Duality—My story, my place
Pamela Croft is an urban aboriginal artist caught in the cultural duality of a white Australian up bringing and education, and a growing awareness of her aboriginality. The desire to rediscover and assimilate a positive aboriginal identity was reflected in her first solo exhibition at Gallerie Brutal.
While many contemporary Australian artists are busy trying to trample underfoot the aura of Western culture and its Euro-centred history, aboriginal Australians are doing all they can to reinstate the spiritual centre of their culture, and assert the presence and value of their traditionally based cultural products. Urban aboriginals tend to be caught between two cultural identities of white and aboriginal, but are denied full access to either. As artists, they often find themselves in the position, as Croft has, of being criticised for using their aboriginality , or damned for not using it enough.
In Duality-My Story, My Place, the presence of white culture seemed to dominate in terms of media and presentation. Overall it was hard to gauge what Croft wanted to say about her aboriginality. Although she used recognisable motifs such as dots and stripes to make the statement "I am aborignal and want to declare myself as such", much of the work displaying these motifs, seemed to contain no more than that statement. In some of the prints, aboriginal motifs stripped of their spiritual potency, came across as empty decoration. On the other hand, didgeridoo music issuing from the black box of a cassette player on the floor, could be seen as a critique of the decentering dominance of white culture. But I may be reading into this gesture more than the artist intended.
Closer to her position was