples, Tatz (1982 cited in Holllinsworth 1992, p140) declares,

White reconstruction anthropology has provided a mental straightjacket for whites and blacks: a physical prototype, head-banded, bearded, loin-clothed, sometimes ochred, one foot up, a clutch of spears, ready to hunt or exhibiting eternal, mystical vigilance. Libraries of material – often of great value and scholarship have helped create, or re-create, a pristine, pure, before-the-white-man-came-and-buggered-everything, idealised type. THAT, says the academic orthodoxy, is Aboriginality.

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J.W. Lindt, Untitled, from the portfolio Australian Aboriginals, c. 1873, albumen silver

photograph. Source: Ennis, Helen (2007) Photography and Australia, Reaktion Books, London, p37.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century,

Indigenous people largely disappeared as photographic subjects perhaps as part of the “great Australian silence”8 – with the exception of the work of a few anthropologists including Frank Gillen, Baldwin Spencer and Donald Thomson (Ennis, 2007, pp. 36-8). While still reinforcing the unequal power relations in settler society, Ennis (2007, p39) believes the work of Spencer and Thomson was “based on a recognition of the cultural complexity of traditional Aboriginal society and the Aborigines’ harmonious relationship with the land”.

It was not until the 1970s that Indigenous people began to reappear in photographs, often of a very political nature – such as fighting for land rights and protesting against continual discrimination and disadvantage (Ennis, 2007, p39). As an increasing number of Indigenous Australians had access to art school education during the 1970s and 1980s, Indigenous photographers such as Tracey Moffatt, Brenda L. Croft, Michael Riley, Ricky Maynard, Leah King-Smith and Brook Andrew arrived onto

8 Term coined by W.E.H. Stanner in his 1968 Boyer Lecture, “After the Dreaming” to describe the absence of Indigenous people in accounts of Australian history.

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the Australian art scene using the camera in a mission of re-presentation, of making Indigenous identity visible and controlling the means of representation (Gellatly, 2000, p286). For artists like Brenda L. Croft, Alana Harris and Kevin Gilbert, the camera became a register of activities of resistance; for Leah King-Smith it provided a means to engage with, reconfigure and revitalise the history of photographic representation of Indigenous Australians (Gellatly, 2000, p286 & 289).

In 1986, the first Indigenous photographic exhibition (NADOC ’86 Exhibition of Aboriginal and Islander Photographers) was held at the Aboriginal Artists Gallery in Sydney. Two years later, the major photographic project After 200 Years was undertaken by Indigenous and non-Indigenous photographers to represent the diversity of contemporary Aboriginal life in twenty different communities across Australia (Gellatly, 2000, p287). Notably, this project and its associated exhibition and publication marked a significant shift in photographic practice involving Indigenous people. Through the stipulation of strict guidelines, this project required a collaborative approach where the participants controlled the work of the photographer and the selection of the images and texts (Gellatly, 2000, p287). By requiring the input of the communities, the project worked to overcome the problems associated with documentary photography and its role in the creation and perpetuation of negative images of Aboriginal peoples (Gellatly, 2000, p287).

Mervyn Bishop in historical context

Widely recognised as the first professional Indigenous photographer, Mervyn Bishop (b. 1945) occupies a unique and crucial position in the history of urban Indigenous art in Australia. Despite Indigenous photography and the very notion of urban art emerging in the 1980s, the work of Mervyn Bishop dates back to the early 1960s, more than twenty years prior to these landmark events. Astoundingly, in 1988 when the book of the After 200 Years project was published, Bishop recounts, “I realised that I had matched every community it covered” and “had photographed the same people and scenes, but all ten years earlier” (Bishop, 1994, p87). Mervyn Bishop’s most famous photographs are his iconic Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pours soil into the hands of traditional land owner Vincent Lingiari, Northern Territory, 1975 and Life and Death Dash, for which he won the News Photographer of the Year Award in 1971.

Growing up in Brewarrina in northern New South Wales, Bishop’s initial interest in photography was sparked by his mother (who was forever taking pictures of him and his siblings) and also by a family friend and enthusiastic amateur photographer Vic King (Bishop, 1994, p79, Young, 2006, p18). From a young age, Bishop learnt how to make prints in a dark room and use a number of types of cameras, helped along the way by King, fellow amateur photographers and even the local Anglican priest from England, Brother Richard (Bishop, 1994, p79, Young, 2006, p18). After attending boarding school at Dubbo High, Bishop obtained work as a “general dogsbody” at the ABC in Sydney in 1962 through the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board (Bishop, 1994, p81). After a few months working at the ABC, Bishop was offered a photography cadetship by the Sydney Morning Herald. With an impressive knowledge of photography, Bishop interviewed well and subsequently began a four-year cadetship, leading to his career as a press photographer at the Herald. Bishop describes his early experience of press photography at the Herald as learning at the “school of hard knocks” (NGA, 1998) where as he explains, “No one ever told me what makes a good press picture” (Bishop,

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1994, p82). Instead, Bishop was simply expected “to bring back the goods” for the editor (Bishop, 1994, p82). At the Herald, Bishop recalls,

I had entered the assimilated world of the White institution. There were very few Aboriginal people in any profession and hardly any that I could share my experience with in Sydney. My Aboriginality was in different places, but there was no place for it at the Herald … (Bishop, 1994, p84)

In 1974 Bishop left the Sydney Morning Herald and moved to Canberra to work for the newly established Department of Aboriginal Affairs. While Bishop believes “there was the feeling that things were really going to move for Aboriginal people throughout Australia”, he recalls one of the “major difficulties throughout this period was trying to get a clear idea of what was wanted” (Bishop, 1994, p84 & 87). Since “a lot of assignments weren’t thought out in advance” the chance to create a “comprehensive photographic record of Aboriginal development and history” was often missed (Bishop, 1994, p87). In describing his travels around Australia working for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Bishop (1994, p87) relates, “whenever I went to a community for a special assignment I’d also take a lot more general documentary pictures of what was going on. In this way I was, if only for myself, making a record.”

In 1979, after six years at the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Bishop returned to Sydney to work for the Herald until 1986. Following this, Bishop worked as a freelance photographer and taught photography a Tranby College in Sydney and the Eora Centre in Redfern. In 1991, Bishop had his first solo exhibition entitled In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop, Thirty Years of Photography 1960-1990 at the Australian Centre of Photography, Sydney, curated by fellow Indigenous photographer Tracey Moffatt. Bishop’s photography in the context of postcolonial studies

In providing Indigenous representations of Indigenous peoples almost twenty years before the emergence of urban art, the photography of Mervyn Bishop takes on increased historical and cultural significance, particularly for those wishing to unearth Indigenous voices and perspectives in Australian history, engaged in the project of recovering the voice of the “subaltern” (see Spivak, 1988). In highlighting the ability of colonial subjects to “speak” and challenge colonial authority, Loomba (2005, pp. 192-3) warns there is the danger of romanticising such resistant subjects and underplaying colonial violence. In the project of recovering the “subaltern”, another critical concern is whether we are best served by locating the subaltern’s separateness from dominant culture, or by highlighting the extent to which they moulded those processes and cultures which subjugated them (Loomba, 2005, p192).

