‘Black White & Restive’ is part of an ongoing national conversation that surveys the cross-cultural engagements between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists over the past
quarter century.
Drawing significantly on Newcastle Art Gallery’s collection as well as loans from public and private collections, ‘Black White & Restive’ presents a selection of key works which contextualise cross-cultural currents in Australian contemporary art. The exhibition explores the diverse ways in which artists have challenged existing ways of thinking about identity and, in their restiveness wrestled with the ethical, political, historic and aesthetic dimensions of their practice.
The narrative begins with the creative relationship established in the 1930s between Western Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira and Rex Battarbee, catalyst to the Hermannsburg School of watercolourists. Four decades later at nearby Papunya, the Western Desert or ‘dot painting’ revolution was ignited, forever changing the art world’s attitudes to Aboriginal art and establishing new paradigms for painters. The account continues with the revisiting of 1980s appropriations as well as highlighting large-scale collaborations and formal dialogues from the mid-1990s through to 2015.
Other artists from the collection include Peter Adsett, Gordon Bennett, Robert Campbell Jnr, Tony Coleing, Tim Johnson, Ildiko Kovacs, Rusty Peters, Margaret Preston, Imants Tillers, Tony Tuckson.
A symposium and illustrated catalogue will expand on the issues raised in the exhibition, contextualising the works historically and drawing on recent interviews with artists. Through diverse manifestations of cross-cultural practice, ‘Black White & Restive’ invites audiences to experience key moments in Australia’s evolving transcultural art history and wonder at its multiple futures.
SYMPOSIUM: BLACK WHITE & RESTIVE
Saturday 28 May | 10am to 4pm
Location: McIntyre Theatrette, Newcastle Museum 6 Workshop Way, Newcastle NSW 2300
Cost: general tickets $110 incl. GST, student concession $70 incl. GST
Includes morning tea, lunch and drinks with private viewing of exhibition from 5 to 6.30PM
A day-long symposium bringing together leading academics, curators and artists to discuss the dangers, tensions and nuances of creative exchanges between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous artists in association with the exhibition Black White & Restive.
More information about the symposium to be announced closer to the event date.
Newcastle Art Gallery
28 May to 7 August, 2016
New South Wales
Gordon Bennett, Number Five, 2003, acrylic on linen, 167 x 152cm
Gift of Terrey P. Arcus through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2012
Courtesy the Newcastle Art Gallery Collection, New South Wales
© The Estate of Gordon Bennett
