Blackspot

Destiny Deacon Meloncholy 2000
Monash University collection

Contemporary Indigenous Photography from the Monash University Collection, with selected loans.

Monash University Museum of Art
Exhibition dates: 14 July - 21 August 2004
Opening: Saturday 17 July 3.15 - 5 pm
Floortalk: 1.15pm, Thursday 5 August, Dr. Anne Marsh 1.15pm, Thursday 12 August, Prof. Lynette Russell

Blackspot presents a focused selection of contemporary Indigenous photography from the Monash University Collection, with additional selected loans. It features works by leading Australian artists Destiny Deacon, Fiona Foley, Leah King-Smith, Tracey Moffatt, and Christian Bumbarra Thompson.

The exhibition highlights the power and complexity of contemporary Indigenous photography, and the way in which Indigenous artists draw upon a rich mixture of history, personal experience, blak humour, as well as postmodern and postcolonial theories, in order to generate new perspectives and understandings of the social, political and cultural conditions faced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
The title Blackspot situates the idea of an Indigenous photography in the context of recent history debates (the black armband and white blindfold...), whilst also identifying the process of reconciliation as unfinished business in contemporary Australian culture.

Through the photographic medium, the exhibition explores the ways in which Indigenous artists represented in the Monash University Collection have reclaimed representations of Aboriginality. Through their engagement with diverse artistic, photographic and cinematic genres and traditions - from colonial representations; documentary and ethnographic photography traditions; pop and media culture; to amateur snapshots and home movies - the participating artists achieve indelible, poetic and haunting images, whilst at the same time reworking and redefining cultural stereotypes, myths and representations.

The support of Monash University's Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies; and the Visual Culture section of the School of Literary, Visual, and Performance Studies, is gratefully acknowledged.

Artists

Destiny Deacon was recently included in Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany, arguably the world's most prestigious exhibition, and has recently returned from a major survey exhibition at the Salzburger Kunsthalle. Her work will be the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in late 2004, prior to an international tour.

Fiona Foley has participated in individual and group exhibitions both locally and internationally, as well as curated exhibitions and lectured extensively on the subject of Indigenous and colonial culture. Recent individual exhibitions include Wandering, Niagara Galleries, 2004; and Red Ochre Me, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, 2003. Recent group exhibitions include Art Australia: Zeitigenossishe Kunst, Galerie Seippel, Cologne, 2003-2004.

Leah King-Smith first presented her celebrated Patterns of Connections series in 1992. The series has since travelled extensively internationally, to venues including Camerawork Gallery, London; Stills Gallery, Edinburgh; the Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida, USA; and the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, Wellington. Her most recent exhibition was held at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne in 2004.

Tracey Moffatt is arguably Australia's most well-known artist on the international stage. Her work was recently the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney; and recent international exhibitions include Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, USA; Galerie Six Friedrich Lisa Ungar, Munich, Germany; Galerie Karlheinz Meyer, Karlsruhe, Germany; Phantom of Pleasure, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Switzerland.

Christian Bumbarra Thompson is a Melbourne-based artist and curator who has participated in a wide range of exhibitions in Australia and internationally including Emotional Striptease, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, 2003; Show me the way to go home, George Adams Galery, 2002; Biennale d'Art Contemporain, 2000; and Biennale of Contemporary Art, Noumea, New Caledonia, 2000.