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ABC News
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Marcia Langton 'delighted' and 'terrified' by new exhibition 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art
The long, woven eel trap in pale native grasses hovers above me. I've stepped through the new mirrored entrance into the redeveloped Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne; the building has become a monumental recognition and celebration of the artistic visions of the oldest continuing culture on earth. The sinuous eel trap, made by Dhauwurd Wurrung Gunditjmara artist Sandra Aitken, is suspended in space, no longer a fishing device but seemingly a container of history, of almost-lost weaving skills and of the memory of connection to land and creativity that not even decades of colonisation could erase. Ten years of painstaking work has culminated in an exhibition that not only brings together the infinite variety and long history of Aboriginal art, but that also recounts the brutal history of dispossession, subjection and scientific racism that is the dark heart of colonial history — and the subject of so many of these works. The exhibition is called 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art. It's a deliberately provocative title. It slices quickly to the point of what is almost certainly the most important exhibition of Australian Aboriginal art and design assembled in this country. Because Indigenous Australians have been making art for as long as they have been here, telling their stories, painting their place and recording their experiences and creative visions for millennia — but colonial recognition of that art has been a very long time coming. "I say it's a short history of Australian art,'' co-curator, writer and anthropologist Professor Marcia Langton says, "because Australian art, the art of this country, was not recognised as art until well into the 20th century, so it's both a truthful and an ironic title." The exhibition's curators are formidable women: Professor Langton, who was originally asked to create this show a decade ago; and curator and Arrernte woman Shanysa McConville, with historian and curator of Indigenous art Judith Ryan, who both joined the project in 2021. They are brilliant, insightful and dedicated curators. They hold every aspect of the broad, varied and long histories of Indigenous art in their minds, rapidly recalling fine details and important historical contexts. They are awe-inspiring company: in conversation with them, I work hard to keep up. The curatorial team consulted with communities around the country, sought the display of a major collection of historical Indigenous art and cultural objects, and have invited commissions of new work to establish a powerful timeline over centuries that Professor Langton says had to be done — "because it had never been done before". For the curators, the task of putting together this exhibition was cultural, historic and deeply personal. "I started out thinking that we have to address Australian history because the artists themselves do," Langton says. Not to do so, she says, "would be an act of cowardice". "Getting those chronologies right has been really important," McConville says. "The central and western desert room in particular has been close to my heart … I wanted to get that absolutely right." Brought together, the works are overwhelming. They extend from the very earliest bark paintings and cultural objects — all approved for public viewing — to the first colonial representations of Indigenous Australians. And there is work from every place, region and period of time in which art was created: former missions and settlements, deserts and homelands in and around the battlegrounds of the Australian Wars, and the suburbs and cities of new movements of contemporary Indigenous art. The three curators also include "hero" works from the celebrated art movements of Papunya, the Kimberley and the Spinifex people among others, with major paintings by Emily Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas, Carlene West and the Tjanpi Desert weavers. For Judith Ryan, much of the exhibition is a living tribute. "A lot of the walls are memorial walls — of loss, sorrow and death. You can't see this art separate from dispossession and massacre: it isn't separate from history — it's the intersection of art and history." McConville cites the room of early colonial painting as one of great significance to her, as the names, images and histories of important Aboriginal artists are depicted in the works. "It brings them into the room and into focus. Those works are more about these artists than the colonial painters themselves," she says. At the centre of the exhibition is the returned cultural pinnacle of the university's Indigenous collections: the Donald Thomson collection, which has been on long-term loan to Museums Victoria since 1973. The Melbourne anthropologist's collection is astonishing: Thomson is credited with making the world's most significant ethnographic collection of Aboriginal art and cultural objects, which he started in the 1930s. It comprises work from more than 90 communities in Cape York, Arnhem Land, the Central and Gibson Deserts, and beyond. The room in the Potter Museum that contains many of the Thomson pieces is painted green for the grasslands of their origin, and the precious bark paintings are thrillingly familiar and mysterious. But even in this extraordinary collection, there was something missing. "One of the things I noticed when I started going through the catalogues was that there were no works by women except for the weaving works that Donald Thomson collected," Professor Langton says. "But of course, none of the women are named." The curators specifically commissioned major pieces by contemporary women artists, including the mesmerising five-metre painting, Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country). Betty Muffler and Maringka Burton, respected Aṉangu ngangkari (traditional healers) based at Indulkana in the APY Lands, collaborated on the painting, which focuses on healing the country in the aftermath of British atomic testing at Maralinga and Emu Field during the 1950s. After 10 years' work, the exhibition has left its mark on its curators. "It feels like home," McConville says. "It's the greatest exhibition experience I have had," says Ryan who was senior curator of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Victoria for more than 40 years. When I tell her that I think it will blow people's minds, she quietly replies, "I hope so." Marcia Langton feels similarly. 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is at the Potter Museum of Art (Naarm/Melbourne) from May 30 to November 23, 2025. Virginia Trioli is presenter of Creative Types and a former co-host of ABC News Breakfast and Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne.