This dilemma of whether to emphasise sameness or difference sits at the heart of much postcolonial studies (Hassan, 1998, p238, Crinson, 2006, p452). In some cases, an accent on difference is dubious because it can discourage mutual obligation, cripple empathy and defeat transcultural judgements, leaving only raw power to resolve human conflicts (Hassan, 1998, p238). When an emphasis on cultural difference leads to hostility, exclusiveness and less respect for others, Hassan (1998, p238) believes the discourse of difference becomes counterproductive. Similarly, as Said has shown, the process of creating difference through “othering” clearly does not liberate. In his study of Orientalism, Said showed how the othering of vast numbers of people by European colonialist thought provided a means of dominating, restructuring and having authority over them (Loomba, 2005, p91, Said, 1995, p3).

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In contrast to these arguments, Deifelt (2007, p118) contends that a recognition of difference may lead to a degree of humbleness in acknowledging that the “other” can never be fully grasped by our ways of knowing. Also, an emphasis on sameness (that stresses the homogenous character of cultures) “might even support normative values by disseminating them as the only legitimate expressions of that culture” (Deifelt, 2007, p118). One of the reasons for the dismissal of urban Indigenous art discussed in Chapter One was the use of Western materials and media. There, it was suggested that the use of Western materials by Indigenous artists could be regarded as an example of double-voiced discourse (using the language/technology of the dominant culture and the subject matter of the subordinated culture) – a practice fundamental to cultural innovation (Crinson, 2004, p457). Furthermore, the use of photography could also be regarded as a form of resistance through mimicry, mimicry being perceived as both resemblance and menace (Bhabha, 1994, p86). Despite photography being an obviously Western medium, I am hesitant to interpret its use as a form of resistance merely because it is a non-Indigenous technology. As Loomba (2005, p202) iterates, often the concept of resistance is vaguely and endlessly expanded until it denies any other kind of life to the people doing the resisting. Since Spivak (1988) asked “Can the subaltern speak?”, one might then also ask if the very act of “speaking”9 obliterates the category of the subaltern. Instead of interpreting the medium of photography as a form of resistance, in the remainder of the chapter I focus on how Bishop has used photography to resist and challenge colonial stereotypes and provide social commentary. Challenging stereotypes

Earlier in this chapter it was asserted that photography has the power to define, control, reinforce and reproduce taken for granted assumptions and perspectives (Dewdney, 1994, p1). Although photography can be used harmfully, it can also be used to positive effect. In the context of urban Indigenous art for example, the use of photography by Indigenous artists has provided an opportunity to retake, re-present, reclaim and largely reconfigure photographic representations of Aboriginality in ways that counteract denigrating and stereotypical imaging (Gellatly, 2000, p286). The ability of Indigenous artists to represent themselves and their communities, on their own terms and then present their work to an Indigenous and non-Indigenous audience is critical due to the intersubjective nature of Aboriginality. As McKenzie (1994, p179) outlines, since “Aboriginality has arisen from and is continually shaped by the very nature of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal race relations … The defining of Aboriginality… can play such a large part in the non-Aboriginal population’s perception of us and subsequently the degree of racism they practice towards us.” In other words, representations of “Aboriginality” are both affected by and affect the attitude of non-Indigenous people towards Indigenous peoples. When Indigenous artists use photography, they are able to represent themselves the way they want to be represented and also violate the presumed prerogative of the Western surveyor to control the camera, one of the means by which non-Indigenous people have historically created knowledge about the “other” (Lutz and Collins, 2003, p367).

9 In this case, Bishop “speaking” through photography.

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In the following section I analyse three of Bishop’s photographs from the late 1960s to early 1970s, examining how Indigenous people are represented and the efficacy of these photographs in challenging stereotypical views of Indigenous peoples. In discussing Bishop’s depictions of Indigenous identity or “Aboriginality”, it is important to note that since the category of “the Aborigine” was a social construction of the British colonisers, “Aboriginality” as such did not exist in 1788 but was invented by the invaders as an essentialist designation (Hollinsworth, 1992, p138, Russell, 2001, p3). As mentioned earlier, “‘Aboriginality’… is remade over and over again in a process of dialogue, of imagination, of representation and interpretation” (Langton, 1993, p33). At this point it is also important to emphasise there is not an Aboriginality as such (in the singular, universal sense), but rather multiple Aboriginalities.

Cousins, Ralph and Jim, Brewarrina, 1966

Source: Moffatt, Tracey (1991) In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop, thirty years of photography, 1960-1990, Australian Centre for Photography, Paddington, NSW.

Cousins, Ralph and Jim, Brewarrina, 1966 is an image that exudes positivity and

optimism. On his first holidays back while working for the Sydney Morning Herald, Bishop planned to do some work for his uncle and grandfather on their property. When Bishop’s cousins Ralph and Jim found out that Merv was back in town and going to the property, the boys were so keen to go that they wagged school to join him (Bishop, 2008). With the knowledge that the boys were skipping school there is the possibility that this photograph could be interpreted as representing rebelliousness or resistance. However, for Bishop, this is not really what the image is about. In Bishop’s words, it is simply about “having a nice time” (Bishop, 2008). In Cousins, Ralph and Jim, the boys faces provide the focal points of the photograph. Ralph’s10 gaze is focused directly at the lens of the camera, a gaze which

10 I am presuming that the boy on the left is Ralph, and hence that the boy on the right is Jim.

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travels out from the photograph, through time and space to engage the viewer. Regardless of the angle from which you observe the photograph, Ralph follows your eye, sharing his smile and radiating an aura of delight. While Ralph looks directly at the camera, Jim, shirt untucked, looks over to his right in a way that suggests a carefree, positive attitude with not a hint of self-consciousness. While the boys’ enjoyment is clearly evident in their smiles and laughter, further evidence of the positivity of this image comes from the way the light dazzles on the tops of the boys’ heads, on their sleeves and the back of their hands. The water in the river is crystal clear, holding reflections of the fence and the riparian vegetation. Despite their rowing, there is no sense of this task being arduous or burdensome for Ralph and Jim. Instead, the presence of the two boys identified as cousins, and the implied company of Bishop as photographer communicates a strong feeling of familial warmth and vitality in what might otherwise be considered a picturesque and calm, yet also lonely and isolating setting.

The vanishing point of the river in the distance is a significant feature of Cousins, Ralph and Jim as it shows movement, suggesting the boys have both come from somewhere and are going somewhere. As well as being read literally, this notion of “going somewhere” could be read metaphorically. If for example, we were to view this photograph in the context of Indigenous history we might note that in 1965 the Aboriginal Freedom Ride took place in country and northern NSW, successfully exposing and protesting against racial discrimination. A year after this photograph, a referendum would ensure Indigenous people were included in the census and the federal government given the power to legislate for Indigenous people. Following this, in 1968, the decision of the Arbitration Commission would come into effect whereby Aboriginal workers were to be paid equal award wages if working in industries covered by awards. This may be reading too much into the forward movement of the rowboat, but nevertheless gives us an insight into what was happening for Indigenous people in Australia around the time of the photograph.

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Lionel Rose, World Bantamweight Boxer before departing to the USA to defend his title,

1968 Source: Moffatt, Tracey (1991) In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop, thirty years of photography, 1960-1990,

Australian Centre for Photography, Paddington, NSW.

