ADAM HILL AND DANIE MELLOR
At the beginning of formal speeches and welcomes, it has become customary over recent years in Australia to acknowledge the Indigenous custodians of the land on which the gathering stands. It is gesture of goodwill that is perhaps better than no gesture at all, but, like sculptural monuments, it is a mixed blessing. Paradoxically, such consolatory gestures of remembrance allow us more easily to forget, and not to act. The prime real estate of the foreshores of Sydney Harbor, for example, will never be returned to the Gadigal people. The disinheritance of land, land as a distant memory, are what preoccupy two contemporary Aboriginal artists, Adam Hill and Danie Mellor.
Where traditional Aboriginal art is inextricable from its spiritual ties to the land, Aboriginal art which works with a more Western idiom is preoccupied with the loss of land. Thus so-called non-traditional (urban) Aboriginal art typically straddles two areas of artistic discourse, the one inherited and the one lost. Although Hill and Mellor are far from being the only artists to work in this area, their work is distinguished for its wit and energy.
Where Danie Mellor’s work is texturally rich and poetic, Adam Hill’s commentary is laced with humorous bluster. An amalgam of poster art and hip-hop, Hill’s painting still has no parallel in the Aboriginal art community. His works are typically acerbic attacks on abuses to the environment, and the continued reluctance of White communities to acknowledge the Aboriginal presence, past and present. Whydoesadog… (2004) is a large manifesto-like work, depicting the ubiquitous suburban home complete with fence and driveway. The house is pearl-white. Watering the lawn is a bald, singleted slobby man flanked by lawnmower and trusty... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline