EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender
Jeanette Hoorn, The University of Melbourne
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E Australian Indigenous Visual Culture Notes taken on March 21, 2020 by Edward Tanguay |
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contemporary indigenous art
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gathering momentum in Australia from the 1970s onwards
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indigenous visual culture is the longest continuous art form on the planet
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50,000 years
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prior to contact by Europeans, its locus was
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primary ceremony
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largely ephemeral
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1971
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following the work of bark painters and sculptors in Arnhem land in the Tiwi Islands
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laid the ground work for revolution in indigenous art
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artists at Papunya transferred designs onto small sheets of composition board
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before that only visible on ceremonial ground
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women not allowed to paint
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before this art
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Papunya art was viewed as artifact
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a curiosity
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not deserved to be considered as equivalent as art
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Papunya art was seen as art
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not works for use in ceremony
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they were largely geometric, seemingly abstract
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dots form an important part of iconography
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shields
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cave walls
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used on the body and on the ground
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term: "dot painting"
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these painting showed the actions of ancestral beings
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from a place called the Jokepa
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art was bequeathed to next generations
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the spirit of a person comes from a particular place in the landscape to which the person will return when they pass away
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continuous life cycle
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the position of women in traditional society
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the emergence of women as artists
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the 1980s the first time to work as artists in their own right
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women began painting at Yuendumu, Lajamanu and Balgo
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in discussion with men gained permission to use dots because dots belonged to men
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their works were about their responsibilities to country
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less formal than those of men
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Emily, Cara, and Laura were leading artists in this society
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one canvas of Emily's
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was reproduced on the cover of the group's publication
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women's linear designs was covered by a field of dots
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used to be the predominant iconography of Papunya men's painting
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what was happening at Yuendumu or Balgo
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collectors wanted to see more of Emily's works
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but she had no knowledge of any contemporary art movement