Mervyn Bishop’s Lionel Rose, World Bantamweight Boxer before departing to the USA to defend his title, 1968 is a doubly iconic image. In one sense it depicts the boxer Rose who became an icon for Indigenous peoples – both as a sporting champion and as an example of how Indigenous people were not intimidated by and could overcome racial prejudice and discrimination (Broome, 2002, p161). In another sense Bishop’s photo has become iconic of Rose because it was used on the jacket of a popular book written by Rod Humphreys about Rose’s life and achievements (Bishop, 2008). In this clean-cut, formal style photograph, Moffatt (1991, p5) observes how Rose “behaves for the camera, sitting “poised and perfect”. Bishop’s use of a low angle shot places Rose in a position of superiority and significantly, locates the viewer in a position of slight inferiority, just enough to invoke awe and admiration. By forcing the viewer to look up at Rose, Bishop creates a powerful representation of the champion boxer and perhaps also exemplifies how many Indigenous people looked up to Rose as a hero.

In this photograph, Rose’s attire reflects the fashion of the time but also a civility or genteelness which is not typically associated with the sport of boxing. While Rose’s

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success at boxing could be hijacked by some to emphasise attributes of savagery, barbarism and primitiveness as typified by many nineteenth century photographs of Indigenous peoples, this depiction of Rose could not be further from that stereotype. Clean-shaven with his slick hairdo, white teeth, shirt and tie, jacket, cuff-links and pipe, Rose reflects a 1960s Westernised sensibility, radiating class, style and authority. Looking into the distance and smiling, Rose presents a non-threatening persona, which again is of greater significance due to his pursuit of boxing. Rose’s grip on his pipe, his pose, Bishop’s choice of angle and even the title of the work (World Bantamweight boxer … departing… to defend his title) suggest an individual in control of their destiny.

Rosilyn Watson, 1973

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Source: Moffatt, Tracey (1991) In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop, thirty years of photography, 1960-1990, Australian Centre for Photography, Paddington, NSW.

Another powerful representation of Aboriginality is Bishop’s Rosilyn Watson,

1973. In this portrait, we see the young ballet dancer Rosilyn Watson with shoulders back and toes pointed, resting against a park bench. All attention is directed to Watson by a background that is out of focus and the slats of wood on the bench which almost point to Watson’s outstretched left leg. Watson’s deliberate, graceful pose invites careful inspection from the viewer. As we observe Watson, our gaze is cleverly and involuntarily directed from her eyes to her smile, down past her leotard and left arm, along her left thigh, continuing in the direction of her left leg until we reach the toe of her ballet shoe. Once there, our gaze automatically retraces its path back up to Watson’s face, creating an almost endless viewing loop only briefly interrupted by a possible glance at the darker tone of the park bench or the partially obscured right leg. Together with this viewing loop, Watson’s elegant pose generates a mesmerising representation of grace and beauty, a far cry from images of both the aggressive weapon-wielding hunters or the haunting, frowning and powerless half-naked women depicted in nineteenth century studio portraits.11

Another important feature of this photograph is the fact that Watson demonstrates an ability to take up a European cultural tradition, effectively challenging the myth of Indigenous people as uncultured or as static, living examples of prehistoric humans. Rather than simply symbolising assimilation, through her smile and pose, Watson gives the impression that ballet is not just something she can do, but something she enjoys and excels at. In addition, the outdoor park setting, while unusual for a ballet portrait, could be connotative of a corroboree and hence suggestive of an Indigenisation of Western culture. Furthermore, the very fact that Bishop has photographed Watson and the photograph was included in Bishop’s 1991 In Dreams exhibition also supports the idea that Watson is not just a nameless peculiarity but a figure of prominence and significance for her Indigenous community.

Since ballet is an age-old, classical tradition; a “high” art form characteristic of dignity and control where movements were historically designed to show off the aristocratic polish of the dancers, those who partake in and view the performance of ballet are subsequently often deemed as having good taste, possessing cultural capital, and thereby sitting high in the social order (Mackrell, 2005). By Watson partaking in ballet, she disrupts notions of Indigenous subjectation, of always being at the bottom of the hierarchy, with little or no power, dominated by the colonisers. Since ballet might be considered even too high-brow for some white Australians12, this photograph could be considered unexpected and even unsettling for non-Indigenous viewers, while simultaneously empowering for Indigenous viewers. Social commentary

Working as a press photographer for most of his career, the vast majority of Bishop’s work fits into the category of photojournalism. As Wright (2004, p144)

11 For an excellent example of this latter type see Paul Foesche’s Portrait of a Woman, Minnegie or Mary River, Limilngan NT, aged 18 years, 1880s. It is the last image on the page at http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/page/default.asp?site=1&id=854&fragPage=5 12 As one example of this, see Radbourne (2008). According to Radbourne (2008) “Research on opera, ballet, orchestral and theatre audiences in the past decade generally described performing arts audiences as over 50 years, well educated, and high-income earners.” Despite this, Radbourne’s survey of the attendance of senior citizens in the Sunshine coast at arts events found dance/ballet to be the least popular arts event, with just 2.4% of respondents reporting attendance monthly or more. C/f theatre/plays 10.2%, art galleries 11.8%, cinema/films 26.3%.

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outlines, the broad aim of photojournalism is to produce photographs of quality that become the primary means of telling a story or portraying an event, bringing visual information to the attention of the public. Burnt Bridge, formerly the site of an Aboriginal reserve on the outskirts of Kempsey in northern New South Wales, provided the location for possibly two of Bishop’s most powerful documentary images. According to Moffatt, Bishop’s documentation of the housing conditions in Burnt Bridge “shock and disturb us and make us stare in disbelief at the 1988 date on them” (Moffatt, 1991, p6). In effectively bringing the situation to the attention of the viewer, Bishop’s photographs also act as a form of social commentary, asking us to ask ourselves “How can people still live like this?” and what’s more, “Why do they live like this?”

Girl pours tea, Burnt Bridge, 1988

Source: Moffatt, Tracey (1991) In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop, thirty years of photography, 1960-1990, Australian Centre for Photography, Paddington, NSW.

In Girl pours tea, Burnt Bridge, 1988, Bishop presents a woman and child sitting at their dining table – but maybe “dining” is the wrong word here. In the photograph, the woman is in the act of pouring one of two cups of tea and the child plays harmlessly with the tablecloth, seemingly oblivious to the presence of the photographer. Reminiscent of a 1930s Depression shantytown, the woman’s surroundings display a home made of simple timber walls with a corrugated iron roof. Clothes hang across diagonal support beams; a power cord dangles from the roof; various possessions, boxes and blankets are piled at the side of the already cramped room while bottles, containers and tins sit atop a cupboard we expect is already full. The piercing glare of the seated woman appears unnatural or unexpected for someone in the act of pouring tea and

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supposedly welcoming a guest into her home13. While perhaps unexpected, the woman’s eye-contact is undeniably honest – perhaps reflecting the seriousness of her predicament.

Amongst the modest environs of the room, two items stand out. The first is the floral tablecloth, which through the medium of black and white photography is drained of any colour or vibrancy it may potentially have brought to the setting. The second item is the vase of artificial flowers, which importantly, were found and placed there by Bishop for the shot (Fink, 2007, p314). By placing the vase of flowers on the table, Bishop offers a gesture of beautification in the midst of ramshackle poverty. As Fink (2007, p314) contends, “To have shown sheer destitution would have been accusatory perhaps, or maybe simply damning, but the inclusion of this tender detail brings a whole other dimension to the image, both compositionally and imaginatively: it is the point at which the viewer connects with the subject and is drawn into her world.”

13 Since there are two mugs on the table it is presumed that the woman is pouring tea for herself and Bishop.

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Woman standing near electric power cord in water, Burnt Bridge, 1988

Source: Moffatt, Tracey (1991) In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop, thirty years of photography, 1960-1990, Australian Centre for Photography, Paddington, NSW.

