A new history of Australian Art: Dialectic between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Art

The recent public advent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and its national and international recognition has lead to a major reassessment to the process of writing Australian art. This major commissioned history is part of that process. Whereas earlier histories practiced cultural apartheid, this one traces the active dialectic between Indigenous and non-Indigenous art forms. Australian Art: A history will fulfil a real need for an inclusive and representative historical account of the development of a distinctive art culture. It also will differ from earlier studies in its adopted methodology for the discussion of Australian art. Traditionally the history of Australian art has been viewed as that of a European outpost which was established in the 18th century and which developed over the subsequent 220 years and it has been discussed mainly in reference to changes in visual culture predominantly in Europe and later in the United States. The methodological contention in this study is that non-Indigenous art in Australia has always been to some extent involved in a dialectic with Indigenous art and that this together with the multicultural composition of the population as well as the country�s proximity to Asia, have all contributed to a visual culture which is unique and distinctive. This book sets out to examine all major expressions of visual culture in Australia � painting, sculpture, the graphic arts, the applied arts, installation art and digital art � in the light of a continuous dialectic between Indigenous and non-indigenous art, one, which it is argued, has continued to a varying extent for the duration of European settlement.