This week we had two e-readings and they were both very interesting albeit very short. The first, a short preface written by Susan McCulloch, speaks about the rise of Indigenous art and it's now status as one of the most popular and successful art movement. Even the first sentence says, "The revitalisation of Australian Aboriginal art has been one of the great success stories of modern art." I think that through reading this, and many of the other readings, I have come to the conclusion that Non-Indigenous Australians do not appreciate what they have in their own country. As an experiment I asked some of my sister's friends who are studying year twelve art if they knew of any Indigenous Australian artists and the only actual answer that I got back was Gordon Bennett, whom they are studying for their exam. I find it very interesting that Aboriginal art can be so popular in other countries, especially France, and then be so overlooked in Australia. And I do not mean to generalise, it is obvious that there are also non-Indigenous Australians that care about Indigenous art but from what I have experienced there are less of the latter. I am also not saying that everyone should love Aboriginal art but I do believe that there is a lack of respect in that area.
So, this feeling led to me doing some research on non-Indigenous Australians and how they can react to Aboriginal art. What I found was this naive, to say the least, woman who is not Aboriginal who has put an 8m sculpture of the Wandjina outside her gallery. Aboriginal cultures surrounding the area are outraged and want the sculpture removed however the woman claims that saying the Wandjina can not be there is racist. Here is the link
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2010/10/20/3043661.htm I think that she is EXTREMELY naive and has no idea what she is playing around with! On the site there is audio of her talking which I highly recommend so that you can see her side of the story.