Another of Bishop’s photographs from Burnt Bridge is Woman standing near

electric power cord in water, Burnt Bridge, 1988. In this photograph, an old woman pauses to face the camera, expressionless, standing atop slats of timber, surrounded by puddles of mud, scraps of cardboard, a child’s bicycle and various other pieces of scattered debris. In the foreground of the photograph is a power cord, a cord which runs along the ground, across the mud and quite clearly through a puddle of water. In case

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the viewer misses this detail during their initial inspection of the photograph, Bishop’s titling of the work Woman standing near electric power cord in water makes this feature unmissable, highlighting both the appalling lack of infrastructure and the precarious existence of this woman and her community.

In this photo, we catch the woman, tin in hand, in the act of domestic duties. By encountering the woman in the act of domestic duties there is the possibly that the photograph could connote drudgery and a dull existence. However, as the woman pauses to face the camera, her unwavering gaze, upright, tall stance and straight neck suggest a sense of defiance and resiliency. Moreover, despite the strewn debris, the hazardous power cord running along the ground and the mud and the water, the woman’s white nighting-gown remains noticeably and astonishingly pristine. Despite the poor living conditions, Bishop’s representation ensures the woman retains her dignity and does not become a victim.

In Moffatt’s opinion, Bishop’s images manage to inform without being sickly

positive or viciously negative (Moffatt, 1991, p6). Moffatt (1991, p6) continues, “[he] has achieved this by creating through his photography a world, his world.” In examining Woman standing near electric power cord in water, the woman’s unwavering gaze, upright stance and pristine nighting-gown are factors which contribute to creating a lack of viciousness. Another crucial feature of the photograph, this time controlled by Bishop, is his proximity to the subject. In Woman standing near electric power cord in water, the implied location of Bishop appears somewhat distanced from the old woman, a technical choice which extends the foreground in order to show the power cord within the frame of the photograph. While this slight distancing may have been employed merely to allow space for the power cord, it also acts to slightly distance the viewer from the subject. As strangers, this extension of the foreground softens our intrusion into the confronting world of the woman. Summary of significance

The photographs discussed in this chapter are just a few selections of the work of Mervyn Bishop which extends from the 1960s right until the present, exhibiting an enormous diversity of Indigenous experience and a multitude of Aboriginalities. In photographing real people and real events, Bishop’s work takes on historical, political and social significance as well as artistic meaning. By in many cases naming individuals, Bishop gives his work personal meaning, going against the work of Western photographers in which non-Western subjects (often individuals) became representative of an entire race or culture, considered a typical Australian Aborigine or Trobriand youth for example (Wright, 2004, p173). In the case of Bishop’s Burnt Bridge photographs, by sensitively withholding the names of the women he depicts, Bishop protects the women from possible embarrassment and moreover, creates the impression that these are not exceptional cases but instead representative of a predicament faced by a number of Indigenous people.

Ana Maria Alonso (1988 cited in Gidley, 1992, p8) asserts that a people’s social memory is integral to the creation of their social meaning. Because of this, a people’s own representations of the past such as Bishop’s photography are central to the very constitution of social groups and to the maintenance of social, as well as individual, identities (Alonso, 1988 cited in Gidley, 1992, p8). By controlling the way Indigenous peoples are represented, Bishop’s work has contributed to the empowerment of

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Indigenous peoples. As McKenzie (1994, p184) argues, “Ultimately the empowerment of Aboriginal people will only take place when the level of intersubjectivity in dialogue has reached the point where Aboriginal people have control of the representation of their ‘Aboriginalities’.” Furthermore, the very artmaking process can be seen to be empowering for Bishop who states quite simply, “I like to take photographs because it makes me feel good. … I like to photograph people. Making them feel good about me taking their photograph makes me feel good too” (NGA, 1998).

In creating positive depictions of Indigenous identity in his photographs of Ralph and Jim, Lionel Rose and Rosilyn Watson, Bishop’s work not only represents reality, but in turn acts to constitute reality and history for Indigenous communities across Australia. As Hall (1996, p2) makes clear,

identities are about questions of using the resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not ‘who we are’ or ‘where we came from’, so much as what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves. Identities are therefore constituted within, not outside representation.

In the photographs discussed in this chapter, Bishop presents both positive and negative aspects of Indigenous experience. He shows good times; a successful, powerful, iconic individual in control of his destiny; grace and elegance; dignity and defiance. And yet he also shows poverty, disadvantage and a precarious existence. By using photography, Bishop is able to create an enduring record of Indigenous life, freezing moments in time, “enlivening history and geography”, shifting the “there – then” to “here – now” (Wells, 2003, p1, Barthes, 1977 cited in Wright, 2004, p87). In his photography Bishop represents Indigenous people in a way that counters the long history of negative photographic portrayals of Indigenous people in Australia throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Importantly too, in the words of Fink (2007, p320), Bishop presents “complicated, ambiguous and sometimes opaque versions of Indigeneity – selves that shrug off the bondage of the colonised self while aspiring to the simple liberty of not having to identify oneself at all: of being self-evident”.

Despite being employed by institutions from the dominant society such as the Sydney Morning Herald and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Bishop refused to reproduce the anthropological gaze of scientific curiosity or primitivism in his photography. Rather than objectifying his subjects, Bishop’s depictions of Rose and Watson for example, bestowed them with a sense of agency, presenting them as subjects who were not only aware that they were being represented, but also in control of how they were represented. In the example of Cousins, Ralph and Jim, Bishop presented a joyous scene that may have otherwise gone unrecorded – especially since Bishop and the boys were engaged in an enjoyable recreational pursuit which defied the historical framework of colonial fixity. And finally, when he documented the plight of Indigenous peoples, Bishop managed to do so in a way that respectfully preserved the dignity of his subjects while at the same time drawing attention to and condemning the social, political and economic circumstances that led to such poverty and peril.

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Chapter 3 Ethnocide or Empowerment?

In Chapter One I thoroughly interrogated the problematic notion of urban Indigenous art as “inauthentic”. In that chapter I argued that notions of “authenticity”, “tradition” and “culture” needed to be challenged in order for urban art to be accepted by the non-Indigenous art industry and public as a form of valid cultural expression, just as legitimate as any other, deserving the same respect and acknowledgement. In Chapter Two I discussed the historical/colonial representation of Indigenous peoples through photography and how this supposedly Western medium could be utilised by urban artists to self-represent Aboriginality and challenge negative stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. In my analysis of the photography of Mervyn Bishop I showed how urban art could provide an enduring record of Indigenous life, integral to the social memory of Indigenous peoples, whilst also challenging the way the way non-Indigenous people perceive the “other” – i.e. Indigenous Australians. In this final chapter of my thesis I begin by critically analysing an article written by Willis and Fry (1989) which suggests the production of Indigenous art in a Western, non-traditional setting contributes to ethnocide. Whereas in Chapter One I argued that urban Indigenous art is a valid form of cultural expression, in this chapter I go one step further and through case studies of Fiona Foley and Gordon Hookey, demonstrate how art can empower Indigenous artists and communities. Ethnocide or Empowerment?

