Heritage is on the move, and artists are helping fuel the momentum! Liberated from concepts linked firmly to the past, heritage—and particularly cultural heritage—now has a far more dynamic character, celebrating qualities of presence and transformation. This shift has occurred where engagement with heritage involves more transformation and less preservation. A book published earlier this year captures the momentum perfectly in its title: Heritage in Action, Making the Past in the Present.1 It represents new thinking about the transference of the past into the present, blending concepts of cultural heritage, cultural memory and the cultural imaginary. Making old things new is not exactly a revolutionary idea owned by the contemporary era, but relationships of time are clearly radicalised in this mindset. There is a new order of truth about the past that is fundamentally contingent on who interprets it, and how they do so, and young artists in particular are revelling in shaping a past that makes sense for them.
Elisa Jane Carmichael is a case in point. Her art explores her Quandamooka Indigenous heritage from Queensland’s Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) and Moorgumpin (Moreton Island),2 and is part of the regenerative spirit of a new generation of artists looking to reshape relationships with cultural traditions. Indigenous communities near metropolitan centres like Brisbane are among the most dispossessed and displaced since the onset of colonisation; to the point that for the majority of the non-Indigenous population the Indigenous heritage of these areas is invisible, erased, or fundamentally assimilated. Artists like Carmichael never upheld this perspective, of course, and imbue their art with ideas and images that transform the past and present into a future that begins today. The art is... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Carrying home #1 (saltwater), 2017. Digital print on rag pearl paper (unframed). Photographs Jasper Coleman.
Eugarie shells in my front yard at home, gum leaves in my backyard here, 2017. Synthetic polymer on canvas, 77 x 105cm. Photographs Mick Richards.
