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February 17, 2007
The three paintings below are from the online archive of the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane. I 've turned to the QAG after my visit to the National Gallery in Canberra and saw the paucity of their Indigenous art collection. It was a primitive footnote to the universal (European) avant garde art of the first half of the 20th century. The avant garde works all looked so conservative---it was like stepping back into a modernist time warp: that was how things were way back then.
'Primitivism' is a disgrace in terms of a collection policy. The NGA is still besotted by works, such as David Hockney's A Bigger Grand Canyon, and they are blind to the brilliant and innovative work being done by Indigenous artists in Australia over the last two decades to renew their visual language. It would appear that the NGA is still fighting the Blue Pole high modernist battles of the 1970s, instead of developing a tradition of Indigenous art from the colonial period to show the different strands of Indigneous art, how the artists rework their old visual language to express contemporary concerns, and how they break away from indigenous art being traditionally classified as magico-religious. Shouldn't that be one of the responsibilities of the NGA?
The exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery is entitled Fortitude: New Art from Queensland 2000 It includes some work by an Indigenous artist Rosella Namok, from Lockhart River in Cape York.
Rosella Namok, Big house, 1999-2000, Acrylic on canvas
Lockhart River is a small community near the sea on the eastern side on the peninsula, and the work produced is often directly related to the isolated community's iconographic traditions and concerns. Namok has the ability to take the traditional visual language of Indigenous art and reshape the old signs to create some contemporary artworks.
Though Rosella Namok often paints with her fingers — a technique that relates to the tradition of sand drawing and body painting---she is not categorized as a primitive artist vis-a-vis the (international) avant garde; nor is she seen as just producing kitschy tourist art. The art institution holds Rosella Namok to be one of the most widely-acclaimed and best known of an emerging group of young Aboriginal artists in Cape York; a group commonly referred to as the Lockhart River Art Gang.
Rosella Namok, Para Way, 2000, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
To non-Aborigines, much contemporary Aboriginal art is read as abstraction. Even given the story, we never get it, because the magicoreligious bit eludes us. We could begin by accepting the fuzzy spaces of the art institution's old art history styles in a post-colonial society, the diversity of contemporary Indigenous art practice, and look at the way Indigenous artists are breaking new ground whilst working in their traditions.
Rosella Namok, Kaapay and Kuyan today, 1999, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
The painting depicts the two halves, or moieties, into which Ungkum society is traditionally divided and which one you are . . . ‘kaapay’ or ‘kuyan’ .... depends on your father.
This approach by the QAG in the Fortitude and survey exhibitions is refreshing as it enable us to look at the works of Indigenous artists as contemporary art, rather than being obliged to put Indigenous works into the spiritual/religious/Dreamtime category--- interpreted as non-western magico-religious---because we don't get it. Why not accept that young Indigenous artists such as Rosella Namok are producing contemporary art, just like non-Indigenous artists. That is what the QAG is inviting us to do. in doing so it breaks new ground when compared to the NGA.
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The thing that I have noticed about Indigenous art is that the line between Crap and Good is Blurred.
Seems that a lot is given a Free ticket on the bus because it is done by Aborigines. Yes a lot is great but, 2 of the pics above could be hanging in a primary school classroom.