In their article “Art as Ethnocide: The Case of Australia”, Anne-Marie Willis and Tony Fry (1989) discuss the idea of Aboriginal art production as cultural destruction. Some of the most useful aspects of their discussion are the highlighting of the effects of institutional racism on Indigenous art and the recommendation of cultural or political self determination in providing Indigenous peoples with the freedom to name and classify their own work (1989, p123-125). However, throughout their article Willis and Fry emphasise the supposed contamination of Indigenous cultural production through interaction with the Western art industry (1989, e.g. p126 “it no longer exists in a pure state”). In talking about Aboriginal art, Willis and Fry (1989, p131) believe the romantic interpretation of “cultural survival” needs to be challenged because although Indigenous culture has survived a very long time, “it is a terribly damaged culture in both its past two hundred years and in its contemporary forms”. Firstly, this argument raises the question of whether Aboriginal art was ever “pure”. Are we to believe that prior to European invasion there was never any interaction between Indigenous groups and exposure to different art forms and styles through trade and ceremony? Secondly, as Bottomley (1987, p1) argues,

Cultural practices are constantly renegotiated, transformed and resisted. Some practices can be neglected, others reinforced according to the requirements of particular socio-historical circumstances. There are no static entities called ‘cultures’; there are instead ‘constitutive social processes, creating specific and distinctive ways of life’ (Williams, 1977). Given the fluidity of cultural practices, we cannot assume continuities of traditions nor homogeneity of practice.

Russell (2001, p12) even goes so far as to say “there is no such thing as pure, pristine or traditional”.

In their article, one of Willis and Fry’s (1989, p129) central arguments is that it is impossible for traditional values encoded in artworks to remain intact in the process of

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commodification. According to Morphy (2000, p136), defenders of this position would have us believe “Aboriginal art exists only as such when integrated within the framework of Aboriginal society. As soon as it is bought and sold on a global market it is destroyed. It becomes something else, losing the value it has in its Indigenous context.” If we were to accept that this is the case, does this mean that Indigenous art should not be bought and sold in order to retain its “traditional value”? Surely not. Similarly, does this reasoning suggest that a Renaissance painting purchased and hung in the Art Gallery of New South Wales is destroyed, losing all the value it has in a European context? The view of Indigenous art as devalued through commodification ignores the fact that value is embodied in commodities that are exchanged – that economic exchange can create value (Appadurai, 1986, p3). In contemporary times, the idea of a non-commodified free symbolic exchange could also be regarded as utopian (Wood, 1996, p386). Furthermore, Morphy (2000, p130) regards this view as an oversimplification which denies agency to Indigenous peoples who have been far more engaged in the process of commodification than most theories allow.

After scorning commodification, Willis and Fry (1989, p125) go on to declare “‘Aboriginal art’ is a product of western culture” and that “the very category of art is specifically western”. “This is not to deny a rich Aboriginal material culture” they say, “but to recognise that the function of objects in those cultures is not as signs of disinterested aesthetic speculation” (Willis and Fry, 1989, p125). Willis and Fry’s implied argument in this passage is that Indigenous people had/have no concept of art (in a Western sense). This argument is an extremely contentious one and has also been addressed by Morphy (2000). Here it is worth quoting Morphy at length:

Aboriginal people have been involved in a discourse over art with outsiders long before European invasion. Externally, there have been generations of interaction with eastern Indonesians and Papua New Guineans and, within Australia, art objects have been used in exchanges. From first contact, there is evidence of Aboriginal people trying to persuade Europeans of the value of their ritual performances and their manufactured objects. … William Barak and Tommy McRae were involved in discourse over art with Europeans, and, in Arnhem Land, from the beginning of colonisation, Aboriginal people were involved in the trade in art with Europeans. Clearly, at first contact, they were not as informed about Euro-American conceptions of art as they subsequently became. But many people early became aware of the value that art held in European society, and later became determined to gain recognition of their own art in wider contexts. (Morphy, 2000, p142)

Another concern in this passage is that Willis and Fry’s emphasis on Indigenous

material culture and the utilitarian functions of Indigenous cultural products could be seen to relegate Indigenous art back to realm of the artefact or ethnographic object. By positioning Indigenous cultural products in an ethnographic context there is the underlying implication that Indigenous peoples are incapable of producing ‘proper art’ – whatever that may be – and that Western cultural products are superior (de Souza, 2006, p358). This dismissal of Indigenous art as too Western and hence not even “art” could be seen as a strategic manoeuvre designed to uphold colonialism. In North America for example, this situation has been observed in the refusal to display American Indian tourist art in museums or galleries for looking “too white” (Phillips, 1995, p114). According to Phillips (1995, p114), the appeal of the Indian objects to consumers and their successful entry into the commodity system prevented them from fitting comfortably into categories of otherness; because they blurred the boundaries

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and rendered the “other” unrecognisable, they were threatening. In the case of American Indian tourist art and Indigenous Australian urban art, if critics and curators were to assign positive value to intercultural objects – as evidence of the ability of Indigenous peoples to adapt, to survive, and even to thrive without assimilating – they would subvert colonialism by firstly disrupting the rarity value produced by the evolutionist doctrine of the disappearing native, and also denying the romantic fantasy of “refuge from industrialism” that originated in primitivist discourse (Phillips, 1995, p114).

Yet another concern in this passage is Willis and Fry’s (1989, p125) assertion that the “function of objects in those cultures is not as signs of disinterested aesthetic speculation”. By arguing that Indigenous art does not function as “disinterested aesthetic speculation” Willis and Fry could be seen to imply that in Western or non-Indigenous cultures art functions merely as a system of “disinterested aesthetic speculation”? To invoke such an antiquated, reductive definition of art overemphasises Kant’s theory of beauty and disinterestedness in creating an aesthetic, common sense response to art at the expense of more broad understandings of art (Freeland, 2001, pp. 10-15). For example, the emphasis on aesthetic speculation does not take into account a multitude of personal, social and cultural functions of art such as political expression, social commentary, the imitation of reality, propaganda, emotive response and historical documentation. Art should not be so narrowly defined as simply an aesthetic experience.

In their article, Willis and Fry (1989, p124) refuse to disarticulate Aboriginal cultural production from the crucial political agenda of land rights, health, housing, employment and education. In the context of these issues Willis and Fry (1989, p124) ask “just how significant is the fact that more Aboriginals are having their work bought and displayed in mainstream art galleries in and beyond Australia when there are still an alarming number of deaths of Aboriginals in police custody, when levels of health, education, life expectancy are all dramatically lower than the national average and when rates of infant mortality and unemployment are much higher?” In refusing to separate art from politics, Willis and Fry (1989, p124) believe “it is [hence] impossible to view the claimed artistic ‘achievement’ … of a few as a marker of progress of the position of Aboriginal people in Australian society” (Willis and Fry, 1989, p124).

Attempting to draw attention to the Indigenous political agenda could be seen as a noble motivation. However while land rights, health, housing, education and employment are clearly very important issues for Indigenous Australians, one could ask just exactly how do they relate to artistic achievement? Should we not give credit where credit is due? To use an analogy, do we withhold gold medals from athletes who come from disadvantaged backgrounds? Refusing to acknowledge the achievements of Indigenous artists merely because they are Indigenous verges on discrimination, even racism.

