Round Robin – Curating and Writing Indigenous Art: Tokenism, Pluralism and other Perspectives.
How have curators and writers of Indigenous and non-Indigenous heritage presented Indigenous art, and what is at stake in a critical engagement with their work? Such questions are current and must continue if we are to effectively navigate and represent these plural perspectives, while addressing the concept of cultural “Otherness” and avoiding tokenism.
Join artists, anthropologists, curators and theorists in a discussion that coincides with the exhibition ‘Still in my mind: Gurindji location, experience and visuality’.
Graham Akhurst is an Aboriginal writer and academic from the Kokomini of Northern Queensland. He has been published with ‘Mascara Literary Review’ and ‘Westerly’ for creative non-fiction, and the ‘Australian Book Review’, ‘Cordite’, ‘Verity La’ and ‘Off the Coast’ (Maine America) for poetry.
Bianca Beetson is of the Gubbi Gubbi people of the Sunshine Coast. She is a member of the Campfire Group as well as the ProppaNOW artists group, both based in Brisbane. Beetson is the Head of Queensland College of Art’s Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art program. Her artwork is concerned with her identity as an Indigenous Australian, as well as the identity of Australia in terms of the nation’s history and governance.
Freja Carmichael is Ngugi woman belonging to Quandamooka Country, and was a recipient of the 2014 Australia Council Emerging Curator’s Fellowship. She is a member of Brisbane based Indigenous curatorial trio, Blaklash Collective and is currently working for Redland Art Gallery and kuril dhagun, State Library of Queensland. She curated ‘Gathering Strands’, co-curated ‘Art of The Skins’ and her latest exhibition is ‘Ruby and Hunter: Claudia Moodoonuthi’.
Stephen Gilchrist is from the Yamatji people of the Inggarda language group of northwest Western Australia. He is an Associate Lecturer of Indigenous Art at the University of Sydney. Stephen has curated numerous exhibitions in Australia and the United States and has written extensively on Indigenous Art from Australia.
Dr Carlos Rivera Santana is a Lecturer at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at The University of Queensland. Rivera Santana has worked on theoretical and practical issues relating to colonisation in Australia, the Caribbean (Puerto Rico mainly) and Latin America.
Dr Diana Young is the Director of the UQ Anthropology Museum and a social anthropologist who researches and publishes on visual, material and digital culture. Her research interests include colour, research through curation, contemporary Australian and Pacific cultural production and their histories, public anthropology and the re-invention of so called ‘ethnographic’ or ‘anthropology’ museums for the 21st century. She has curated and collaborated on numerous exhibitions.
Image: Brenda L. Croft , ‘full/blood’ 2016, (from the series ‘blood/type’), pigment print on archival paper.
