New Book
Narrated World: Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art © 2022, 2024 (open access)
Comment by Professor Ian McLean, Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History, University of Melbourne:
This is an excellent overview of contemporary Indigenous Australian art by two German art collectors, drawing on a wide range of research and situating the art movement in the context of its decolonial struggles. While the book’s focus is art produced in the many small remote Australian art centres, reference is also made to urban-based artists trained in Western art schools. The authors also address the unfortunate primitivism that continues to frame much European reception of Indigenous art, commenting on their own experiences promoting the art in the German artworld.
The table of contents, long bibliography with links and the blurb can be found here.
Welcome to aboriginal-art.de
This website is dedicated to providing information on contemporary Indigenous Australian art, especially to readers in Germany, based on our many years of experience and scholarly research.
A series of articles, continually being extended, explore the many facets of this art, the multiplicity of themes, various techniques and styles, and the history of the art movement.
The Infothek is a virtual library, containing extensive lists of literature on contemporary Indigenous Australian art, with accompanying tables of contents and sometimes cover text or book reviews. Art students and others who are interested are welcome to make an appointment to view references in our collection.
We wish our visitors much enjoyment and fascination with the huge spectrum of contemporary Indigenous Australian art!
Expertise
Our expertise is based on experience arising from projects in Indigenous contemporary art, starting in 1986. From 1997 to 2007 we founded and directed the Aboriginal Art Galerie Bähr and established cooperations with Art Centres in Australia. Within those ten years we organized 18 art exhibitions outside the gallery, in art museums, city art associations and in institutions with reputations for contemporary art. Since 2008 we have curated a further 4 exhibitions. We have published a number of books, written articles and held numerous public seminars.
Recent updates to this website
Most of this website has not been updated in the last few years, due to working on our 496-page German-language book on Indigenous contemporary art published by Wasmuth & Zohlen Verlag in November 2022, and then working on an English-language open-access translation (see the announcement opposite). Now, we are pleased to be able to insert much new content, step by step, listed changes newest-first below. You can contact us here for feedback.
| Page Link | Description |
|---|---|
| Literatur*.* | Update of references in our library |
| kunstdiskurs_books | List of book reviews available on this website |
| review_diversity | Review of exhibition The Beauty of Diversity |
| reviews_exhibitions | List of reviews of exhibitions available on this website |
| review_narrated-world | Published reviews and feedback on the open-access book 'Narrated World - Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art' |
| global_exhibitions | List and analysis of 300+ exhibitions in Europe in 19th and 20th centuries |
| review_kithandkin | Review of prize-winning artwork 'Kith and Kin' by Archie Moore at the Biennale di Venezia 2024 |
| review_aratjara | Short notes and review of the 1993 exhibition Aratjara, curated by Prof. Bernhard Lüthi |
| review_aaa | Review of exhibition 16.06.2024 - 10.11.2024 'ARTIST ACTIVIST ARCHIVIST: BERNHARD LÜTHI INVITES' |
| News 2024 | Announcements for exibitions around Germany and major news (such as Archie Moore winning the Golden Lion Award for his work in the Australian Pavillion of the 60th Biennale di Venezia) |
| reviews | This is a new section, with subsections for reviews of books and of exhibitions |
| /narrated-world/index | Narrated World book overview and link to download 94MB open-access PDF |