In this passage, Willis and Fry refuse to give Indigenous Australians any agency in the process of artistic achievement – instead they are passive subjects whose works are simply “bought and displayed” (1989, p124). Willis and Fry also refuse to acknowledge the influence of non-Indigenous society in perhaps being the cause of poor health, educational achievement and lack of land rights. The notion that political issues are more important than artistic achievements disregards the fact that art can be very political and can be used to draw attention to important issues such as land rights,

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deaths in custody and poor health in mainstream art galleries in and beyond Australia.14 “The fact that more Aboriginals are having their work bought and displayed in mainstream art galleries in and beyond Australia” could be considered very significant for Indigenous Australians and perhaps even more so because of the aforementioned problems they face in other areas.

Towards the end of their article, Willis and Fry (1989, p128) declare, “Looking at the art of fringe-dwelling Aboriginals … through the discourse of race politics, it can be concluded that what has been achieved is not cultural intervention or resistance, or a place from which to speak ‘their’ cause, but rather moderately successful assimilation.” Willis and Fry’s constant reference to the assimilation of Indigenous peoples through their production of art in a Western context is very contentious primarily because assimilation is a very loaded term. For many Indigenous Australians, assimilation carries intensely painful connotations of a history of government policy which aimed to destroy Indigenous culture. Labelling Aboriginal involvement in a Western system of art as assimilation is an extremely precarious and provocative exercise, especially since this history of assimilation including the forced removal of children remains very clear in the memories and psyches of many Indigenous Australians. But one of the major concerns with Willis and Fry’s description of Indigenous art production as “moderately successful assimilation” is that it is inappropriate at best to proclaim that Indigenous people have assimilated. Due to their positionality as non-Indigenous Australians and outsiders to Indigenous culture, it is outrageous for Willis and Fry to act as the gatekeepers of authenticity, telling Indigenous people what their culture entails, what it means to them or that it is “terribly damaged” without engaging in any dialogue. Throughout their article, Willis and Fry’s use of a paternalistic, definitive and transcendental tone (e.g. “it is impossible to view the claimed ‘artistic achievement’ of a few”, “must never be conflated with Aboriginal resistance” and “it is nonsense”) gives the impression that there is no room for alternative explanations and no need to listen to the voices of Indigenous peoples. This latter point is particularly important because when this is the case, Indigenous peoples of course remain represented as passive victims of the very “institutional racism” and “ethnocentrism” Willis and Fry rally against. Empowerment

To wholeheartedly reject the notion of Indigenous art as ethnocide, I now move to an examination of the work of Gordon Hookey and Fiona Foley, highlighting how their work is empowering for them as individuals as well as for Indigenous peoples generally. Foley’s Witnessing to Silence

According to Tamisari (2006, p65) [Indigenous] “artists – from ritual leaders in rural communities to artists in urban centres – have always used art to negotiate their place and participate as equals in Australian society”. Rather than being ethnocide and “moderately successful assimilation”, Tamisari (2006, p66) argues that the art of Indigenous Australians “was and still is a tactic of survival – a struggle that it is forced to play out in the territory of the enemy, within the institutions, values, definitions and classifications (i.e. traditional, modern, authentic, tourist ‘Aboriginal art’) in which it

14 See for example the discussion of Gordon Hookey’s work later in the chapter.

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moves, taking advantage of any opportunity to announce itself, confront and challenge.” In her writing, Tamisari draws on de Certeau’s concept of the tactic, an “improper” action belonging to the “other”, often an opportunity seized “on the wing” to resist and undermine the power of the dominant majority (de Certeau, 1988, pxix).

Fiona Foley, Witnessing to Silence, 2004, sculpture, Brisbane Magistrate’s Court,

Brisbane15 Source: Urban Art Projects (2008)

As an example of the tactical use of art, Tamisari (2006, p68) describes the work

of Batjala artist Fiona Foley who in 2002 was enlisted to design a public sculpture as part of the development of the new Magistrate’s Court in Brisbane. Funded by the Queensland Government, Foley’s sculptural project was entitled Witnessing to Silence (2004) and comprised a circle of cast bronze lilies and five stainless steel columns embedded with ash in laminated glass panels. Separated by a space paved with white and grey tiles on which were engraved place names, the metallic lilies and columns “were [initially] presented in celebration and respect for the harshness of life, the destructing and self-renewing force of the Australian environment with its recurrent floods and fires, scorching heat and cooling fogs” (Tamisari, 2006, p69). In other words, the places named were simply thought to be locations that had experienced devastating environmental events such as bushfires or floods since 1788. However, it was not until four months after the official opening that the artist revealed her subterfuge – describing in The Australian how the very colours, materials and elements she used were intended to remember the deaths of the many Aboriginal people whose bodies were often burnt and thrown into the lagoons (Tamisari, 2006, p69). Moreover, the names engraved on the tiles were 94 of those places in Queensland about which it was possible to find written documentation about massacres of Indigenous people (Tamisari, 2006, p69). Since Foley’s sculpture was set against a building which acts as a metaphor for settler authority, her work became “something of a contemporary monument to her people and a unique recording of past history” (UAP, 2008). Because of the double, tactical meaning of Witnessing to Silence, Foley’s work has been described as “arguably one of 15 No further details provided at source – such as size and materials.

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Australia’s most important and potent contemporary art works situated in a public domain” (UAP, 2008). Hookey’s FIGHT: To Survive; To Live; To Die!

In creating works that are overtly political and provocative, Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey comments on the meeting of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures (Nellie Castan Gallery, 2008). Rich in large, brightly coloured text, containing quick wit, iconic Australian imagery, visual puns and wild political cartoons, Hookey’s work explores current issues in contemporary society, “screaming loud what people are whispering” (Nellie Castan Gallery, 2008, Nelson, 2005).

Gordon Hookey, FIGHT: To Survive; To Live; To Die! (2007) detail, oil on canvas, four

parts, 240 X 1080cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Source: Australian Art Collector, Issue 45, July-September 2008, p136.

When it was suggested to Hookey to make an artwork about the death of

Mulrundji Doomadgee who died in police custody on Palm Island in November 2004, the result was FIGHT: To Survive; To Live; To Die! (2007). Because he was not directly involved in the incident, Hookey decided to create a more general painting on black deaths in custody, in his words, taking a more “metaphorical view of what went down and connecting it to how we live as a people” (Hookey, 2008). In this work, Hookey depicts an Aboriginal man in a jail cell – but instead of the Aboriginal man getting bashed, it is he who has done the bashing, with countless police officers lying flat on the jail cell floor. According to Hookey (2008), “The crux of this work is about fighting and as Aboriginal people we’ve had to do that all our life in every strata of this whole system in which we live in”. Large black text at the top of the cell reads: Their Attrociously, Horrific, Savage, Attempts To Violently Brutalise Him, Was Nulla-nulla

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Nullified. Null and Void. As LITTLE DID THEY KNOW…? Below, overlayed on top of the flattened police officers in red, the text continues: LITTLE DID THEY KNOW…! Prior To His InCarSiration He Had Failed To Return The D.V.D.’s To The Video Shop: Mike Tyson’s ‘Greatest Hits VOL. I, II and VI’ And Bruce Lee’s ‘Exit The Dragon’. Crucial to the meaning of the artwork, this text fulfils multiple functions: as narration, visual imagery and a vehicle for creating humour. In this latter role, the text ironically informs us that the incarcerated Aboriginal man learnt how to fight from watching DVDs he failed to return. By using humour in this work, as he does in many of his others, Hookey lightens the burden of moral consciousness for the non-Indigenous viewer (Nelson, 2005). In FIGHT: To Survive; To Live; To Die!, the mini-story about the DVDs has personal significance for Hookey, who recalls experiencing difficulty while trying to borrow. In a talk given at the exhibition of this work, Hookey (2008) recalled how he had recently returned home to look after his mother and went down to the video store to borrow some DVDs. On reaching the counter however, the staff would not allow Hookey to borrow because of the Hookey name – his relatives had borrowed lots of DVDs and failed to return them.

