Collaboration and art history (2)
3 December 2022 at 2:00:00 am
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Session Convenors
Dr Susan Lowish, University of Melbourne
Dr Ursula Frederick, University of Canberra
Session Speakers
Dr Nikita Vanderbyl, La Trobe University
Dr Alec O’Halloran
Professor Annie Clarke, University of Sydney
Professor Jennifer Barrett, University of Sydney
Dr Laura Rademaker, The Australian National University
Anindilyakwa Land Council
Much has been written about artistic collaboration, but what of collaboration and art history? This panel focuses on demonstrations of collaboration within the discipline of art history, between artists and institutions, and with communities and academics across disciplines. It seeks to showcase examples of collaboration that cross cultures and interdisciplinary alliances that demonstrate innovation, develop new methods and link differing knowledge and value systems. This panel also includes presentations in the form of conversations between artists and historians, case studies of curatorial collectives, and papers that outline circumstances of a breakdown in an existing collaboration or an absence of a collaboration where there should have been one.
Aiming to highlight the range and diversity of collaborative endeavours, alongside a focus on what makes collaboration successful, the presentations in this panel show research outputs that benefit their source communities. The key questions proposed by this panel are: what is ‘collaboration’? How do we/should we/can we ‘collaborate’? How do we understand the nature of collaboration? How might we collaborate better in the future?
Collaboration and repatriation: William Barak and the Sotheby’s auction
Dr Nikita Vanderbyl, La Trobe University
Collaboration can be an opportunity to listen, and listening can bring new roles for art historians. This was my experience earlier this year when William Barak’s painting Corrobboree (women in possum skin cloaks) and his parrying shield were announced by Sotheby’s for auction in New York. Barak’s descendants at the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation used crowd funding and networking within supportive institutions to garner support and ultimately purchase their patrimonial heritage at auction. This presentation explores my role as a collaborator with Wurundjeri community members working towards this goal. I explore my role as an art intermediary and the author of the Sotheby’s catalogue note, a publication read by non-specialists and art collectors alike via the website, providing one avenue to describe the importance of returning the artworks. Self-reflexively I examine where I am complicit in a system which is designed to keep artworks and cultural objects inaccessible to their source communities, and where I have successfully listened and supported Barak’s descendants to reach their goal. In so doing I hope to add to discussions about the role of art historians outside the academy and how collaborations can be made better in the future.
An exercise in cross-cultural collaboration: writing the authorised biography of an Aboriginal artist
Dr Alec O’Halloran
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, now the longest-running Aboriginal-owned art organisation in Australia. It is self-determination writ large. Over a 19-year period I researched and wrote the authorised biography of one of its founding members, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, a Pintupi man, who passed away before I commenced my project. This cross-cultural endeavour engaged me in two very significant collaborations. The first was with the Papunya Tula organisation, based in Alice Springs, particularly its manager and field staff. The second involved Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra, Namarari’s widow, a resident of Kintore, 500 klms west of Alice Springs. There was no ready-made ‘collaboration handbook’, nor any comprehensive published biography of a Pintupi artist. The process became one of ‘finding my own way’. In this paper I outline and reflect upon my research journey, with its challenges, joys, mistakes and benefits. The methodology included inter-alia the formal requirements of seeking approvals and form-filling, as well as the Western Desert informality of relationship-building – ngapartji ngapartji – ‘I give you something, you give me something’. My analysis of collaboration concludes with several suggestions for improving the process, at least as it relates to biographical research.
Groote Eylandt Stories: co-creating community histories and collections
Professor Annie Clarke, University of Sydney
Professor Jennifer Barrett, University of Sydney
Dr Laura Rademaker, The Australian National University
Anindilyakwa Land Council
‘Groote Eylandt Stories: co-creating community histories and collections’ is a collaborative project currently under development, involving the Anindilyakwa Land Council, and a group of five academics from archaeology, art history, history and museology. Co-design and co-creative methodologies are the heart of the project which aims to firstly( re)gather and (re) collect the century-long diaspora of cultural belongings and secondly to co-create narratives that (re)present the history and culture of Groote Eylandt from Anindilyakwa and academic perspectives. In this paper we use two bark paintings to explore the potential of co-creation and collaboration across cultural and disciplinary spaces.
Biographies
Dr Susan Lowish, University of Melbourne
Dr Susan Lowish is Senior Lecturer in Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne. She publishes widely on the critical reception of Indigenous art, and the uses of technology in cultural heritage preservation and management. Her monograph, Rethinking Australia’s Art History: the challenge of Aboriginal art (Routledge, 2018), won the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s Best Book Prize in 2019 and was released in paperback mid-2021.
Dr Ursula Frederick, University of Canberra
U.K. Frederick (Ursula) is an artist based in Canberra, Australia. Her primary modes of art practice are photography, printmaking, and video. Her art practice is informed by her interests in material culture and the way people interact with each other and their worlds. Ursula was recently awarded an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award to examining the relationships between creative art practice and contemporary archaeology and heritage. Her interdisciplinary research reflects a background in archaeology, fine arts, photo media and art theory.
Dr Nikita Vanderbyl, La Trobe University
Nikita Vanderbyl is a historian of nineteenth-century Aboriginal art. Her research focuses on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung art and history in the context of colonial cultures of collection and display. Most recently she has published with Professor Barry Judd on Indigenous masculinities and her work has appeared in Aboriginal History, History Workshop Journal (with Professor Alan Lester), The La Trobe Journal and on the Conversation. Each month she publishes a newsletter called Slow Looking via the Substack platform.
Dr Alec O’Halloran
Alec is an independent researcher and author whose abiding interest is the Papunya Tula artists of Australia’s Western Desert region. He researched and wrote the authorised biography of award-winning artist Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, ‘The master from Marnpi’, based on his doctoral thesis at the ANU. Alec’s current project is a major exhibition catalogue essay on Papunya Tula’s women artists. Reflections on his journey as a biographer will appear in the Australian Journal of Biography and History in early 2023. He lives in Sydney.
Professor Annie Clarke, University of Sydney
Professor Annie Clarke, Chair of Archaeology, University of Sydney, has collaborated with the local community of Groote Eylandt for over 30 years. She researches rock art and mark-making practices, ethnographic collections, and objects.
Professor Jennifer Barrett, University of Sydney
Professor Jennifer Barrett is Pro-Vice Chancellor Indigenous (Academic), University of Sydney. She is of Dhanggati heritage from the Macleay River region in northern NSW and publishes on museums, culture, art, and the public sphere.
Dr Laura Rademaker, The Australian National University
Dr Laura Rademaker, ARC DECRA research fellow, is an award-winning author on cross-cultural exchange in Christian missions. Her work explores ‘cross-culturalising’ history, interdisciplinary histories as well as oral history and memory.