INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN
PHOTOGRAPHERS
AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Education Resource
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Horsham Regional Art Gallery Education Resource 2017
Indigenous Australian Photographers
INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHERS AND PHOTOGRAPHY
HRAG - COUNCIL GALLERY until 26 May 2017
Introduction:
Contemporary engagement with notions of representation, race, gender and culture by Indigenous Australian
photographers is producing some of the most exciting art currently produced in the Australia and presented
internationally.
It was fifty years ago that the then federal Holt Government called a referendum to amend the Australian
constitution, the referendum on the 27 May 1967 made history as Australians voted overwhelmingly to amend the
constitution to include Aboriginal people in the census and allow the Commonwealth to create laws for their future
self-determination. This presentation of collection works celebrates some of the most provocative Indigenous
photographers who, since that day, have challenged established ideas, of nationhood and self-identity, often utilising
humour to great effect.
List of works:
2007-27
Darren SIWES
b.1968 Adelaide
We Made A Mission Truck And Took Them For A Drive from the series
Mum I want to be black 2006
cibachrome print
1992-30
Leah KING-SMITH
b.1957 Gympie, Queensland
Untitled from the series Patterns of Connection 1991
cibachrome photograph
2011-10
Bindi COLE
Wathaurung b.1975 Melbourne
Wathaurung Mob from the series Not really Aboriginal 2008
pigment print on rag paper
2010-21
Christian THOMPSON
Bidjara b.1978 Gawler, South Australia
'Untitled' - Yellow Kangaroo Paw from the series Australian Graffiti 2008
C-type print
1982-1
Pegg CLARKE
b.c1890, d.c1956 Australian
A Bush Symphony nd
Bromoil
2004-1
GOVERNMENT PRINTER
A Miner's Hut, Lithgow Valley, NSW C 1880s
Albumen paper print
1976-55
UNKNOWN
Untitled (Trooper's Tree at Roses Gap) nd
Black and white, silver gelatin print
2009-2
Tony ALBERT
Girramay b.1981 Townsville, Queensland
Optimism 8 from the series Optimism 2008
Type C Print
2011-11
Tracey MOFFATT
b.1960 Brisbane
Lip! 1999
DVD in collaboration with Gary Hillberg, duration 10mins
2008-40
Brook ANDREW
Wiradjuti b.1970 Sydney
Parrot from the series Replicant 2006
Ilfochrome print
2001-78
Jon RHODES
b.1947 Australian
At Yumari (I) Yumari Rockhole WA. 1990
silver gelatin print
2009-5
Fiona FOLEY
Badtjala b.1964 Maryborough, Queensland
Nulla 4 eva V from the series Nulla 4 eva 2009
ultrachrome print on Hanemühle paper
2013-19
Tracey MOFFATT
b.1960 Brisbane
Self Portrait 1999
hand colored photograph.
2013-25
Steven RHALL
b.1974
X (Wathaurung, Belmont) 2012
inkjet print
2001-77
Jon RHODES
b.1947 Australian
John Tjakamarra, Kintore Ranges, NT 1974
silver gelatin print
2001-79
Jon RHODES
b.1947 Australian
Rockhole Wave, Lungkurda Rockhole, Nyirrpi, N.T 1987
silver gelatin print
2004-18
J. LINDT
b.1845, d.1926
Untitled (Portrait of Aboriginal Woman and Baby) C 1874
albumen paper print
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Horsham Regional Art Gallery Education Resource 2017
Indigenous Australian Photographers
KEY WORKS
Bindi COLE CHOCKA
Wathaurung b.1975 Melbourne
Wathaurung Mob from the series Not really Aboriginal 2008
1035 x 1235mm
COLE
Bindi Cole works in a variety of media that challenges our broad cultural obsession with
categorising identity. At the forefront of her concern is the classification of indigenous
Australians according to the darkness or lightness of their skin.
“The 1886 Victorian Aborigines Protection Act is an extraordinary example. This legislation
categorised us, divided us and planted seeds of misconception that continue to grow and
inform contemporary non-Indigenous ideas of what it means to be Really Aboriginal….
What the government didn’t count on was cultural resistance. What they didn’t realise was
that Aboriginality has never been about skin colour. Before colonization, Yorta Yorta people
were the colour of Yorta Yorta people. Wathaurung people were the colour of Wathaurung
people. We were never Black before white people sailed in. It was a colonial need to
reaffirm whiteness that started this preoccupation with skin colour. Kinship, culture, that’s
what makes us Really Aboriginal, as Bindi Cole’s portraits illustrate.”
