Whilst in Europe in late 2006 I researched the reception there of contemporary Australian Indigenous art. The results were grim. Tokenism and primitivism still reign supreme where this art is concerned, and despite all of the recent hype regarding Australian Indigenous artworks included in the public spaces of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, there is actually very little of the art to be seen in major art centres such as London, Paris and Berlin. An anomaly exists between an evidently healthy market for Australian Indigenous art and the almost non-existent public exposure or critical writing regarding the art in an international context. The longevity of the market depends on its ability to endure beyond the ‘flavour of the month’ phase and enter into a wider discourse in which Australian Indigenous culture contributes its own intellectual and aesthetic perspectives to the global circulation of ideas. There is a real need for a critical mass to form around concepts of ‘worldly Indigenous art’ and how it engages with global cultural exchange. We have absorbed postcolonial lessons about respect for cultural difference and now different cultures need to find ways of negotiating usefully with this difference. Contemporary Indigenous artists from the remote Queensland community of Lockhart River are among those who inherently teach us about this negotiation.
Before considering the ‘worldly’ art of Lockhart River some consideration of the critical reception of contemporary Australian Indigenous art back home in Australia is useful. Indeed, it is widely felt that there is none. Discourse regarding the art generally lacks rigour and focus and rarely gets beyond descriptive passages sanctioned by reference to Dreamings. It seems that a cultural hermeticism applies to this art... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline