Visual Arts Art of Engagement: Practice-Led research into concepts of urban Aboriginal art and heritage

Abstract

My practice-led research explores developments that have underpinned contemporary Aboriginal art within an urban Australian context, taking into consideration the social, cultural, and political influences from colonial times through to the present. This inquiry has three primary components: the emergence of an urban-based Aboriginal ontology, the colonial archive and its ambivalent role in Aboriginal cultural healing and contemporary cultural heritage, and an interrogation of the conceptual tension between ontological being and becoming in the context of Aboriginality today.

I ask the question: What does it mean for me, disconnected from traditional material cultural practices, to "authenticate" my life and cultural identity, through reclaiming and replicating archival objects? These objects were created in the context of functional and/or ceremonial practice, under colonisation became objects of ethnographic curiosity and taxonomy, and are increasingly objects of contemporary art and contemporary cultural heritage.

My exploration has been informed by urban-based artists of the 1980s through to the present, including the Sydney-based Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, individual artists such as Trevor Nickolls, Gordon Bennett, Destiny Deacon, Leah King Smith, Christian Thompson and Brook Andrew. I have also explored the work of the late-nineteenth century New South Wales south coast artist, Mickey of Ulladulla. These artists have been significant for me in the context of the time in which they were practicing, the expressions of Aboriginality I perceive demonstrated through their respective art works, and the relationship between identity, place and heritage.

I draw on theorists, historians and philosophers to inform my thesis. These include Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Martin Nakata, and Linda Tuhiwai-Smith, who represent important perspectives on contemporary Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies. Rosi Braidotti, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Nikos Papastergiadis provide valuable insight into contemporary discourses of globalism and cosmopolitanism. I consider these theories with regard to the "diasporic" nature of many urban-based Aboriginal realities, and the increasingly "glocal" nature of Indigenous art engagements. I also draw on the work of Ian McLean who has contributed significantly to the critical understanding of contemporary Aboriginal art, historically, and as a manifestation of the ongoing process of transcultural negotiation.

The resultant artworks represent a personal archive of cultural ambivalence - a serious folly - consisting of polystyrene artefacts inspired by early archival investigations, colonial notions of cultural progress, and the problematic concept of cultural authenticity. Materially and culturally problematic, the work struggles with personal experiences of alienation and abjection.