Another important feature of FIGHT: To Survive; To Live; To Die! is Hookey’s use of symbolism. According to Hookey (2008), the repeated crosshairs represent that the death of the Aboriginal man is inevitable; the crow indicates that in death there is freedom and the olive branch carried by the crow symbolises peace - in leaving this world, the man is now at peace. These are just some of the symbols Hookey uses – there is also a wooden spoon, a cloud covered Earth, a metal mallet and a mountain in the distance. By including so much imagery, Hookey’s work can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways.

In the process of making his art, one of Hookey’s stated intentions is to position his work at the interface between black and white society in Australia (Hookey, 2008). For him personally and for his Indigenous community, Hookey (2008) says, “The art that I do is about empowerment, about making my people feel good”. By working at the cultural interface, Hookey’s work can also be interpreted as making an implicit statement about the separateness of the two entities (Hookey, 2008, Morrell, 2007, p108). Particularly through his use of text, Morrell (2007, p108) believes Hookey “speaks the same inventive, ribald, disorderly language as thousands of Indigenous people in Australian cities and towns who would otherwise not have a voice in the hallowed halls of high culture”. Hookey’s play-on-words and multiple oblique references are further described by Morrell (2007, p108) as “a painted equivalent of the joke-cracking and word-mangling narrative style shared by Kooris, Murris, Noongars and other Indigenous people all over Australia”. Significantly, Morrell (2007, p108) says, “quite often a white audience just isn’t going to get it”.

Since his work is stridently political, emphasises the separateness of black and white society and speaks a language that is distinct to urban Indigenous people, Gordon Hookey shatters the idea of Indigenous artists as passive subjects whose works are simply “bought and displayed” and who engage in “moderately successful assimilation”. Furthermore, urban art such as Hookey’s which sits at the interface of Indigenous and non-Indigenous society and responds to contentious political issues, plays an important role in engaging in that intersubjective dialogue which creates Aboriginality (see Langton, 1993, p33).

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Empowerment! In the examples of both Foley and Hookey, art has clearly provided an avenue

for political expression. In Foley’s case, she ingeniously took advantage of the opportunity offered to her by the Public Art Agency and the Queensland Government to highlight the colonial history of massacres of Indigenous peoples in Queensland. In creating a (hitherto) permanent artwork in a public space, a work that is on display all day every day, 365 days a year, Foley’s sculpture takes on a timelessness that transcends far beyond that of an ordinary temporary exhibition piece. Since the subject of Foley’s work would have been deemed inappropriate by those commissioning it, it was necessary for Foley to initially withhold the underlying meaning of the work. According to Martin-Chew (2006, p49), during the concept design process

a linear element in the paving was seen to be problematic, given that it could be read as ‘reminscent of the shape of handcuffs’. The list of place names caused concern because it ‘creates a memorial effect’, and it was suggested that the text element ‘will equate disaster with the courts. Finally, the client (the Department of Justice and the Attorney General) was ‘keen to promote Queensland rather than national issues or concerns if possible’.

Despite this obvious tampering with the intellectual property of the artist, Foley continued to make her work, cleverly withholding the meaning of her work until after the work was approved, created and officially opened (Martin-Chew, 2006, p49). If once Foley revealed her subterfuge authorities had called for the work to be removed or amended, this would have undoubtedly caused outrage amongst Indigenous peoples and drawn more media attention to this issue. Because of this, I argue that (despite the obvious attempts at censorship and the highly fraught ground on which Foley was working,) Foley always remained in a win-win position – clearly demonstrating how art can be both tactical (in de Certeau’s terms) and empowering for Indigenous peoples.16

In Gordon Hookey’s work, he is able to speak to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians about confronting political issues. In speaking multiple visual and textual languages, Hookey’s work is effective for communicating meaning to a variety of audiences. By having his work displayed in a mainstream gallery, arguably the most prominent gallery in Australia17, Gordon Hookey is able to draw attention to Aboriginal deaths in custody – one of the very problems which prevents Willis and Fry from perceiving artistic production as an achievement or a marker of progress. By being afforded the opportunity to raise questions and comment on Aboriginal deaths in custody through FIGHT: To Survive; To Live; To Die!, art can be seen as a means of empowerment for Gordon Hookey; a vehicle for conveying an Indigenous perspective.

In contrast to Willis and Fry who view Indigenous art solely as “moderately successful assimilation”, Fiona Foley and Gordon Hookey demonstrate through their art a tactical utilisation of Western media, styles and sites in order to stage politico-cultural

16 Interestingly, at the time when Foley revealed the real meaning of her work, the then Queensland Arts minister Anna Bligh said she did not feel ambushed by the revelation and that a work which encouraged thinking about issues of justice and injustice was appropriate to the site. Bligh stated "I hope her experience with this work will encourage her to feel she can be as open as she wants in the future." (Cosic, 2005) Whether this would have been the response if Foley had revealed the meaning of her work from the outset is debatable.

17 The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

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interventions which challenge the power of non-Indigenous society whilst simultaneously representing Indigenous counter-histories and perspectives. They engage in intercultural dialogue, both drawing attention to and commenting on highly political issues of massacres of Indigenous Australians and Aboriginal deaths in custody. Their work is not tainted by commodification and rather than contributing to cultural destruction, the art of Foley and Hookey can in fact be seen to do the opposite, empowering Indigenous people and strengthening Indigenous culture.

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Conclusion

Urban Indigenous art continues to be a highly contested arena where artists struggle against colonial relations of power, derisive categorisations and a lack of attention or conversely, an overall pessimistic reception. In this conclusion I summarise the content of my thesis, discuss a number of problems that arose and reiterate some of the most important points.

In Chapter One I traced the historical emergence and reception of urban

Indigenous art. I then critically analysed Giles Auty’s review of the 1995 National Aboriginal Art Award which emphasised the deep antiquity of Indigenous culture, positioned Indigenous peoples as primitive, defined authentic in terms of the exotic “other” and strongly favoured traditional art forms over contemporary ones. In questioning the authenticity of contemporary urban Indigenous art, Auty and others could be seen to be questioning the authenticity and identity of over 70 per cent of Indigenous Australians. Some of the reasons posited for the rejection of urban Indigenous art in Chapter One included the use of Western materials and the blending of different art styles, the categorical nature of Western art history, and the ability to reinforce dominance over and marginalise urban Indigenous people through criticism. Other reasons included an attempt to redirect attention away from the culpable “centre”, render urban Indigenous people invisible and exempt oneself from having to properly engage with the meaning of a work. Rather than being dismissed as a cause of “inauthenticity”, Chapter One also demonstrated how intercultural contact could be seized by artists such as La Perouse’s Esme Timbery to adapt and innovate their art. In her work, Timbery used recognisable subject matter which ensured no viewer was alienated from creating meaning while simultaneously encouraging them to acknowledge Sydney’s rich Indigenous heritage and the presence of traditional artistic practices in an urban centre.

