Acclaimed artist Tony Albert tells Virginia Trioli how he gives 'Aboriginalia' new power

Australia Broadcast Center

28-04-2025

The plaster warriors line the entrance to artist Tony Albert's rainforest studio, bristling with threat — except, they are only a foot tall, indignantly aiming their spears at my knees.
I wince: here is a collection of some of the most awfully familiar, awfully racist bric-a-brac of the suburban 1960s: when white Australians decorated their gardens with figures of "natives", hunting among the hydrangeas.
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On pink background, Virginia Trioli faces side and smiles, with text: Creative Types with Virginia Trioli.
Multi-media visual artist Tony Albert calls these kitsch figures "Aboriginalia" and he collects them with a kind of calm and good humour, in the face of a mid-century legacy of purloining Indigenous imagery and faces, and turning them into décor.
Some of it is weird: the once-highly popular trend of painting black Australians on black velvet; other stuff is as upsetting as it can get — the highly common household item of an ashtray featuring an Indigenous face.
Tony takes old objects and gives them new power, as in this 2016 work, 'Woman hunting' (from the 'Mid Century Modern' series).
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Supplied: Queensland Art Gallery|Gallery of Modern Art/© Tony Albert
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Yes, we ashed out our cigarettes on the faces of the oldest continuing culture in the world. And Tony seeks out all these objects, gathers them up, uses them in his art and gives them another voice.
"I like to think they've got their own autonomy and their own voice now," Tony says. "Everything will eventually be used in some way, shape or form.
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I'd love to take the whole [lot] out of circulation.
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Giving pieces new power
I spent two days with Tony for an episode of Creative Types, in his airy, purpose-built Brisbane studio, and at his second home, the Queensland Art Gallery, where he worked as a curatorial assistant before committing to his practice full time.
In the years since, he has become one of Australia's most awarded and recognised contemporary artists, taking his vast collections of Indigenous paraphernalia and turning them into works of great power and effect.
Tony began collecting "Aboriginalia" bric-a-brac as a child. They would become the hallmark of his powerful later work.
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Supplied: Aaron Smith
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His award-winning, landmark work, Ash on Me, which features those ashtrays, showed he was an artist to be reckoned with.
"I've literally had people, from the army or grown men … in tears in front of them," Tony says. "The understanding of it really has an impact. And people have shared that with me, which is really beautiful."
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At any one time, Tony has hundreds of searches live on eBay, his feelers out for all of these collectibles. He's had to turn off notifications. Otherwise, his phone will ping all day with new items.
He's been collecting since he was a child, visiting op-shops with his sister and gathering objects of people who looked like him. "I assumed they were kind of famous people because how do you get on a plate?"
Re-used in Tony's installations or wall-pieces, the objects take on a new power and significance, their autonomy and voice no longer "pre-prescribed to them through non-Indigenous voice".
Anger and optimism
Tony's star continues to rise: Thames and Hudson has included him in a lavish book called Collecting: Living with Art, and alongside some of Australia's most glamorous households are Tony's vast collections of "Aboriginalia".
He was appointed director of the 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial, which opens in December, and some of his most beautiful photographs — of kids in the Aboriginal community Warakurna in WA, posing as superheroes — will be included in the world's longest-running and most prestigious photography festival, Les Recontres d'Arles.
On Creative Types, Tony explains how his practice takes in photography, installation, video and sculpture.
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Supplied: Aaron Smith
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It's a successful time for Tony, but like other high-profile Indigenous Australians, he has had to cop the blow from the "no" vote in the Voice referendum and try to move forward.
"Optimism in the face of adversity is how I managed to survive through life. And it's a personal choice I think I've made. I've been angry. I still am angry, but the way in which I choose to carry myself and to be able to deal with and live in the society I do is through optimism.
"[It's] the simplest answer for me. And it works."
Watch Creative Types with Virginia Trioli: Tony Albert on Tuesday April 29 at 8.30pm on ABC TV, or stream the whole series now on
.