BBC News
25-05-2025
- Business
- BBC News
India's colonial past revealed through 200 masterful paintings
Founded in 1600 as a trading enterprise, the English East India company gradually transformed into a colonial power. By the late 18th Century, as it tightened its grip on India, company officials began commissioning Indian artists - many formerly employed by the Mughals - to create striking visual records of the land they were now ruling.A Treasury of Life: Indian Company Paintings, c. 1790 to 1835, an ongoing show in the Indian capital put together by Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), features over 200 works that once lay on the margins of mainstream art history. It is India's largest exhibition of company paintings, highlighting their rich diversity and the skill of Indian by largely unnamed artists, these paintings covered a wide range of subjects, but mainly fall into three categories: natural history, like botanical studies; architecture, including monuments and scenic views of towns and landscapes; and Indian manners and customs."The focus on these three subject areas reflects European engagements with their Indian environment in an attempt to come to terms with all that was unfamiliar to Western eyes," says Giles Tillotson of DAG, who curated the show."Europeans living in India were delighted to encounter flora and fauna that were new to them, and ancient buildings in exotic styles. They met – or at least observed – multitudes of people whose dress and habits were strange but – as they began to discern – were linked to stream of religious belief and social practice." Beyond natural history, India's architectural heritage captivated European visitors. Before photography, paintings were the best way to document travels, and iconic Mughal monuments became prime subjects. Patrons soon turned to skilled local the Taj Mahal, popular subjects included Agra Fort, Jama Masjid, Buland Darwaza, Sheikh Salim Chishti's tomb at Fatehpur Sikri (above), and Delhi's Qutub Minar and Humayun's once-obscure and long-anonymous Indian artist Sita Ram, who painted the tomb, was one of them. From June 1814 to early October 1815, Sita Ram travelled extensively with Francis Rawdon, also known as the Marquess of Hastings, who had been appointed as the governor general in India in 1813 and held the position for a decade. (He is not to be confused with Warren Hastings, who served as India's first governor general much earlier.) The largest group in this collection is a set of botanical watercolours, likely from Murshidabad or Maidapur (in present-day West Bengal). While Murshidabad was the Nawab of Bengal's capital, the East India Company operated there. In the late 18th century, nearby Maidapur briefly served as a British base before Calcutta's (now Kolkata) rise eclipsed part of the Louisa Parlby Album - named after the British woman who compiled it while her husband, Colonel James Parlby, served in Bengal - the works likely date to the late 18th Century, before Louisa's return to Britain in 1801."The plants represented in the paintings are likely quite illustrative of what could be found growing in both the well-appointed gardens as well as the more marginal spaces of common greens, waysides and fields in the Murshidabad area during the late eighteenth century," writes Nicolas Roth of Harvard University. "These are familiar plants, domestic and domesticated, which helped constitute local life worlds and systems of meaning, even as European patrons may have seen them mainly as exotica to be collected." Another painting from the collection is of a temple procession showing a Shiva statue on an ornate platform carried by men, flanked by Brahmins and trumpeters. At the front, dancers with sticks perform under a temporary gateway, while holy water is poured on them from above. Labeled Ouricaty Tirounal, it depicts a ritual from Thirunallar temple in Karaikal in southern India, capturing a rare moment from a 200-year-old tradition. By the late 18th Century, company paintings had become true collaborations between European patrons and Indian artists. Art historian Mildred Archer called them a "fascinating record of Indian social life," blending the fine detail of Mughal miniatures with European realism and perspective. Regional styles added richness - Tanjore artists, for example, depicted people of various castes, shown with tools of their trade. These albums captured a range of professions - nautch girls, judges, sepoys, toddy tappers, and snake charmers."They catered to British curiosity while satisfying European audience's fascination with the 'exoticism' of Indian life," says Kanupriya Sharma of DAG. Most studies of company painting focus on British patronage, but in south India, the French were commissioning Indian artists as early as 1727. A striking example is a set of 48 paintings from Pondicherry - uniform in size and style - showing the kind of work French collectors sought by painting (above) shows 10 men in hats and loincloths rowing through surf. A French caption calls them nageurs (swimmers) and the boat a the standout images are two vivid scenes by an artist known as B, depicting boatmen navigating the rough Coromandel coast in stitched-plank no safe harbours near Madras or Pondicherry, these skilled oarsmen were vital to European trade, ferrying goods and people through dangerous surf between anchored ships and the shore. Company paintings often featured natural history studies, portraying birds, animals, and plants - especially from private menageries. As seen in the DAG show, these subjects are typically shown life-size against plain white backgrounds, with minimal surroundings - just the occasional patch of grass. The focus remains firmly on the species Anand, CEO of DAG says the the latest show proposes company paintings as the "starting point of Indian modernism".Anand says this "was the moment when Indian artists who had trained in courtly ateliers first moved outside the court (and the temple) to work for new patrons". "The agendas of those patrons were not tied up with courtly or religious concerns; they were founded on scientific enquiry and observation," he says. "Never mind that the patrons were foreigners. What should strike us now is how Indian artists responded to their demands, creating entirely new templates of Indian art."