In Chapter Two I examined how photography such as 19th century staged studio portraits represented Indigenous peoples as primitive, savage, a scientific curiosity and the last remnants of a dying race; often presented as powerless, nameless subjects frozen in time. In contrast to these negative portrayals of Indigenous peoples, I showed how Indigenous artists such as Mervyn Bishop have used photography to control re-presentation, make Indigenous people visible, challenge stereotypes and provide social commentary. Applying a postcolonial framework to Bishop’s work, I was reluctant to interpret Bishop’s work as resistance by merely using the medium of photography. In the works discussed in Chapter Two, Bishop depicted good times and powerful and graceful subjects in control of their lives. In his Burnt Bridge photographs, Bishop drew attention to appalling living conditions but at the same time invested his subjects with a sense of dignity and agency.

In Chapter Three I argued against Willis and Fry’s (1989) notions of Indigenous art as impure, tainted by commodification, not functioning as “disinterested aesthetic speculation” and its production not being an “achievement”. The main argument of Willis and Fry however was that Indigenous art production contributed to cultural destruction, a point I strongly refuted using examples of work by Batjala artist Fiona Foley and Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey. In the work of Foley and Hookey, their art clearly provided an avenue for political expression, an opportunity to undermine dominant society and hence empower urban Indigenous people and strengthen

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Indigenous culture. Although the production of urban Indigenous art could be regarded as empowering, the case of Foley clearly demonstrated how there are still relations of power at play which affect the way Indigenous art is made and exhibited. In Foley’s case, only through the act of subversion was she able to achieve the placement of a meaningful artwork on a significant public site in Brisbane (Martin-Chew, 2006, p50).

Problems

In researching my honours thesis one of the problems I faced was finding bibliographic details of criticisms of urban Indigenous art. In attempting to detail examples of urban Indigenous art being rejected as inauthentic (too Western, not truly Aboriginal etc.) the vast majority of Indigenous sources did not describe exact details such as who said what, where and when. Precisely because criticisms of urban art have been extremely contentious, it seemed these criticisms were more likely to be made “off the record” and (rather than being published) were instead related generally by Indigenous artists and curators. Despite this setback, I made a concerted effort to find as many published examples of this authenticity debate as possible, and was surprised to find examples such as Willis and Fry (1989), Auty (1995) and Cockington (2006). What surprised me most about these examples was the assumed freedom and disregard with which the authors wrote about Indigenous art and culture, making authoritative determinations with little or no input from Indigenous people.

In writing my thesis one of my aims was to highlight the diverse forms of art created by Indigenous artists from urban areas. While I discussed four different examples of Esme Timbery’s shellwork, Mervyn Bishop’s photography, Fiona Foley’s sculpture and Gordon Hookey’s painting, I acknowledge that these artists are just a few of the hundreds I could have written about. Writing about the work of Mervyn Bishop also proved particularly challenging. Although he was the sole focus of Chapter Two, Bishop’s body of work is so extensive and so historically significant that it is unlikely any thesis or book could ever do it justice. In researching Bishop’s work, there was a notable lack of analysis or interpretation of any of Bishop’s photography except for his iconic Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pours soil into the hands of traditional land owner Vincent Lingiari, Northern Territory, 1975. Due to Bishop’s importance to the development of urban Indigenous art and the aforementioned historical and social significance of his body of work, it was disappointing to find this gap in the literature – a gap which perhaps exemplifies the disrepute and disregard urban art has suffered. Through writing my thesis, I hope my work will contribute to filling this gap and also provide some recognition of the work of artists who may not have the same prominence as artists working in other areas, particularly in the general Indigenous art literature.

Another problem I encountered was the relatively narrow focus and short time frame of an honours thesis which prevented me from approaching (in person) all the artists whose work I discussed in my thesis. Future research would ideally engage more directly with artists who do not have a substantial literature written about their work. Future research could also focus on specific urban communities and perhaps even try to gauge Indigenous peoples’ responses to various artworks. By doing this, future studies may be able to more clearly pinpoint some of the functions of urban Indigenous art such as creating and affirming identities and even elucidating the linkages between art and health and wellbeing.

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In my thesis I argued that non-Indigenous audiences and members of the art industry need to rethink categories and terminology historically imposed on Indigenous art and artists such as “urban”, “traditional” and “authentic”. While demonstrably problematic, to simply abolish these terms and refrain from using them in discourses on Indigenous art does not provide the solution and hardly serves as a decolonising action. Just as deleting the word “race” does not end racial discrimination and refusing to mention a woman’s gender does not end discrimination against women (Cowlishaw, 2004, pp. 60-61), refusing to label urban Indigenous as urban does not fix the problem of artists being considered inauthentic, having lost their culture and not truly Aboriginal. It also does not fix the problem of urban art being largely ignored by galleries and art dealers (particularly through the 1980s and 1990s) and artists still being denied the opportunities available to other Australian artists. What is required however, is a positive identification with the term “urban”, one that recognises its limitations and acknowledges the diversity and dynamism of artistic styles and forms. Ultimately, to avoid non-Indigenous people being the ones afforded the privilege to “make” or “unmake” Indigenous people in the process of subjectation, I advocate that artistic categories and styles be self-determined. In my introduction I flagged the risk that a thesis such as mine had the ability to reproduce discursive relations of power between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Although I engaged with Indigenous points of view and utilised aspects of purportedly decolonising methodologies such as postcolonialism and critical whiteness studies, there are still significant limitations to my approach. While decolonising methodologies may be useful for ethical reflexive practice, they may be considered ultimately inadequate for inverting authorial power relationships. For example, in writing my thesis and taking on the position of author, I was the one who controlled the topic of discussion, chose which other authors to engage with and ultimately argued (or decided) who was right and wrong. Through the power and agency of the authorial position, Indigenous people and Indigenous culture remained subject to my analysis. While arguing for the recognition and acceptance of urban Indigenous art by the wider Australian art community, there was also the risk that I was reasserting the discourses of authenticity and tradition, albeit from a different angle. Furthermore, the very fact that I am a white male writing about Indigenous art and culture in the academy means that I could be seen to be re-instituting colonial relations of power. Despite these limitations, I made a concerted effort to produce my thesis respectfully and reflexively, having undertaken consultation, conducted extensive research and endeavouring to remain critically aware and engaged throughout. Importantly too, I clearly outlined my purpose from the beginning, acknowledged the highly contested space in which my work is located and discussed the weaknesses of my approach. Final words It is inappropriate and inaccurate to describe urban Indigenous art as inauthentic because cultures change and traditions change; very few Aboriginal people live non-Aboriginal lives and intercultural contact and influence of artistic forms has occurred for thousands of years, both in other parts of the world and in Australia prior to 1788. It is equally inappropriate for non-Indigenous people to describe the production of Indigenous art as “moderately successful assimilation” because it assumes “we” know

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more about Indigenous culture than Indigenous people themselves and because in line with Djon Mundine, all Aboriginal art is in a sense about Aboriginal-ness. Furthermore, the works of Foley and Hookey speak for themselves in refuting this argument, clearly showing how art can provide an outlet for the voices of Indigenous peoples, provide unique records of history, send powerful messages to non-Indigenous audiences and underscore the separateness of non-Indigenous and Indigenous society rather than emphasising the assimilation of the latter into the former. In my thesis I have shown that urban Indigenous art is crucial to Indigenous communities because it presents Indigenous perspectives, challenges negative stereotypes of Indigenous peoples, and provides an outlet for political expression as well as a means of empowerment. As Indigenous artists and cultural theorists have argued and demonstrated, urban Indigenous art is a valid cultural expression that deserves acknowledgement and respect.

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