Review of Art Exhibition
23.07.1993 - 10.10.1993 'Aratjara. Art of the First Australians. Traditional and Contemporary Works of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Artists'
This review is adapted from pages 382-384 of the free PDF book 'Narrated World - Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art'
Exhibition Review
The title of the exhibition that made Indigenous Australian art visible as contemporary art for the first time in Germany was 'Aratjara. Kunst der ersten Australier'. It was exhibited at the important state art museum Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf and subsequently travelled to London to the Hayward Gallery and to Humlebæk to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.
The initial discussions and planning for the exhibition spanned eight years, with a heroic commitment on two continents. In Germany, the Swiss-born artist and curator Bernhard Lüthi was at the centre of the planning. He used all his personal and professional contacts from his long career to realise collaborations with renowned museums and to raise funding of two million DM (approximately 1.6 million Euro in 2020 prices). In Australia, Indigenous activists Gary Foley and Charles (Chicka) Dixon and Indigenous artist Lin Onus used all their contacts with artists and their professional roles on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council (ATSIAB). As a result, approximately 150 artworks were on loan from artists, private collections, and major museums in Australia. Foley and Dixon were not reappointed to the Council, but their successors in ATSIAB supported the exhibition when it was finally shown in 1993-1994. ATSIAB funded the travel of seventy artists and others to visit one or more of the three exhibition venues. [1]
The concept of the exhibition, as described in the introduction of the catalogue, was to let the art and the artists speak for themselves. As a result, about half of the seventeen chapters of text were written by Indigenous authors, and the artworks came from all over Australia, from the southern tip to the central desert areas to the islands of the Torres Strait in the far north. Conceived as a counterweight to the chauvinist celebrations in Australia in 1988 of 200 years of colonial rule, political statements denouncing racism or demanding land rights were very evident in the artworks from the south of Australia and in the bark paintings from the north. As the artist Galarrwuy Yunupiŋu wrote,
»Just as our struggle for land is still strong, so is our fight to maintain and revive our culture, for our land and culture are indivisible from our lives. Therefore, I would ask the reader to remember this […]. I am not asking you to ignore the beauty of the work; to my eyes the art of our people surpasses that of other cultures?-?I can?t ignore my own prejudices! But I do ask that you recognise that the paintings […] are not just beautiful pictures. They are about Aboriginal law, Aboriginal life. They are also about our resistance over the last 200 years, and our refusal to forget the land of our ancestors. They are about cultural, social and political survival. You can′t get any clearer statement than that.« [2]
Djon Mundine, an Indigenous expert in art, was chosen as the travelling curator for the exhibition. He was already well known in Australia since 1988 as the initiator of the 'Aboriginal Memorial', an installation by artists from central Arnhem Land. The 'Aboriginal Memorial', that shows 200 painted hollow log poles, each symbolising one of the 200 years since the annexation of Australia in 1788 and the death of many Indigenous people, has been part of the permanent exhibition of the National Gallery of Australia since 1988.
Mundine pointed out that 'Aratjara' was very well attended at all venues, with a total of more than a quarter of a million visitors and that all catalogues were sold out. However, he observed time and again that visitors expected a different exhibition style from that commonly used for contemporary European art:
The curators tried to hang the exhibition in a modernist fashion — or give each piece a lot of space so viewers could focus on its individual attributes. The labelling was minimal — name of work, artist, date, country and materials — just as would be the case with any other contemporary art. But this was greeted with dismay. How could viewers understand the work without extended labels and photographs (despite the generous catalogue, an acoustic-guide and several informative handouts)? [1]
The exhibition of Indigenous Australian art was planned as contemporary art. The artworks were valuable loans from major Australian art museums, with clear provenance (i.e., from individual artists), they were exhibited in a major German contemporary art museum and they were selected by a large team of knowledgeable curators. The exhibition described themes of artistic inspiration and techniques in a 350-page catalogue in German and was supported by the Australian government. Unfortunately a stable local (or national) network of art scholars in Germany was lacking, so further discourse about this art quickly subsided.
[1] Mundine, Djon. 'Ich Bin Ein Aratjara: 20 Years Later'. Artlink 33, no. 2 (June 2013): 50–53. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20140304071527/https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/3952/ich-bin-ein-aratjara-20-years-later/
[2] Yunupiŋu, Galarrwuy: 'The Black/White Conflict'. In: Caruana, Wally (ed.): Windows on the Dreaming: Aboriginal Paintings in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra 1989, pp. 16-17.
Further Reviews
Ingram, Terry. 'Germany taps into Aboriginal Art', Financial Review, April 29, 1993. See www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/germany-taps-into-aboriginal-art-19930429-k5d9v .
Haase, Amine. 'Aratjara', Kunstforum International, Vol. 123, 1993. Accessed on 7th July 2024 at www.kunstforum.de/artikel/aratjara/
Gilchrist, Stephen. 'Video-lecture: Defining Moments: Aratjara: Art of the First Australians', Published 12th October 2020. Accessed on 7th July 2024 at acca.melbourne/video/defining-moments-aratjara-art-of-the-first-australians-fluent-with-dr-stephen-gilchrist/
