Heather Kemarre Shearer, Troubled Traces: Painting and Displaying Intercultural Traumas of Aboriginality

Fiona Magowan and Heather, Kemarre Shearer Aboriginal art has been the source of much contention between art curators, gallery owners, art critics and Aboriginal artists themselves. Early aesthetic debates about whether so-called traditional works should be considered ethnographic or artistic have led, at times, to conflicts over the rights of Aboriginal people to have their works exhibited according to the criteria applied to other kinds of Western artworks. The legal parameters of artistic production have also posed problems in copyright recognition and compensation for Aboriginal artists when works are misused. In seeking to find a resolution to such conflicts the legal decisions on what counts as art are often made in the abstract. Yet, for Aboriginal artists, the question of what justice is and how one engages justly is not just philosophical, it entails very real consequences with political implications. Behind the pointillism of dot paintings or ‘naïve’ techniques, Aboriginal artists stridently critique histories of injustice, incarceration, racism, colonialism and dispossession. In this discussion we explore how the dilemmas of troubled ethno-histories are critically embodied and reconfigured in texture and colour. We consider the problems that hidden histories pose for those responsible for their display to the public. As Aboriginal images often conceal troubled intercultural encounters we ask how they can best be displayed and used to provide a counter-polemic to national rhetorics as artists seek to reshape and improve intergenerational futures. Some images, sounds or other media used in the following presentation are subject to copyright restrictions that prevent them being shown. In order to provide a complete record of the conference, these items have been blurred or silenced. Should we obtain permission to use these images, sounds and other media in the future the films will be updated.