Crosscurrents in Australian First Nations and Non-Indigenous Art

This edited collection examines art resulting from cross-cultural interactions between Australian First Nations and non-Indigenous people, from the British invasion to today. Focusing on themes of collaboration and dialogue, the book includes two conversations between First Nations and non-Indigenous authors and an historian's self-reflexive account of mediating between traditional owners and an international art auction house to repatriate art. There are studies of 'reverse appropriation' by early nineteenth-century Aboriginal carvers of tourist artefacts and the production of enigmatic toa. Cross-cultural dialogue is traced from the post-war period to 'Aboriginalism' in design and the First Nations fashion industry of today. Transculturation, conceptualism, and collaboration are contextualised in the 1980s, a pivotal decade for the growth of collaborative First Nations exhibitions. Within the current circumstances of political protest in photographic portraiture and against the mining of sacred Aboriginal land, Crosscurrents in Australian First Nations and Non-Indigenous Art testifies to the need for Australian institutions to collaborate with First Nations people more often and better. This book will appeal to students and scholars of art history, Indigenous anthropology, and museum and heritage studies.

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

Introduction 1. The Weight of Grief - Maree Clarke and Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll on Artist-centricity 2. On Working as an Aboriginal Museum Director and Curator of the Berndt Museum 3. Price and Provenance: William Barak as an Artist in the Market 4. The Duplicity of Emus and Kangaroos: Coats of Arms from the Australian Frontier 5. The Toa of the Dieri 6. 'The Arts are where Cultures Meet': A Cross-cultural Analysis of Aboriginal Art in Fashion and Textile Design 7. Aesthetically Similar but Politically Far Apart: The Art and Designs of Bill Onus and Byram Mansell during the Assimilationist Era 8. Shared Motives: New Art and Curatorial Collaborations in the 1980s 9. Decolonisation and Conceptual Art: Collaboration, Appropriation, Transculturation Ian McLean 10. Widening the Aperture: Cross-cultural Collaboration - A Perspective from Borroloola 11. Wrecking Culture: Australian Iconoclash 2020