Jirra Lulla Harvey
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Horsham Regional Art Gallery Education Resource 2017
Indigenous Australian Photographers
Fiona FOLEY
Badtjala b.1964 Maryborough, Queensland
Nulla 4 eva V 2009
800 x 1200mm
FOLEY
“There is more than one history, even though white, western history dominates. In
Australia there is a lack of national in-depth engagement with this history except for our
narrow, official, paper-thin view. Meanwhile, Fiona Foley has taken on the role of a kind of
unofficial historian. Nobody has asked for or authorised this role but the history she
explores is in fact our common national history, from both sides of the racial divide. Beyond
its strong visual appeal, it’s really in this context that I believe her art should be read.
The Cronulla ‘incident’ was one of contestation, historically as well as physically:
contestation of the site—the beach as an Australian social interactive space, for many a
‘sacred’ place. Aboriginal people were never asked for comment about the incident—white
Australians simply claimed the site (to keep an escape route open perhaps?). There was no
reference to Aboriginal history even though many Sydney coastal and harbour beaches
carry Aboriginal names—Akuna Bay, Barrenjoey, Bilgola, Bondi, Coogee, Curl Curl, Dee
Why, Elanora, to name just a few.
Successive waves of migrants have washed up on our shores—each challenged as they
arrived by the previous wave, each vilified and to an extent subsumed and then dismissed.
They are all strangers to us Aboriginal people. Who owns the beach? Aboriginal people, if
anyone.”
Djon Mundine
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Indigenous Australian Photographers
Brook ANDREW
Wiradjuti b.1970 Sydney
Parrot from the series Replicant 2006
Ilfochrome print
1242 x 2186mm
ANDREW
“Brook Andrew has always skirted a difficult path between harsh political and cultural
issues while producing works of captivating and often luscious beauty. At the core of his
amazingly diverse practice is his desire to make the viewer consider the construction of
history and power.” Ashley Crawford, 2007.
Parrot 2006 from the Replicant series sees Andrew using museum artefacts photographed
then replicated technologically. The duel reflected portrait of the stuffed parrot, a prized
museum piece, highlights and questions the decisions made by the original collectors, and
the national institutions they created. When Andrew went searching the archives of the
Melbourne Museum for artefacts relating to his cultural heritage, he found objects but no
documentation relating to their history, at the same time as the Indigenous objects entered
the museum collection so did a series of stuffed animals, although these came with reams
of information relating to the animal, the location it was found, the finder and ultimately
the taxidermist. This information ensures that these artefacts are displayed interoperated
and celebrated. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the objects Andrew was
originally searching for.
Creating interdisciplinary works and immersive installations, Andrew’s presents viewers
with alternative choices for interpreting the world, as does the arrangement of the
artworks in this exhibition, by intervening, expanding and re-framing history and our
inheritance. These perspectives are driven by his rich involvement with research practice
and his cultural inheritance of Wiradjuri, Ngunnawal and Celtic ancestry growing up in and
around Sydney.
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Indigenous Australian Photographers
Christian THOMPSON
Bidjara b.1978 Gawler, South Australia
'Untitled' - Yellow Kangaroo Paw from the series Australian Graffiti 2008
Type C print
1000 x 1000mm
THOMPSON
‘Untitled’ Yellow Kangaroo Paw from Thompson’s Australian Graffiti series builds on a
tradition of performativity used by indigenous artists in addressing identity that is found
across these galleries. Through his incorporation of elements of the Australian flora,
Thompson performs and questions established understandings of indigeneity as
synonymous with the land in this self-portrait. Graffiti has multiple connotations; public
defacing of property, marking of territory, and political and social commentary. Thompson
further extends the questioning of identity within this work with his playful adornment and
fashion referencing an American tradition of 1980’s street culture, music, dance, and post
disco clubbing.
Christian Thompson’s work focuses on the exploration of identity, sexuality, gender, race
and memory and creates art expressive of a continuing relationship to his country and
culture of the Bidjara people of the Kunja Nation from south-west Queensland. Thompson
has presented his photographs, videos and performance works in numerous solo and group
exhibitions nationally and internationally. In 2010 Thompson made history when he
became the first Aboriginal Australian to be admitted into the University of Oxford in its
900-year history. He holds a Doctorate of Philosophy (Fine Art), Trinity College, University
of Oxford, United Kingdom, Master of Theatre, Amsterdam School of Arts, Das Arts, The
Netherlands, Masters of Fine Art (Sculpture) RMIT University Melbourne, Australia.
