About the exhibition
The title Blackspot situates the idea of an Indigenous photography in the context of history debates occurring in the early 2000s (the black armband and white blindfold...), while also identifying the process of reconciliation as unfinished business in contemporary Australian culture.

Through the photographic medium, the exhibition explored the ways in which Indigenous artists represented in the Monash University Collection had 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 had achieved indelible, poetic and haunting images, while at the same time reworking and redefining cultural stereotypes, myths and representations.

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

The exhibition highlighted 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.

Exhibition Catalogue:
Blackspot: Contemporary Indigenous Photography

MUMA Online Exhibition Archive
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^{Image: Leah King-Smith, Untitled #5 (King Billy) from the series Patterns of Connection 1991. Monash University Collection, Melbourne}