Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 Seeing Aboriginal Art : Settler Classifications of the Work of William Barak
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'This article sets out to demonstrate the uneven history of settler-Australians’ labelling of Indigenous cultural objects and documents as ‘art’. Using the case of William Barak (c. 1824–1903) as its example, it asks, how was Barak’s work understood prior to the major re-evaluations of Aboriginal art as ‘art’ in the 1980s? A series of fleeting moments of understanding, exchange and recognition provide a hitherto-overlooked genealogy of the shifting reception of Barak’s paintings and drawings within his own lifetime and up to the 1940s. These moments encompass his agency in diplomatic exchange, his peer-to-peer relationships in Melbourne’s colonial artworld, and the early placement of Barak’s work in cultural institutions leading eventually to the first inclusion of his work in an art exhibition in 1943. Selected examples from this trajectory demonstrate an uneven path to recognition while illustrating their ability to exceed the category of art from a western viewpoint.' (Publication abstract)

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    y separately published work icon Australian Historical Studies vol. 54 no. 4 2023 27235576 2023 periodical issue 'In this year of the Referendum for the Voice and Australian First Nations contemporary art politics, including ‘decolonisation’, Black Lives Matter and the call for ‘truth-telling’, a review of the nation’s eurocentric art history is necessary and timely. Until relatively recently, the category of Aboriginal art was constructed as ‘primitive’ in relation to the more ‘sophisticated’ European-Australian art, while the category of ‘Australian art’ itself excluded recognition of the lived experience and visual cultures of First Nations Australians. As we demonstrate in this journal issue, dismantling the eurocentric notions of art and history, while being alert to racism and the eliminatory tendencies of Australian settler colonialism, is not a straightforward process.' (Editorial introduction) 2023 pg. 718-739
Last amended 5 Dec 2023 07:36:38
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