When we talk about the revitalization of Aboriginal art being the success story of modern Australian art, I don't even know how to think about it - Does this mean that Indigenous art is simply more abundant in the contemporary gallery? Or that it is flourishing more so that in Indigenous art's history? Was Aboriginal art ever lost?

Indigenous art has only been brought to the contemporary gallery for the past 30 years, but it is one of the the most ancient art forms on the planet. Does the fact that Indigenous art only recently came to the present day gallery mean that it wasn't appreciated by the Western culture before?

Aboriginal art sells three times as much as non-Aboriginal Australian art every year, yet - do the artists themselves see any of the benefit from the sales of the work? Are their communities really benefiting? Or are the artists simply being ripped off? Indigenous art has helped put Australian art on the market - Is the Westernized culture of Australia using Indigenous art as a platform to reach into the contemporary art world hubs like New York, Berlin and London?

Or, has Aboriginal art influenced modern Australian art made by non-Indigenous artists?

Perkins says modernity "erases the old with the new" and that Indigenous art is contradicting this idea - we are able to follow the path of Indigenous art from it's ancient origins through colonization and up until today. Traditional Aboriginal imagery and technique is still used in the contemporary work of Indigenous artists. Also, many Indigenous region's styles are melding together, keeping Aboriginal art ever-changing.

Okay, so I sat down and watched the Baz Luhrmann film "Australia" the other night with my aunt and uncle. After getting over the melodrama of it all, I realized that I really have no clue about any Australian history (unless you want to count my pitiful knowledge of the convict immigrants and the Stolen Generation - which, by the way, I only learned about within the past month of this course). I brought up this revelation during a conversation with a mate, and found that she didn't even know that Darwin had been bombed during WWII. I suppose that this information should make me feel a little bit better about my lack of Aussie historical knowledge (aka I'm not the only one who doesn't know these things), but it really only leads me to question why.

Anyway, I found some strong relationships between the segregation of African Americans in the U.S. and the Aboriginal community portrayed in the film - how the children of mixed races were affected is especially something that I really just find so completely inhumane. The idea of "breeding out" a race is absolutely disturbing. Despite my general uninterest in the film, there are some things that I'm going to take with me.

Just some thoughts.

One of the discussion points this week was artist Lin Onus and his ability to incorporate traditional Indigenous imagery into contemporary, political pieces. Onus uses political referents as well as current reflections of Australian culture (like his work with the Hill's Hoist and painted bats). Our class deliberated whether Onus's artwork was about loss or the reinvention of culture...my classmates and I discussed how Onus used a mocking tone towards the white Aussie society of today.

In the tutorial this week, our discussion group also talked about how (in the film from the lecture) Rover Thomas was able to look at a painting and sing the story that was being told - something that we all found so interesting. I suppose it's related to the Indigenous spiritual dreaming - something that only people who were raised in Aboriginal communities would understand. It's something that I find really engaging to think about.

The class tutorial exercise this week focused on the context of Indigenous-related artwork - Does the viewer need to know what political ideas are referenced in the work to be able to appreciate it?

I find myself asking this question about a lot of artwork, and that a lot of viewers, artists, and students answer with "The aesthetic gaze is just as important as the conceptual gaze!" This is something that I tend to have a hard time with - not all art is attractive. Actually, a significant amount of art is generally UNattractive, or even just uninteresting, unappealing. So, say you've got some unpleasant looking art that you don't understand the referent for - can you still appreciate it? Does appreciation only come from some sort of attraction or connection with the work?

The particular artists that this exercise looks at are Destiny Deacon and Ricky Maynard.

With Deacon's work, I don't believe that the viewer needs to know the specific political ideas to understand it (I find that these are implied by the directness of what's actually happening in the image), but that the viewer does need to know this information to fully appreciate it the way the artist probably intended the work to be seen (this is, obviously, an assumption).

When it comes to the photograph of Ricky Maynard in the ocean, I actually find my answer to be a little different - I think any image that projects a feeling of longing, searching, or loss is going to be powerful to viewers. It's something that is intimate; something that many, if not all, of us have experienced in one way or another. Knowing the context of work would bring the meaning to another level, of course, but the feeling is conveyed regardless.

Another artist I've been introduced to recently is Vernon Ah Kee - another Brisbane based, text-using contemporary Indigenous artist. What stands out to me about Ah Kee are his amazingly beautiful drawings and his ability to incorporate different mediums (text, drawing, video, sculptural elements) together with ease in his portraits.

"I'm expanding the idea of what it means to be Aboriginal and what it means to be human. A lot of the problem this country has with Aboriginal people is that it struggles to see Aboriginal people as fully human." (Taken from The Australian)

I've been looking into some contemporary Indigenous-Australian artists lately...I find the combination of traditional imagery and contemporary issues to be a really interesting basis for work - something very new to me, especially since I don't have the background knowledge of the Indigenous cultures like most Aussies do.

Anyway, a classmate turned me on to Tony Albert - a Brisbane based mixed media artist who uses text and imagery to create work that shows the political, historical and cultural issues between Indigenous people and white Australia today. A reoccurring word in his work is "Sorry", clearly referencing Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations.