Indigenous art of the Cape York and the rainforest
'Story Place’ sings through the Queensland Art Gallery like the winds that blow in off the sea across Cape York. In this celebration of the art of the Indigenous people of Cape York and the rainforest—and it is a celebration—all the cramped darkness that often accompanies ‘ethnographic’ museum displays has been swept aside to be replaced by light and space.
As the first major exhibition of the Indigenous art of this region, it has been a long time coming. Compared to the art of the Central Desert which has enjoyed the attentions of major exhibitions and the art market since the 1980s, the Indigenous art of Cape York and the rainforest has largely been ignored. Like the Cape itself, it has remained an unknown, without a grip on our imaginations. The Queensland Art Gallery, under the directorship of Doug Hall, may have opened its doors to this state’s Indigenous art from the time of the ‘Balance 1990’ exhibition, but a curatorial commitment to the far north has come to fruition only in more recent years.
In Story Place, the Gallery has not simply staged a survey exhibition. As David Burnett explains in his introductory essay in the Story Place catalogue, the Gallery saw this as ‘an exhibition that we hope will in some way act as a catalyst for the recognition and rejuvenation of art practices in the Cape’ (p.24). Such a hope is predicated on the way in which culture and ceremony is passed from generation to generation, and the way both are tied to place, particularly to country of special spiritual or cultural significance.
Links between traditional work and current practice form fascinating threads throughout the spaces of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline