Incredibly this is my 600th report, critique, commentary or essay for Aboriginal Art Directory. It all began in 2007 when the site was set up privately to assist remote art centres enter the digital market for their artists’ product. At some point, I suggested editorial content to bring more eyes into the mix, and that seems to have stuck.
And now I’m really excited to have been led to the Oxford Bibliographies website recently and discovered that it lists aboriginalartdirectory.com in a fairly short list of recommended sources for students of Australian Aboriginal art. Others include ‘The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture‘ (of course), the McCulloch encyclopedia and Vivien Johnson’s magisterial biographical dictionary, ‘Aboriginal Artists of the Western Desert ‘.
Our citation reads:
An invaluable site for anyone who wants to keep informed about ongoing exhibitions and issues in the industry. Promotional but lively tone with attitude; its author Jeremy Eccles has amassed an archive of the industry.
The citers are academics Greg Lehman, who is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne and Tasmanian, an artist, curator, writer and commentator descended from the Trawulwuy people of Tasmania, and the co-curator of ‘The National Picture: the Art of Tasmania’s Black War’, which I wrote about when it opened at the National Gallery. Also Dr Susan Lowish who is Senior Lecturer in Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne and has published widely, including her first monograph, ‘Rethinking Australian Art History: the challenge of Aboriginal art’ in 2018.
Last but not least, Prof. Ian McLean, Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne. He has published extensively on Australian art, particularly Indigenous art, including: ‘Rattling Spears A History of Indigenous Australian Art’, ‘White Aborigines Identity Politics in Australian Art’, and ‘How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art’.
The purpose of the listing, says Oxford Bibliographies, is to provide faculty and students alike with a seamless pathway to the most accurate and reliable resources for a variety of academic topics. Written and reviewed by academic experts, every article in our database is an authoritative guide to the current scholarship, containing original commentary and annotations.
There you go!
After such unabashed trumpet blowing, a little light relief. In France, gallerist Stephane Jacob has maintained a business promoting and selling Indigenous art for many a long year. His website currently contains a light-hearted quiz to help you choose the sort of First Nations art that suits your heart, mind and spirit.
I enjoyed the exercise “though was surprised to discover that I’m a man for Central Desert art!”
See the link below.
