65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art The Saturday Paper

Sixty-five thousand years is a time longer than human comprehension, so far beyond our understanding it is abstracted to “forever”. Aboriginal people have been on this continent for at least that long – and so has our art.

Universities have not always had a good relationship with Indigenous people and our material culture. They still hold the bodies of our ancestors as specimens and for many years our art has not been respected as fine art, stored in anthropological collections or as curios in museums. The University of Melbourne’s Potter Museum of Art is host to 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art. Curated by associate provost and Distinguished Professor Marcia Langton AO, senior curator Judith Ryan AM and associate curator Shanysa McConville, it is a historic exhibition, not only in how it exposes historic and ongoing injustices while displaying classical Indigenous art alongside contemporary works, but also because it is making history itself.

The incomparable Langton has excavated the university’s collection, archives and storage spaces to expose the toxic way it has historically engaged with the first people of the continent. This hopefully will change how the institution works with Indigenous people and our material culture into the future. The name of the exhibition itself is an act of truth-telling and protest, immediately establishing that Australia’s art history did not begin with the landing of the First Fleet. In fact, Australian art is the oldest art tradition on Earth. The art of the colony is not even as old as the colony, as it took some time for white Australia to throw off the mantle of European art and begin to create something unique to Australia.

The intention of the exhibition is shown effectively in the truth-telling room, where artefacts from the long history of anthropological crimes are shown among art that engages with this history. In Brook Andrew’s Vox: Beyond Tasmania, a human skull screams through a giant megaphone in a large vitrine box of anthropological artefacts and material. For Yhonnie Scarce’s In the Dead House, disembowelled glass bush bananas, representing the anthropological desecration of Indigenous bodies, are displayed on a vintage surgeon’s table. This was first shown in South Australia at the site where a surgeon experimented on Aboriginal corpses. A work by Langton shows the professor herself in a very important looking chair reading from archival letters and documents that record the misuse and abuse of Indigenous remains.

This exhibition exposes the truth that Indigenous culture is so much older than coloniser culture that there is no comparison. The dominant coloniser culture on this continent rarely reckons with this. I cannot count the number of times I have seen interpretative signs or panels with the pre-colonial history written as merely a prologue to the arrival of the colonisers. The “history” of Australia, including our art history, is written as if it began in 1788.

This discourse is important, but so is the entire exhibition. Every room in the three floors of the newly renovated and expanded Potter Museum of Art has been filled with art, most of it Indigenous. The non-Indigenous works are there to provide context for the Indigenous works. Some have not been seen by the public for decades, if they have ever been displayed. Many were in anthropological collections and are only now being shown as they should have been, as exquisite works of art. Some of them have been hung alongside related works from the same community or culture, telling the story of the connection of classical/historic works to the works of contemporary artists.

This is how exhibitions of Australian art should be: focused on Indigenous art with a smattering of whitefella works needed to tell the story.

There are many highlights, too many to list in this short review. One is a room of south-east Australian peoples and their art, including priceless works from the Wurundjeri Elder who protected his people in the early colony, William Barak. On another wall, drawings from Nicolas-Martin Petit, who drew Aboriginal people of Van Diemen’s Land, the palawa, as part of Nicolas Baudin’s 1800-1803 expedition to Australia, are contrasted with photos of displaced palawa by Ricky Maynard. A focus on the south-east is essential, not only because the gallery is in the south-east of the continent but also because the art of that region, local to the gallery, is so often ignored in discourse about Indigenous art.

In another room upstairs, historical Yolŋu works from the university collection hang with modern works from the same peoples. I was startled and deeply moved to see a classical work by Mundukul Marawili, who would have seen his first whitefella as an adult, hanging next to the works of his daughter, who has only recently passed into the Dreaming. Nearby in the same room is a display of bark paintings and ceremonial dillybags – all of them, the paintings and weavings alike, holding deep stories that are opaque to anyone who does not know how to read them. At the press preview, Yolŋu Elder Djambawa Marawili, who is definitely qualified to read them, was crouched down doing just that.

The division between modernist and classical Indigenous art is so thin as to be non-existent: it’s important to remember that Aboriginal people are the oldest continuous living culture on Earth, with an emphasis on “living”. The art of contemporary Indigenous people has taken on new materials, topics and iconography. This is best demonstrated by a print by Brian Robinson, which combines science fiction and Torres Strait Islander culture in an exquisite and delightful way. You can see it on a wall along with other contemporary and classical TSI works.

I can’t possibly list them all, as a list of all the works and artists would be longer than the word count allocated for this review. There are hundreds of works by dozens of artists, great works by a who’s who of Indigenous art, along with historical works by artists whose names were never recorded: yet another reason why Australian art is due a reckoning.

Of note is the beautiful and well-designed accompanying publication of the same name, co-edited by Langton and Ryan. A particularly informative book, it is heavy on the text while still carrying enough images of the art to make it fun to just flick through. If you like art books, it would be a great addition to your collection. If you have never read an art book or catalogue, or if you don’t know anything about Indigenous art, it would be a great way to start learning. The essays by a litany of the greats of Indigenous arts scholarship might not cover everything there is to know about Indigenous art, but they will teach you a lot of what you need to know.

On page seven of the catalogue, Langton justifies her assertion that Aboriginal art is 65,000 years old. Perhaps this exhibition and publication can finally put that old debate to rest. I don’t imagine it will, however, as there are many racists who still want to deny how long Aboriginal people have lived on this continent.

If you are interested in seeing what is almost certainly one of the greatest survey exhibitions of Indigenous art presented here, if you want to see brilliant, powerful and insightful works by Indigenous artists, or if you want to learn a lot about Indigenous art in an almost overwhelming rush, this show is worth a visit. If you combine your visit with the catalogue, it will be a crash course in the true art history of this continent, a history in which coloniser art is a mere blink of an eye.

65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is showing at the Potter Museum of Art until November 22.

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