Aussie Triennial, Seared by the Past

By Jessica Dawson
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, September 11, 2009

Yes, the show fits the mold of nearly every bi-, tri- and quadrennial out there. Sure, emerging artists edge up against choice selections by art-world elders. That is, after all, the norm.

Despite this, "Australian Indigenous Art Triennial: Culture Warriors" is one of the most revolutionary exhibitions of its ilk. Though the show acts as the most civil of diplomats, it also subverts expectations; more important, its very existence acknowledges a country's history of state-mandated racism.

Both here in America -- in an abbreviated version that opened Tuesday at the Katzen Arts Center, the show's only U.S. venue -- and during the its two-year Australian tour that began in 2007, "Culture Warriors" enacts artistic diplomacy of the highest order. Its ambassadorial aim comes out of the remarkable circumstances of its conception: It is the very first survey of contemporary Aboriginal art.

Organized by Brenda Croft, senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander art at the National Gallery of Australia, the show collects 90 works by 31 artists who count Oz's earliest residents in their family tree. (In previous Australian incarnations, the show included nearly twice as many artworks; the artist roster remained the same.)

The exhibition's 2007 debut marked the 25th birthday of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. "Culture Warriors" joined two other shows -- one featuring outback landscape painting, the other showcasing Australian artists influenced by Andy Warhol -- conceived to represent the museum on its anniversary. Croft's massive exhibition indicated high levels of institutional commitment to the collection and display of Aboriginal works. It was something like a cultural seal of approval.

Even more important, Croft intended "Culture Warriors" to coincide with the 40th anniversary of a landmark 1967 referendum mandating that indigenous Australians be included in the country's census. Indeed, just 42 years ago, two-thirds of the artists in Croft's show -- those born before 1967 -- fell under the same category as the island's flora and fauna, taking their place among the koalas and the kangaroos.

That legislation was hard-won, but its enactment hardly marked an end to racial conflict, which continues to this day. A 2004 case of police brutality incited the nation (something like the Rodney King debacle here, though there was no video-recorded evidence). And the debates continue: Over the past decade, "history wars" have pitted Aboriginals against Australians of European descent in debates over who will write the country's history. Croft's "Culture Warriors" gamely enters those debates.

So, we know that this show matters. How's the art?

Equal parts polemical and placid, the works evoke everything from ancient water goddesses to ethnographic stereotypes, alcoholism to manatees. The artists work in styles that date to the nation's prehistoric caves, but also use up-to-the-minute video technology. With such divergent material, gallery spaces filled nearly to capacity (the show sprawls over two floors at the Katzen) and thickets of dense wall text to negotiate, the exhibition challenges visitor stamina. For American audiences, however, it functions as a necessary reminder of how little we know of Aboriginal art, past or present.

Croft built her show around five senior artists who engage millennia-old artistic precedents. Yet even here, in bark paintings using natural pigments or in dot-style pictures -- artworks that our untrained eyes may recognize as typically "Aboriginal" -- all but one or two of the elders have revolutionized ancient techniques.

(The medium of bark painting itself is just about a century old; only with increases in trade and the spread of missionary efforts did the notion of moving and hanging a bark painting take root. In the long tradition of indigenous art, it may as well have been invented yesterday.)

Compare works on bark by two different artists and you'll see the varied approaches. Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek works in the 4,000-year-old "X-ray style" in his paintings. As the style's name suggests, Nadjamerrek reveals animals' internal organs as well as their outer bodies. Here, the artist remains so faithful to the classical style found at ancient rock-painting sites that his images would fit perfectly among the rock-art sites (called "galleries" in Australia) that pepper the continent.

Then there is John Mawurndjul, who has pushed older styles in entirely new directions. His neat lines and abstracted fields are painted on bark and tree trunks, yet his stripped-down version of things has more in common with 20th-century abstraction than millennia-old art practices. Though he continues to represent ancient stories that are important to his clan groups -- indeed, he has been given custodial responsibility to paint these stories -- his work would never fly in a rock-art gallery.

Also represented are the strong, clear, contemporary voices, the voices of outrage and despair at past and present-day abuses. Four artists invoke Palm Island, the most infamous of the country's Aboriginal reservations and the site of the 2004 brutality case against Mulrunji Doomadgee, who was beaten to death while in custody. Though the coroner ruled his death a homicide, the officer accused of the slaying appealed and the finding was overturned. Outraged indigenous Australians saw it as emblematic of continued oppression.

For Gordon Hookey, the case gave rise to "FIGHT: To Survive; To Live; To Die!," a massive triptych in orange and blue that is full of the passion and despair of righteous indignation. In the painting's central panel, Hookey has imagined an alternate reality -- a roomful of police officers lie dead; Doomadgee lives. The piece is equal parts strident, bitter and cynical. And yet, even here, hope emerges -- in the peace dove on the picture's right panel and in the larger achievement of "Culture Warriors."