Australian
Thursday 16/8/2007 Brief: DPLAUTO
Page: 16 Page 1 of 3
Section: Arts & Entertainment
Region: National Circulation: 129,000
Type: National
Size: 983.79 sq.cms.
Published: MTWTF
Culture caught in the crossfire
alcohol for a year and then a review of the
Federal intervention in results. Many, however, including senior
figures in the art world the Yunupingu clan
the Top End threatens in eastern Arnhem Land, for instance, which
hosted the annual Garma festival last week
hundreds of art-related are variously calling the intervention racist, a
land grab, neocolonialism in the guise of
concern for children and cultural genocide.
jobs, reports Miriam Cosic Inevitably, perhaps, the heat of the argu-
ments loomed over the National Aboriginal
LAN Eggleston, the West Aus- and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards an-
tralian Liberal senator who nounced in Darwin last Friday night. Missing
A chaired the review of Aboriginal
art that was tabled in federal
parliament in June, must have
was the warm and celebratory glow in which
the NT Government and the awards' long-
time sponsor, Telstra, usually bask.
expected his report to make waves. What he The NT Arts Minister, Marion Scrymgour,
didn't know was that it was about to be an indigenous politician, made an unsched-
overtaken by the tsunami triggered by the uled trip to Canberra on Thursday to address
Little Children Are Sacred report, detailing the Senate's review of the emergency response
sexual abuse, delivered to the Northern proposals. Standing in for her at a NATSIAA
Territory Government. preview, NT Deputy Chief Minister Syd
Eggleston told The Australian this week Stirling urged guests to consider the ramifica-
that he had not known the wide-ranging tions of the intervention for artists.
emergency intervention into indigenous com- He said that while the NT Government
munities was coming. When he did find out, supported welfare reform, it did not support
the first thing he asked a colleague involved the compulsory acquisition of leases over
was whether the legislation would recommend Aboriginal towns and communities: We do
abolishing the permit system that keeps not support the measures that break down the
unauthorised people off Aboriginal land. fundamental basis of the relationship with
It was, but the review and the legislation land that inspires the work of artists whose
were at odds over other things: Community works we are privileged to see tonight."
Development Employment Projects pay- He said the abolition of CDEP would
ments, for instance, which the arts review threaten thousands of Aboriginal jobs in the
wanted strengthened and the federal Govern-
ment is about to abolish. NT, including hundreds in the arts sector; six
Critics of the intervention including in Yirrkala, a community famous for its
federal Labor politicians who debated the sophisticated barks and hollow logs, in his
proposed legislation when it was rushed electorate.
through the lower house in one day last week, Hanging on the walls inside was another
and NT government spokespeople say sign of the times. There were the usual bold
abolishing permits will leave communities colours of the Western Desert painters,
more open to the carpetbaggers who exploit including Naata Nungurrayi, Makinti Napa-
artists, especially in relatively accessible com- nangka, Walangkura Napanangka and George
munities near highways. Tjungurrayi from Papunya Tula; a joyous,
And yet Eggleston's committee wanted the sprawling pack of colourful camp dogs by the
permit system abolished to "outmanoeuvre Tjanpi Desert Weavers of Toyota truck fame;
the carpetbaggers", as he puts it. By letting intricate barks from eastern and western
tourists come in and buy from the arts centres Arnhem Land, including by former NATSIAA
directly," he says, "it would undermine the winners Gulumbu Yunupingu and Bunduk
carpetbaggers, who come in and set up Marika; a selection of urban works, including
exploitative relationships with the artists." an impressive multi-panel painting by Perth
The arts review's opinion of CDEP as vital artist Shane Pickett. The exhibition is hung
to arts centres has been overtaken. The federal with the same coherence as last year's, the first
Government's legislation says it keeps those overseen by the Museum and Art Gallery of
who receive it dependent on welfare in NT's new indigenous art curator, Franchesca
makeshift work and unable to join mainstream Cubillo.
