The importance of loving your roots
Provocative, internationally acclaimed visual artist Tony Albert has been celebrating a number of firsts recently: being appointed Australia’s first official Aboriginal war artist and winning the prestigious National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Ar
was born in Townsville but my father wanted us to have a better education so we moved to Brisbane. My younger sister and I were the only Indigenous kids in school. That was really tough and isolating in a way, coming from a big, extended Aboriginal family. Mum would tell stories of taking us to school and not being acknowledged by other parents as our mother. People actually said to her: ‘Are you babysitting these children?’ We don’t look the same as Mum, who’s white Australian.
“I’ve always been politically aware. For assignments I would always pick an Aboriginal writer or person. Then in high school an art teacher picked up that maybe I had a talent for art and recommended I go to a specialist art college one day a week. That was my introduction to art. They recommended I look at a book of works by Tracey Moffatt and Gordon Bennett. My teachers really went beyond the curriculum. When I saw Tracey Moffatt’s Scarred forLife, I realised: ‘ This is my life!’ Someone else was feeling the way I do. I started crying. And that’s when I understood art didn’t have to be a pretty picture; that art can do and say something. It gave me a path that I was interested in following. It didn’t matter if no-one else liked it: it was for me.
“That led to me studying a bachelor of visual art majoring in Australian contemporary Indigenous art at Griffith University, the only university-accredited art degree just for Aboriginal people. It laid the foundation for experimentation; and for living and working in contemporary Australian society in a way that is culturally relevant and appropriate for an Aboriginal person. Which was incredible.
“Growing up we were poor. We shopped at second-hand shops, and that’s where my love of ephemera came from. I call them ‘Aboriginalia’: they’re the soul of my work. I was six when I started collecting kitsch objects with Aboriginal imagery on it. It was incredibly cheap and no-one else wanted it, but to me it was a representation of people who were in my family. I just couldn’t believe there was nothing on TV, nothing on the media, no Aboriginal people on Neighbours! The first piece I found was a plate with an old Aboriginal man’s face on it. To me it was incredibly beautiful.
“My art is very grounded in the here and now. I like to keep up with the news and social media, and respond to those issues, so I looked very closely at Adam Goodes’s experience of racism for the 2014 Basil Sellers Art Prize [which Albert won, for his work OnceUponaTime]. Racism in society – the 2012 shooting of the Aboriginal boys in Kings Cross – really looking at contemporary life and the validity of contemporary life as Aboriginal people inspired WeCanBeHeroes (2013-14). [ This work won the prestigious 2014 Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award.]
“I don’t feel I have to reach back to the traditional heritage of my Aboriginality to validate my life as an Aboriginal person: my art is about the here and now, the Dreamtime stories of the future. I think that’s something people don’t understand: that this is Aboriginal art, contemporary art by an Aboriginal person. Labelling is really problematic. Aboriginal art should be able to exist everywhere, not only in a dedicated Aboriginal art gallery. How could anything be curated in an Australian context without the work of an Aboriginal person in it? It’s like doing a show and not including a female artist. The fear people have is if they put one Aboriginal person in an exhibition, it’s tokenism. But it goes beyond tokenism; it’s an act of social engagement that’s incredibly important. And given where we are in our history, I think we do have to take drastic measures and change the way we think and respond to these things.
“The footprint of Sydney is built on Aboriginal walking tracks … the suburb names we use every day are part of an Aboriginal language [ yet] we have a landscape that’s barren of any acknowledgement of Aboriginal iconography or presence, whereas if that were part of our daily engagement, I think it would really change society’s perspective and ideas.
My art is about social engagement. I don’t necessarily tell the viewer how to think. I want to plant a seed, give them an alternative viewpoint. It is political, but I really hope it offers the chance for more discussion rather than telling the viewer how to think. Now I’m looking at my work in an international context. Can I still address the same ideas without the Aboriginal iconography? What I’ve discovered is that it’s a global story. This idea of people who live on the periphery or are a minority – migrants, refugees – it’s a global story. That’s what I wanted to investigate while I was in New York with the International Studio and Curatorial Program last year. Does my work transcend cultural specificity?
And it definitely does. It gave me so much more confidence to reach further. I really feel that was the most beneficial thing I’ve done, working and living overseas. To become a very, very small fish in a very, very big pond where no-one knows who I am, or cares who I am.
“There are some great Australian artists exploring this but when I talk about them overseas people don’t have a clue who I’m talking about. We’re really not on the international radar, which is a shame because when I see art from Australia, it’s top quality. It definitely transcends a lot of work I see overseas. Australia will get its time in the art spotlight. And to my mind it will be contemporary Aboriginal art and art by women because they’re the people who are doing the most interesting things. Their work is gritty, it’s got something to say, and that’s what people internationally are looking for.
“Working with Mario was fascinating. For me the idea of collaborating was Mario telling me his story, sharing his culture with me. He really wanted diversity to come through in the issue. So when he handed over 30 images from his archives and started speaking about the importance of his Peruvian background and how he’s invested in that through not only his [charity] but through his photographs of people in traditional Peruvian costumes, I knew these were the photographs I would respond to best.
“To me, Mario was on the money when in noting the lack of Aboriginal representation, the lack of conversations around diversity. What I read, see and hear about Aboriginal people [in the media] is not my experience of who Aboriginal people are. We’re incredibly creative, leaders in all kinds of fields.
“So why aren’t we having this conversation? We have such a short colonial history yet the oldest living cultural history. I do think we are at a time when these issues can now be talked about more freely and openly than even 10 years ago. I think we’re ready for it. With everything I do there’s an undercurrent of positivity in the face of adversity. To look at things optimistically, or with a sense of a better future, is for me the only way. I believe art can change the world, and it’s not just a sweeping statement because art did change my life. I’m living proof.