A month or so ago it looked as though there was a real competition on for the biggest ever First Nations art show. The NGV in Melbourne announced plans for the largest ever exhibition to go overseas, then the University of Melbourne threw out the catalogue for 65,000 Years – A Short History of Australian Art which promises encyclopedic length not brevity when it opens in May. And in Canberra, the NGA finally brought home Ever Present, the 161 artist, 156 artworks promotional show that was sent to Perth, Singapore and Auckland.

But in Canberra, it’s lost the scale with which it travelled, crammed into the National Gallery’s existing Indigenous spaces, losing many a work offered in the Singapore catalogue. Not only is there no catalogue here, but the NGA’s marketing material is full of its Ethel Carrick/Ann Dangar exhibition and rich with pictures of its shiny new $12m Ourobouros sculpture by Lindy Lee, but it’s hard to find any mention of Ever Present since its September opening.

PS – In case that $12m sounds extravagant, the Brits are proposing to spend up to GBP46 million on a statue of the late Queen!

So, has Director Nick Mitzevich lost faith in the Indigenous? With enthusiasm bubbling around the Lee work as crowds Oohed and Aahed and photographed it by night, while a broken escalator made even finding the First Nations galleries a challenge, I did begin to wonder why curator Tina Baum had bothered to bring it home.

For, as it travelled, Baum was quoted as saying proudly: “It takes many generations to get a deeper understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and culture, but it only takes a moment to appreciate it. Because when you see these works, they are absolutely beautiful. I hope this exhibition challenges the idea of what Australian history is”, adding that the audience will “learn as they go”.

But that learning in part depended on the clearly defined shape of the original show. Rooms overseas were clearly characterised by titles ‘Ancestors + Creators’, ‘Country + Constellations’, ‘Community + Family’, ‘Culture + Ceremony’, and ‘Trade+Influence’, before culminating in ‘Resistance + Colonisation’. In Canberra, there’s much less definition.

As I came in, I was greeted without explanation by Megan Cope’s Blaktism film in which the artist is blacked up in a faux colonial ceremony in order “to be seen as a real Aborigine”. Beside her were William Barak’s and Tommy McRae’s 19th Century representations of real ceremonies – for ceremony is such an essential precursor to all classical Aboriginal art. But this connection didn’t continue as I progressed to the first salle that offered not a single traditional/remote work, but walls of gaudy Bells, Alberts and Vincent Namatjiras, dark Daniel Boyds and D. Harding’s melting boomerangs.

When I did hit Roy Wiggan’s mysterious woven Ilma, intended to be danced in ceremony in the west Kimberley, there was no explanation whatsoever. But plenty for Brook Andrew, Vernon Ah Kee and Janet Fieldhouse. This surely reflected Tina Baum’s comment that 50 years ago, “There’s no way shows like this would have been done. That shift has come about because First Nations artists have been in these spaces pushing, and pushing through their work, to create a groundswell of support and engagement”.

50 years ago, of course, the world had only encountered bark works from the tribal north and the very first acrylic boards from Papunya. Art as an aesthetic medium with financial value was virtually unknown. Though the political imperative to reveal a hidden, complex culture was certainly emerging. Now, the Western-trained Blak artists have learnt to “push through their work” to gain the sort of international reputation that Brook Andrew and Richard Bell have achieved, totally justifying their prominence in the original touring ‘Ever Present’ but resulting in a fairly chaotic mish-mash in Canberra.

I have to admit that in the oddly combined ‘Country + Constellations’ rooms, there’s a great explanation of the importance of Country, of return to Country and the discombobulation caused by loss of Country. Then you’re hit by a mighty Timo Hogan Lake Baker/Pantjutjara work replete with powerful Wanampi (water serpent) and the two mythic men of the Wati kutjara Tjukurrpa. Equally mighty is Darrell Sibisado’s neon-enhanced engraving from an ancient riji – a Bardi pearl shell traded as a pubic cover into the Deserts. A Gija triptych from Rover Thomas, Queenie Mackenzie and Paddy Jaminji offer a more ancient picture of their East Kimberley Country and survive well in their ochred intensity. A back room expands Country (but not Constellations, which seem to have gone missing) with Lin Onus, Albert Namatjira and Jonathan Jones’s thought-provoking inked native grasses defacing 19th Century colonial agriculture adverts.

What Grace Lillian Lee’s Future Woven Flora Forms are doing there is a mystery; neither C nor C.

‘Trade+Influence’ encompasses the influence of the Macassans on coastal Arnhemland, the much-traded riji and the more recent Indonesian input into Desert batiks. But I question whether contemporary Torres Strait Islands work by Messers Tipoti, Nona and Thaiday can be seen as anything but rooted in the old TSI cultures that the Christian Coming of the Light tried so hard to eradicate.

Finally (or perhaps first) came ‘Ancestors and Creators’ where the eternally numinous presence of the ancestors did come across cumulatively. Clifford Possum’s Warlukurlangu is surely the finest work in the exhibition with its seven Dreamings crowded around the central bushfire story of the boys who failed to share their hunting catch and were punished by a raging conflagration. It’s accompanied by two old Wandjinas, Gwion Gwion figures, Owen Yalandja’s flying Yawk Yawks, Uta Uta Tjangala’s Tingari Dreaming, Ginger Riley’s Limmen Blight legends, and Doreen Reid Nakamara’s desert sand dunes, home to so many survival stories, laid flat to achieve a living 3D sensation.

As a bonus, the NGA has left intact it’s alleyway of significant old Papunya boards – quite correctly labelled ‘The Birth of a Movement’. It’s sad, though that the removal of the Aborginal Memorial collection of two hundred Ramingining dupun/funeral poles to the heart of the NGA has left a blank space to look down on from the boards.

Ever Present is on untl 24th August.