"Culture and identity feature heavily in my work. Untitled (2010) questions what informs the other more powerfully in urban locations; Indigenous identity or white suburban culture."
Indigenous culture is moving out of dedicated spaces and into the mainstream. Ultimately all Indigenous culture is claiming the space for experiences that have not been widely told and this broadens the space for the stories of everyone whose stories are untold.
John Barbour (1954-2011), a complex, intelligent and much loved South Australian artist and academic, was in the prime of his life and at the height of his career when he died on Sunday 17 April 2011.
Associate Lecturer at the College of Fine Art in Sydney Tess Allas writes about when she was NSW Regional Indigenous Cultural Officer and first met the women of Boggabilla who formed the Euraba Paper Company which won the Parliament of NSW Aboriginal Art Prize in 2010.
Christian Thompson who is one of the two inaugural Charlie Perkins Scholars at Oxford University writes about this experience and how it makes him think of his upbringing and the responsibility it entails. "...it is our arrival at Oxford that reminds me of how much work we still have ahead of us as young Aboriginal people and future leaders of our communities. This is something you feel as an inherent responsibility when you meet people daily from all around the world, whose communities are facing similar hardships and the symptoms of the ravages of colonisation; time is of the essence."
Canopy Artspace first opened for the 2009 Cairns Art Fair. It houses the Australian Art Print Network, New Flames Foundation and Editions Tremblay NFP (no Fixed Press). Paloma Ramos who works at Editions Tremblay vividly decribes the intense and fertile work in printmaking and sculpture that happens at Canopy.
Laura Fisher worked for three years on indigenous artists' biographies for the DAAO (Dictionary of Australian Artists Online) and is now completing a doctoral thesis on the indigenous art market at the University of NSW. Here she brings her wide knowledge to bear on representational and romantic landcape paintings by indigenous artists.