Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Art In The Collection Of The National Gallery Of Victoria

"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria" is a major overview of the work of Indigenous artists of the past 130 years. Entries on more than 100 works in the NGV¿s collection reveal the influence of early Indigenous objects on contemporary dialogues; explain systems of representation in Indigenous art; and reveal the ways artists have responded to change and have incorporated new aesthetic principles and artistic concepts, images and imaginaries over time. Through visual analysis, readers gain an understanding of preoccupations with place, ceremony, identity and race in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. This beautifully illustrated publication identifies similarities in artistic perception across time and place, and disrupts prevailing binaries of centre and periphery, traditional and contemporary, and urban and non-urban modes of representation and identification.

The National Gallery of Australia holds the largest collection of Australian Indigenous art in the world. Written by Indigenous authors and curators and other experts in the field, this new book features works of art which highlight the diversity, richness and excellence of the Gallery's collection. They range from rare 19th-century objects, historical and contemporary bark paintings, fabrics, dance masks, and headdresses to contemporary politically charged works by artist working in towns and cities in the 21st century. Frachesco Cubillo is a member of the Larrakia, Bardi, Wadaman, and Yanuwa Nations. She is senior curator Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the National Gallery of Australia. Wally Caruana is an independent curator, author, and consultant on Indigenous Australian art.

Timothy Cook has been lauded as a leading contemporary Australian artist: critically acclaimed, honored with the prestigious 2012 29th Telstra National Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, included in major exhibitions throughout Australia, and well represented in significant public and corporate collections. He has lived and worked for his entire life in a small settlement in the Tiwi Islands, in remote Indigenous Australia, deeply attached to his place. Cook is also a maverick artist: non-conformist, individualistic, original and inventive, straddling the modern and ancient with confidence. In this stunning monograph, author Seva Frangos attests to Timothy Cook's achievements, inhabiting a place and space where innovation might seem impossible against the background of tradition and ritual; where he realigns artistic and cultural boundaries and re-explores being Tiwi. These pages capture the remarkable levels of energy and emotional charge in his painting, and provide a brilliant introduction to Cook's vast body of work created over two decades in a range of media. [Subject: Art, Aboriginal Studies]

Aboriginal art collections : highlights from Australia's public museums and galleries is a survey of the indigenous collections of fourteen public museums and galleries in Australia.

Celebrating the richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in contemporary Australia and in the National Gallery's collection, this book highlights a selection of major artists and features new developments in media and artistic idioms. From bark paintings and weaving to photography, video and installations, it encompasses artists from Arnhem Land, Wadeye and the islands of the Tiwi people near Darwin, the central Australian desert regions, the Kimberley, north Queensland and the Torres Strait, as well as the urban and rural areas of the continent's seaboard.

Responding to many recent calls for redress and restitution, Richardson summarises the historical and current situation and attributes its problematics to the fact that theorists and historians have taken the concept art as a generic that includes both design and craft – which are actually and validly distinguishable from art by application of the concept function/al – or else ignored the two entirely. Considering the concept function/al, he maintains, calls into question the view that the three may be sub-classes of the one class: whereas in a work of art, typically there is a resolution of the tension between form and content, in works of design and craft the resolution is between form and function. How this recognition can clarify the issue informs the entire book. The book’s other major thesis is the realisation that aesthetic values are inherently human and that, therefore, they apply not only to art but to life in general. Far from being frivolous or a mere ‘emotion’, the aesthetic is a sense of equivalent psychic status to sight and hearing and, like them, is employed at almost every moment of our daily lives – which fact grounds art, design and craft deeply in human life. This is reflected in the universal use of the human form (including the exhibition of sexual characteristics) in art. The eternal conflict between making art and making a living from making art is examined and contrasted to the rarely-recognised, but positive, role of design in planning and industry. Richardson also critiques common theories of representation and composition, including ‘creativity’, Albertian perspective and scientific and geometric theories of beauty and composition; also the relevance of the camera and the computer in the field.

Yulyurlu Lorna Fencer Napurrurla was an important pioneer of the Central Desert art movement. This profile of Yulyurlu illustrates her bold and expressive artwork, with its brilliant use of colour and ongoing graphic explorations of her Yam Dreaming complex from Tanami Desert.

This book celebrates Aboriginal art of the 'New Wave': the daring and visionary use of colour by indigenous artists throughout Australia. It encompasess work by a diversity of outstanding artists and represents indigenous art-producing communities around Australia.