ZETLAND: In its second major show of the year, Sullivan+Strumpf presents the latest offerings from one of Australia’s most exciting young Indigenous artists, Tony Albert, in a symbolic collaboration with one of the country’s leading early 20th century modernists, Margaret Preston.
Born in 1875, Margaret Preston was seen as progressive for her beliefs that the richness and sophistication of Indigenous Australian iconography should be incorporated into a national visual language that would set Australia apart.
In her quest to foster this Australian identify she was one of the first non-Indigenous Australian artists to use the unique designs and motifs and natural-pigment colour schemes of local Aboriginal artists in her work.
Albert concedes Preston’s intentions were sound but is also aware that her artistic and commercial success during that period opened the door to an onslaught of cultural pillaging, with increasing numbers of Aboriginal designs and motifs openly appropriated as adornment for domestic homewares and décor for decades to come.
This is, and always will be, a complicated collaboration given that it explores both the ideas behind Preston’s desire to create a visual national identity, and the fact that her artistic influence created a mass market industry of kitsch objects that naively and stereotypically depict Aboriginal people and their culture.
By contrast the intentions around Albert’s work have always been personal, attached to his life, yet always seen through the prism of an Aboriginal experience of living and working in Australia.
He says: “It started from the very innocent perspective of a boy living in suburban Brisbane, growing and changing as I travelled and continued educating myself both nationally and internationally. I really see my work now as a vessel for storytelling. It is important for me to challenge perceptions and stereotypes. Aboriginal people represent the oldest living surviving culture in the world, and this is something that we should all be proud of and celebrate.
“I came across this discarded ephemera in secondhand shops (a weekly ritual) and fell in love with it. It represented my family and the people I loved that surrounded me. The objects and the images of Aboriginal people are beautiful. As the collection grew, so did I. I started to understand its problematic undertones. I have had to reconcile with the nature of the collection as I got to know more about it, but also understand the social, political and environmental aspects. I am ever fascinated by the collection and it is still growing. While a lot of the work I do with the collection is hard-hitting, a little bit of me still looks at the imagery through the loving eyes of my childhood. It is this juxtaposition and tension which fascinates me.”
In Conversations with Margaret Preston Albert turns the tables on history and reclaims the designs and motifs from Preston’s Aboriginal woodblock prints, to honour the subjects and voices of the work’s original creators. What a glorious take back it is. See it.
Conversations with Margaret Preston
Tony Albert
Sullivan+Strumpf Sydney
799 Elizabeth Street, Zetland
Until April 10
View online at Sullivan+Strumpf
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art@ssh.com.au
