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Indigenous art stereotypes a bark up the wrong tree

By Sharon Verghis

10 July 2002 - If you have a "suntan" - courtesy of pigment, not lifestyle - art convention dictates that you create dot paintings of Dreamtime mythology, accompanied, preferably, with a hard-luck story of deprivation. Jonathon Jones, however, is less than impressed by this view.

The Sydney artist and curator is one of a growing group of young, urban Aboriginal artists who have publicly questioned this prevailing cultural status quo. Why are so many works of urban Aboriginal artists, based on experiences of growing up black in the city, not the bush, dismissed as "unauthentic" while a more traditional style of painting fetches price records and praise? What is black art and what isn't?

Perhaps Australians are more relaxed and comfortable about benign, safe rock art or bark paintings than anything overtly political or social. Jones, the winner of this year's $15,000 NSW Indigenous Arts Fellowship, is a vocal critic of this narrow view of cultural "authenticity".

"My life and culture is just as valid and important as any other," says the 23-year-old Bronte-based artist, part of a cabal of urban Aboriginal artists who use contemporary tools - photography, light, digital media and computers - to create art. "The statement 'you have lost your culture' disturbs me as, in fact, it is an impossibility to lose your culture," he said.

"What is being insinuated is that you are not living up to naive stereotypical ideas of Aboriginality. Urban Aboriginal culture is just as legitimate as any other culture and deserves the same respect and acknowledgement," says the artist, who curated the visual arts component of the indigenous arts festival Message Sticks at the Opera House this year.

Formerly the curator of the Annandale-based Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Co-operative, he has exhibited widely, including at the 2002 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Along the way, he finds time to sit on the Prime Minister's national Youth Round Table.

This mission to redefine what constitutes Aboriginal art - shared by such urban Aboriginal artists as Kerry Gilbert, Brenda Croft, and others - was rewarded last night when Jones was awarded the scholarship for his work in "deconstructing" stereotypical notions of indigenous identity.

The NSW Ministry for the Arts has joined in this push for more diversity, releasing a guide for Aboriginal artists this week emphasising the lack of necessity of adopting the "more recognised forms of indigenous arts practice, such as desert or bark painting styles, in order to have their work identified as indigenous."

There's no ochre or dot work in sight in Jones's installation work, which uses the interplay of light and shadow to communicate ideas of community and urban identity.

"For me lights evoke the idea of human spirit; memories of those who have passed on stay with us long after they have gone," says the artist, who will use the scholarship funds to produce a limited-edition book based on the installation work he has created over the past five years.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

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