How Australians View Art

As a class, throughout this trip we have explored various forms of Australian art from different authors and time periods—analyzing poetry, paintings, and songs with the depth of literary analysis.  Because our coursework has a strong focus in English, this class is able to view art through an academic lens.  As such, our approach to artwork as American college students made me wonder how Australians themselves view Australian art.  The man I chose to interview about this topic is named Brian Bozorg.  He is the shopkeeper of the Gannon House Gallery in the Rocks, a shop that sells Indigenous artwork.  Brian, though not an artist himself, definitely sees the importance of art.  He views it as a creative work that depends on one’s imagination, as something very beautiful to look at.  He also said art was a means of expressing yourself politically any way you like, for people will receive a message better if it’s visual.  Our class has seen this expression in action many times with artists who use paintings or poetry to speak about difficult political topics, such as the poem “Australia 1970” by Judith Wright.

Next we talked about how Australian and Indigenous culture affect artwork, especially the artwork in his shop.  Brian sees that the artists use colors affected by the nature of what they see around Australia.  Interestingly, it seems the land of Australia is conducive to using more reds, blues, and oranges than in other places.  To me, this would seem because Australia’s coastlines can be experienced as a seaside paradise (hence the blues), but Australia’s wilderness can also be experienced as a hot and oppressive wasteland (hence the reds and oranges).  In addition to Australia’s unique landscape, I asked Brian how Indigenous culture specifically influences the artwork in his shop.  His reply was that the stories in Indigenous paintings are secret stories, and that the dot style of some Indigenous paintings is meant to emulate sand.  This aligns with our class discussions about Indigenous art as a work not completely meant for us—because the stories are only meant for other Indigenous people, our outside perspective will never be able to fully understand their art.

Finally, I was interested in his opinion on how Australians view Indigenous art.  To my surprise, he said he thinks that Australians actually aren’t very fond of Indigenous art.  Rather, it is Europeans and Americans who are more interested in Indigenous art.  This initially came as a surprise to me because a lot of the Indigenous art I see is very beautiful and unique, even if I can’t understand its meaning.  However, in hindsight this response makes sense, for two reasons.  First, Australians may have grown up with the knowledge, however slight, of Indigenous and their art, and to those living here their art may not seem new or unique.  To European and American visitors, however, this is not a mundane part of our history, but a completely new style by the people of a foreign nation.  The art’s unfamiliarity gives us more incentive to pay attention to it and appreciate it.  The second reason applies to our class after reading about Indigenous history, thereby we are more informed in our travels than the average Australian tourist.  As Edward mentioned in our day visit with the Indigenous today and as mentioned throughout the class, Australia’s history of Indigenous peoples is ignored and not taught in schools.  Therefore, many Australians remain unaware of the importance of Indigenous art and do not have the knowledge to appreciate it.  Because they were born inside the system that tends to gloss over Indigenous history and experiences, ignorance of the conflict between Indigenous and the Australian government’s treatment of Indigenous becomes a norm to them.  However, because we are approaching Australia from an outside perspective, through our academic studies we have been able to discuss and analyze the tensions between Indigenous and Europeans, both historical and contemporary.  In this way, our outside perspective is actually helpful for seeing the internal conflicts of Australia that may not be as readily apparent to the average resident within Australia.

Laurie Ruhlmann