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Indigenous Australian Photographers
Tracey MOFFATT
b.1960 Brisbane
Self Portrait, 1999
hand colored photograph.
340 x 227mm
MOFFAT
This is Tracey Moffatt’s portrait of herself. Moffatt has been in control of its
construction, the metaphors that define her. Standing within a hazy landscape the
artist clasps the tool that has made her an international art star. This artist is going
places; no longer is her presence an object of enquiry or a concept frozen in time,
Moffatt is current, in the today. With the indigenous flag caught in the lens of her
camera Moffatt is not backward in coming forward in expressing that her work will
come from her point of view. It will carry her history, and will look beyond our
landscape.
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Indigenous Australian Photographers
J. LINDT
b.1845, d.1926
Untitled (Portrait of Aboriginal Woman and Baby) C 1874
albumen paper print
192.143mm
LINDT
J. W. Lindt photographed a series of aboriginal people and family groups between 1868
and 1876 producing images through the competing tensions of anthropology and art.
Constructed within a studio setting with painted backdrops, costumes, etc.; they seem
faked; why are such documentary photographs being ‘rigged’ in this manner instead of
being taken in a natural bush setting? Lindt’s intention was entirely documentary and
the tyranny of the Wet Collodion photographic process forced him to work in a studio.
Yet this is still Lindt’s image and the subject is as important as the recurrent theme of
his scientific and artistic endeavour.
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Indigenous Australian Photographers
Suggested learning activities and focus questions addressing
the VICTORIAN CURRICULUM F-10
Explore and Express and Respond and Interpret
1.
Why do you think this group of people are on the beach in Fiona Foley’s photograph, “Nulla 4 eva V”?
2.
Investigate the Cronulla Riots and/or Aboriginal Land Rights. What is your opinion?
3.
Research places in Australia that have Aboriginal names and make a list of them.
4.
Investigate the development of photography in history. Present your findings to the class. Represent
it on a timeline.
5.
Write a list of questions for the lady in Lindt’s photograph to find out more about her life.
6.
Choose two works from the Council Gallery to compare using a Venn Diagram. What do they have in
common and what is unique to them?
7.
Aboriginal artists use different styles depending on where they are from, the materials that are
available, and the historical and cultural context they are working in. Split your class into groups to
research a style used by a group of Aboriginal artists or an individual artist. Present your findings to
the class.
8.
What is your favourite artwork? Explain why.
9.
Discuss how Brook Andrew has used two art elements from, colour, texture, tone, and line to create
mood and effect.
10.
Discuss how Brook Andrew has used two art principles from space, emphasis, contrast, scale, and
balance to create mood and effect.
11.
What was your first reaction to “Wathaurung Mob” by Bindi Cole? What is your opinion now you
have read the information about the artist and the work?
12.
Why do you think Christian Thompson is wearing a floral headpiece in the photograph “Untitled” –
Yellow Kangaroo Paw, 2008? What do you think it symbolises?
Visual Art Practices
1.
Design your own photographic self-portrait. Think about what you would wear, what objects would
be with you in the photograph, and the location you would be photographed in. How would this
symbolise you? Work in a group so that someone can take the photograph of you under your
direction. Finally, create a display of class portraits. Ask a viewer to interpret the meaning behind
your portrait – have you been able to communicate your message?
Present and Perform
1.
How many different ways are artworks in the Council Gallery displayed or presented? How do you
think this affects the way the viewer responds to the artworks?
2.
Why do you think Brook Andrew’s work is so big? Enlarge something that is naturally small. What
effect does this have on the viewer’s interpretation of the subject?
Ethical
1.
Research the treatment of Indigenous Australians since white settlement. What do you think of this?
2.
Stereotypes: as a group list all the stereotypes of people you can think of. With a partner, discuss
why you think there are stereotypes?
3.
Both Bindi Cole, Christian Thompson and Tracey Moffat are photographed within their artworks. Do
you think they took the photographs themselves? In a group discuss why Cole, Thompson and Moffat
are still the creators of the work.
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Horsham Regional Art Gallery Education Resource 2017
Indigenous Australian Photographers