Just Soak in Yuldea
Bangarra Dance Theatre – wasn’t it once Bangarra Aboriginal Dance Theatre? - has a new boss in Frances Rings. She’s a former dancer and creator of seven works before with Read More
The Agony of Assimilation
I wrote down the word “terrible” at the end of my Sydney Film Festival screening of ‘The New Boy’, Warwick Thornton’s latest Indigenous film. And I didn’t mean the film; Read More
Radical Reverend
The words Sovereignty and Treaty immediately conjure up associations with Melbourne’s feisty Senator Lydia Thorpe. But in Arnhemland, there’s a Yolngu elder with a far more developed set of demands Read More
APYACC Part 6
Today, the Council of the National Gallery of Australia has announced its decision to postpone the Ngura Pulka – Epic Country exhibition which was intended to show the works of Read More
A Significant Loss – Bob Edwards 1930-2023
A man almost written out of history in his life is receiving due recognition in death. Dr Robert (Bob) Edwards may have been the first Director of the Aboriginal Arts Read More
Red Ochre Time
Just delivered on NITV are this year’s First Nations Arts & Culture Awards - headed by the Red Ochres. And the two top winners – one male, one female – Read More
Dr G Yunupingu
The word Yunupingu In Yolngu means “the rock that stands against time”. An apt description for the man who lead a dynasty of doughty fighters and artists in North East Read More
APYACC Part 5
The world is now aware that there’s a crisis in Aboriginal art. Two American-based international newsletters and Britain’s important Art Newspaper have all reported on the belated decision by three Read More
Tragedy in Adelaide
A tragedy looms in Adelaide as the current ALP State government appears to be pulling back on the well-developed plans of the previous Liberal government to build a nationally significant Read More
EXISTENTIAL LIMBO
“A pared-to-the-bleached-bones existential thriller”.. The Guardian review of Ivan Sen’s latest film Limbo sums it up awfully well. The unworldly underground/overground landscape of Cooper Pedy shot in black and white Read More
Kunmanara (Pepai) Carroll
Last month I wrote about the exhibition at Manly Art Gallery which featured Blak Douglas paintings and both pottery and art by the late Pepai Jangala Carroll. I mentioned a Read More
First Nations Take Over the AGNSW
Wow, was my headline last time prescient! I touted, "First Nations Take Over the AGNSW Prizes" last week. And now that we know and have met the winners, I can Read More
Finalists for the 40th NATSIAAs
63 finalists have been announced in the 2023 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Australia’s richest art awards, presented by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Read More
Two Recent Losses
In Melbourne, galleryist, Aboriginal art lover and bon vivant William Mora has lost a long fight with cancer; and at Kalka in the distant APY Lands, founding artist at the Read More
APYACC Part 4
Sadly, it’s inevitable that I keep writing about the issue raised several weeks ago now by The Australian newspaper. For, as I’ve tried to indicate, much hangs on understanding how Read More
First Nations Take-over the AGNSW Prizes
Just three percent of the nation and just over four percent of the 2348 entries for Sydney’s Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes, but Aboriginal artists are a whopping 26.5% of Read More
APYACC Part 3
Big news – the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) has announced the team that will enquire into claims made by The Australian newspaper two Saturdays ago that artists working as Read More
Trans-Indigenous Marrugeku
You go to see Marrugeku dance for difference. It may be the marvellous co-artistic director Dalisa Pigram dancing by her Yawuru self on stage. Or it may be an increasingly Read More
Blak and Deadly
Dhungatti artist and Archibald Prize winner Blak Douglas has returned to Manly Art Gallery & Museum to present his challenging truth about Gayamay (Manly Cove). It’s the first solo exhibition Read More
APYACC Part 2
This is how I began an article a week ago on this website: “A lengthy investigation by The Australian newspaper claims to have discovered that artists working for the APY Read More