Australia as financially independent, even But the awards, given to five works from a
economically dynamic, individuals. field of 104, were surprising. NT and northern
Public discussion of Eggleston's report has WA artists usually dominate, but three of the
been drowned out by the uproar surrounding five went to Queenslanders. Three went to
the emergency response. Some indigenous figurative art; two to metal sculpture.
people are calling it overdue. Warren Mun- The recent formula for the judging panel
dine, chief executive of NSW Land Titles one indigenous artist, one (white, male) head
Services and immediate past national presi- of a state art gallery was changed this year.
dent of the Australian Labor Party, says the Fiona Foley, a Queensland artist, and Djon
legislation is racially discriminatory but posi- Mundine, an experienced curator, are both
tive discrimination, and he endorses it. indigenous and both outspoken about the
Women in Fitzroy Crossing, where artists politics of race.
are not supported by CDEP, have run with the
proposals, demanding a moratorium on all Some NATSIAA-watchers expected a bla-
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Australian
Thursday 16/8/2007 Brief: DPLAUTO
Page: 16 Page 2 of 3
Section: Arts & Entertainment
Region: National Circulation: 129,000
Type: National
Size: 983.79 sq.cms.
Published: MTWTF
tantly left-wing response to the federal Cathedral in Paris, say, which might also lake
intervention, but they were blind-sided by the the eye down the laneways that surround it.
.judges' intellectual rigour and experience. In its 24 years, the NATSIAA has coincided
Rather than digging in with a nostalgic with the rise of several indigenous art
paeon to traditional iconography or making a movements and has contributed to awareness
statement by elevating the often of them. "It's a very important competition,"
undergraduate style bravado of urban artists, Mundine says, "notjust in the length of it, or
the judges sought to confound expectations the money given to the artists, but in defining,
"Both of us were looking for work that or contributing to the definition of, where
wasn't prescriptive, that was unusual," Foley Aboriginal art is going."
says. "The entries, over the years, can cone to I fe sees a shill under way, with the passing
seem a little hit oversaturated. We were of the older generation who painted authorita-
looking for things that were fresh to the eye tively hill almost naively from the heart of
and worked on us at an emotional level." their tradition, to ii r'ounger generation of ar t
The $40000 major prize certainly con- school-trained pcopl, who are still, by defini-
lounded some. I)enis Nona's monumental tion, making inrlicn,ni art but who have
bron,e, Ubirikubiri on sale for S193,000 engaged with WoOIorn art history and under-
now that the awards have been made non- stand the marketjil.in o. He predicts an increase
acquisitave is based on a children's story, in video art and photography at future awards
originally from Papua New Guinea, about a Serendipitously, this year's winners may
man who searches for an animal playmate for come, with hindsight, to represent the changes
his daughter after her mother dies, and the girl afoot in the wider indigenous world. Nona,
is consumed by the crocodile she wanted. Nilsen and the winner of the works on paper
The 480kg sculpture of the man's body, award, Alick Tipoti (a Torres Strait Islander
strangely morphed with fins and a fish tail and who works in Nona's style), are Al tertiary-
laid out on the back of a crocodile, is a educated. Neither they nor George are
departure for Nona, who has pushed the supported by C'DLP-style welfare
technical boundaries of' printmaking and the Nor is Papunya Tula, the movement that
artistic boundaries of Torres Strait symbolism. started the contemporary Aboriginal art
Remarkably, he has been experimenting with phenomenon in the 1970s and which is stilt a
metal rating for only a couple of years. marker of its strength, subsidised by govern-
""It', .a \,,t tr, ang piece," Foley ,i-s ""The ment. (On Saturday, crowd control was
phvio.iIii< Iilrtrikesyouimmediatolyasyou needed for the opening of' an exhibition of
walk inl o the room and the technir,i f skill level Papunya Tula paintings at the Harriet Street
is very high." Mundine says it is 1;ioninating, Gallery in Darwin, and sales were restricted to
almost science fiction-like, with it, inthropo- one canvas a buyer.)
