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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-29/tony-albert-creative-types-virginia-trioli-aboriginalia/105210826>
'The plaster warriors line the entrance to artist Tony Albert's rainforest
studio, bristling with threat — except, they are only a foot tall, indignantly
aiming their spears at my knees.
I wince: here is a collection of some of the most awfully familiar, awfully
racist bric-a-brac of the suburban 1960s: when white Australians decorated
their gardens with figures of "natives", hunting among the hydrangeas.
Multi-media visual artist Tony Albert calls these kitsch figures "Aboriginalia"
and he collects them with a kind of calm and good humour, in the face of a
mid-century legacy of purloining Indigenous imagery and faces, and turning them
into décor.
Some of it is weird: the once-highly popular trend of painting black
Australians on black velvet; other stuff is as upsetting as it can get — the
highly common household item of an ashtray featuring an Indigenous face.
Yes, we ashed out our cigarettes on the faces of the oldest continuing culture
in the world. And Tony seeks out all these objects, gathers them up, uses them
in his art and gives them another voice.
"I like to think they've got their own autonomy and their own voice now," Tony
says. "Everything will eventually be used in some way, shape or form."
"I'd love to take the whole [lot] out of circulation."'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
