Narrated World: Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art © 2022, 2024 (open access)
Comment by Professor Ian McLean, Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History, University of Melbourne:
This is an excellent overview of contemporary Indigenous Australian art by two German art collectors, drawing on a wide range of research and situating the art movement in the context of its decolonial struggles. While the book’s focus is art produced in the many small remote Australian art centres, reference is also made to urban-based artists trained in Western art schools. The authors also address the unfortunate primitivism that continues to frame much European reception of Indigenous art, commenting on their own experiences promoting the art in the German artworld.
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This website is dedicated to providing information on contemporary Indigenous Australian art, especially to readers in Germany, based on our many years of experience and scholarly research.
New Publication "Narrated World: Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art © 2022, 2024
The book "Narrated World: Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art", authored by Elisabeth Bähr, curator for Indigenous Australian art, and Dr. Lindsay Frost, freelance consultant, is now available at the ArtHistoricum archive of the University of Heidelberg (Germany) as a free open-access PDF document at https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/9068/.
This book aims to promote discourse in Germany and beyond concerning contemporary Indigenous Australian art, an art that is almost exclusively a narrative one. This publication is an open-access English translation of the 496-page hardcover book “Erzählte Welt” that was published in German by Wasmuth & Zohlen Verlag in November 2022 (ISBN ?9783803040381).
Unique to this book are analyses of techniques, motifs, styles, and themes, and their developments across two centuries, in Indigenous Australian art. It uses high-quality images (280), many in large format (146), to illustrate the principles on which this art is based, citing quotations from artists and art historians. An extensive bibliography of over 400 references, electronically accessible wherever possible, is included.
The ten chapters can be read in almost any order. The short introduction 01 Preliminaries explains some of the terminology and the limits of coverage of this book: The art is even more diverse than shown here. Art lovers may prefer to next browse the chapter 02 The Bähr/Frost Collection with its large-format images, to be inspired to delve deeper into this innovative art. Chapter 03 Individuality and Community gives examples of some artists careers and development, based on five women and five male artists from a wide range of backgrounds, to provide insight into artistic diversity and to counter stereotypical ideas. Chapter 04 Sources of Inspiration describes the artists’ philosophical/cultural/political reference systems, insofar as they are relevant to their art, including confrontation with colonialism and ongoing racial discrimination.
Chapter 05 Narrated World uses over 70 pages and numerous works of art to convey the wealth of themes that illustrate the cultures lived today. Detailed interpretations of artworks are presented and accompanied by background information. The chapter highlights mutual inspirations: intra-, inter-, and transcultural. Chapter 06 Techniques and Materials describes innovative techniques, such as the emphasis on haptics, or luminosity in painting, as well as some specialized materials (tree bark, earth pigments). Chapter 07 Brief History of Indigenous Art provides an overview of the art movement, across Australia, from the beginnings until the early 2020s, choosing about a dozen centres of art as examples. The gradual acceptance of this art into Australian modern art museums is outlined.
Chapter 08 (In)Acceptance of Indigenous Australian Art in Germany – Part I: A Report summarises 30 years of personal experience with exhibitions and institutions in Germany and how contemporary Indigenous Australian art has been exhibited (or ignored) in Germany to date. Chapter 09 (In)Acceptance of Indigenous Australian Art in Germany – Part II: Analysis embeds those examples into a theoretical description of the sociology of art worlds, identifying a number of mechanisms that help or hinder the acceptance into modern art museums of such 'foreign' art, i.e., art that stands outside the established art-historical canon.
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