morphism "It's ugly in one way, but that's
the power of it " And yet Apolline Kohen, for example, the
The award for three-dimensional work, manager of Maningrida Arts and Culture and
named for the famed Yolngu artist Wandjuk chair of the MAGNT, is worried about the
Marika, is usually won by hollow logs from his abolition of C'DLP, though she too represents
region. It was won this year by Laurie Nilsen, big names, including John Mawurndjul, an
aBrisbane artist originally from regional international figur She says losing CDFP will
Queensland, for Goolburris on the Bungil put out of work - iz cotale who value both the
I
Creek, an installation of three emus made of flexibility of the an 0 n, which allows them to
barbed wire and moulded steel. attend to ceremoni :I business, and the top-up
It sprang from his memorv of coming across wages paid when they work more than four
40 emus in one day lying dead or dying after hours a day.
strangling themselves on barbed-wire fences "It's not that I can't technically afford one
while trying to reach ";ilc i. Water, of course, or two full-time positions," Kohen says. ""The
is a pressing issue IL,1HHo , ;uul the emu happens problem is, how are they going cope? I've got
to be Nilsen's totem. six because I need three...
The painting by Angclina George, which
won the am,rrd lot that medium, also played The loss of CDIAP and top-up payments,
with ,sp, l,ilions. It is, Mundine says, a compounded by pall payment of the dole in
powerful c', iiillle of the search for a visual some sort of food vouchers to ensure children
language by Ngukurr artists, who are neither are led, will also dramatically lower the
hark nor dot painters. The room, he says, amount of cash circulating.
gesturing around a Dace filled with glowing "Where is the only place to find cash in the
earth-coloured was "full of an community at the moment?" Kohen asks
incredible arr:i'. I a: HI lag in what we have rhetorically. "The arts centre, because we
conic to expert of lti,-I, an Desert have a policy of paying artists up front You
"Maybe things Lay L o ome too pnctHct- can imagine what's going to happen
able, or maybe our taster are a bit ja,Iu1, or
overwhelmed," he savs ""i,ti'e need to recog- Apart from the obvious risk of theft,
nxe other ways oftepresentation" pressure on artists to produce will escalate,
George not only depicted the majesty of the especially on older big-name artists who are
rocky escarpments near Darwin but also already often pushed by younger relatives to
revealed an intimacy with the landscape. The increase their cash flow. And that will. have an
sunset monochrome of the m, air: I;r His is offset effect on the quality of the art produced.
by trails of' fading light in the riIt\o Nlundine The federal Arts Minister, George Brandis,
compares it to a painting of Noire Dame will not be drawn on the detail of the federal
Ref: 29575837
Australian
Thursday 16/8/2007 Brief: DPLAUTO
Page: 16 Page 3 of 3
Section: Arts & Entertainment
Region: National Circulation: 129,000
Type: National
Size: 983.79 sq.cms.
Published: MTWTF
intervention because it's not his portfolio, nor are now caught up in the world of dealers,
on the Government's response to the Eggles- auction houses and high-powered collectors.
ton report, which he is due to table in "That is the point of intersection between
parliament next week. the art issues and the broader issues," Brandis
Brandis and Eggleston spent five days says. The more the market grows, "the more
visiting communities in northwest Australia it will impose the disciplines of business on the
last week. At a time when news from the arts centres, which have hitherto been run on
indigenous world is seen as uniformly bad, he a voluntaristic model" by people eager to help
says, art is a beacon. where they can, he says. The transition will
"It's the one thing that is a success in those inevitably pose problems.
communities," Brandis says. "Not in all of "It's a good problem to have," he says. "As
them, not even in most of them, but it assumes Peter Costello has said in a different context,
a particular importance where it is." there are good problems and bad problems.
He describes Aboriginal art in transition The problem of growth is a good problem,
from a cottage industry to a commercially better to have than the bad problem of lack of
viable international business. Artists who until growth."
recently only had to worry about their practice
Confronting: Winning pieces by Denis Nona,
left. and Laurie Nilsen. below left
`It's a very important competition ... in contributing to
the definition of where Aboriginal art is going'
Djon Mundine, a judge at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards
Majesty: Angel in a George with herd epiction of rocky escarpments Picture: Peter Eve
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