Beyond the Aesthetic: A Study of Indigeneity and Narrative in Contemporary Australian Art

Abstract

Over the past decade, some of the most celebrated art to emerge from Australia has been the work of a group of Indigenous artists whose practice has been instrumental in relocating Indigenous experience and establishing an Indigenous sense of place within the complex social, political and cultural landscape of contemporary Australia. Their work is rooted in the urban Indigenous art movement that swept across the southeast of Australia in the mid-1980s. Like many artists once on the periphery of mainstream artistic narratives, however, these artists have benefited from globalisation, and they now find their work in the evolving discussions of contemporary art worldwide. No other group of artists has offered a more thorough or far-reaching artistic investigation of the history and lived experience of Indigenous Australians since colonisation, yet their work continues to be overlooked as a core area of academic inquiry. This thesis seeks to both illuminate its cultural significance and to state the case for continued art historical research on work tied to the narrative of Australia’s shared history. It does so through an in-depth reading of artworks produced by Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Brook Andrew, Daniel Boyd, Dianne Jones, Christopher Pease and Christian Thompson since 2000. At the forefront of these pieces are narratives underlining the subjugation of Australia’s Indigenous history, the intergenerational impact of colonisation and its legacy and the continued misrepresentations by others of Indigenous people and culture. Show more