Victorian College of the Arts - Theses
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ItemNo Preview AvailableWho's Afraid of Aboriginal Art?( 2022-12)WHO’S AFRAID OF ABORIGINAL ART? investigated how intercultural curatorial models reframe and redefine narratives and understandings of Aboriginal art. Through a series of three original curated exhibition projects, this practice-led research expanded the framework through which the curation of Aboriginal art has historically been approached and/or confined. Each exhibition brought together diverse Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australian visual art practices to generate profound intercultural resonances. Furthermore, each curatorial model was informed by an Indigenous worldview that acknowledges the interconnection and interdependency of life, materiality, and place. Collectively, the exhibitions form the core creative outcomes of this practice-led research and comprise 'one (&) another' (2020–22), 'In and of this place' (2021–22), and 'breathing space' (2021–22). Each exhibition deployed a different intercultural curatorial model for the presentation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australian art as a means of investigating how Aboriginal art is presented and how Aboriginal artists are represented in the broader context of Australian art. This was achieved through a visual and spatial levelling of artworld hierarchies (such as those that are identity-based, geographic, and/or medium-specific) that have historically informed the selection and display of Aboriginal art. For the purposes of this practice-led research, this exegesis presents each exhibition outcome within a respective chapter – “Chapter 1: one (&) another”, “Chapter 2: In and of this place”, and “Chapter 3: breathing space”. While the exegesis presents the exhibitions sequentially, they evolved concurrently. “Chapter 1: one (&) another” presents a dual-format exhibition featuring two distinct bodies of work: a collection of brightly coloured fibre baskets by Tjanpi Desert Weavers (Aboriginal) and a series of video works by Taree Mackenzie (non-Aboriginal). By bringing Tjanpi baskets together with Mackenzie’s video works, the exhibition interrupted artworld categories and binaries to emphasise the importance of opening up curatorial engagement with Aboriginal art that moves beyond the generalised identity-based tropes. “Chapter 2: In and of this place” is focused on an online collection-based exhibition that included a series of twelve “artwork pairings” that each comprised a historical landscape painting from the Benalla Art Gallery Collection (non-Aboriginal) and a work of art by a contemporary Aboriginal artist responding to Country in varying ways. This model disrupted the hierarchical power dynamics typical within collection-based exhibitions of Australian art. “Chapter 3: breathing space” examines a group-format exhibition that featured video, sculpture, text-based work, installation, and audio by four Aboriginal artists and two non-Aboriginal artists. The exhibition interrupted hierarchical curatorial notions of expertise by considering Australian contemporary art within an Indigenous knowledge framework that understands knowledge as collective as opposed to individualistic, and that operates across time and place. This practice-led research emerged from the curatorial hesitation that often exists between works of art by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australian artists in exhibitions, particularly in the context of Australian art. Each exhibition disrupted standard institutional curatorial methods of approaching, viewing, and understanding Aboriginal art. Collectively, they engaged a broader conversation about the curatorship of Australian art. As a diplomatic action in alignment with Indigenous protocols, each chapter begins with a contextual discussion that provides a synthesis of a range of curatorial histories and exhibition precedents. These initial discussions frame an in-depth curatorial reflection on each intercultural curatorial model and exhibition outcome because it is important that the reader understand my practice in the context of a lineage of curatorship of Aboriginal art and Indigenous curation.
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ItemComposing Cultural Reclamation — Reconnecting to an Indigenous Cultural Heritage through a Music Practice( 2021)This thesis is a first-person account detailing my reclamation of my First Nations Australian cultural heritage through my creative practice. To understand the project, it is pertinent to first understand two important aspects of my identity: 1. I am a First Nations Jaadwa man, raised disconnected to culture as a result of colonisation. I did not always know this, but it has always been true. 2. I am a musician, engaged with composition and performance practices since I was a teenager. As a result, music and sound is an embedded part of my identity. The aim of the research is to understand my Jaadwa heritage, and to realise this through my music practice. That practice consists of two creative outputs, the first of which consists of five long-form, improvised soundscape works which I call ‘Country-songs’ in consideration of their existing in the intersection of music and Australian Indigenous understandings of Country. These works aim to develop my relationship to my cultural Jaadwa Country, and to consider my place on Boon Wurrung Country, where I was born and continue to reside. The second output of my practice consists of six lyric-centred songs in the style of folk and country & western music, in which I share narratives of my experience as a Jaadwa man disconnected from, and reconnecting to culture. Composing and performing these songs allowed me to generate a space in which I can reflect on my ancestors, family, identity, and my social and political responsibilities in the context of cultural expression. The research is embedded in four primary fields: Western understandings and creative expressions of soundscapes; sonic expression within Indigenous communities; histories of the relationship between Indigenous communities and developing sound technologies; and, Indigenous identity and reclamation through creative practice. The discussions I share around my creative works stem from, intertwine, and further these fields. My understandings of these fields, experiences during periods of field-work, and development of the creative works all contribute to an emergent conception of my Indigenous cultural heritage and its expression through composition. The research consists of a written thesis, and digital audio recordings of the five ‘Country-songs’ and six lyrical songs, totalling approximately 45 minutes of audio. Together, the written thesis and the audio works document my observed changes in self, and positions my creative output as a space through which I realise and reflect these changes.
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ItemLightning in the middle( 2021)Lightning In The Middle (LIM) Methods of Creative Practice Bon Mott acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the ancient land named Australia by Matthew Flinders from 1804 and the peoples of the Kulin Nation where Bon Mott lives and works. Bon Mott acknowledges that the land, sea, and sky were never ceded and pays deep respect to First Nations people past, present, and emerging. Lightning in the Middle (LIM) draws from transdisciplinary transformative mixed method (TTMM) research methods from a neurodiverse perspective. The creative outputs of LIM are driven by transdisciplinary processes that focus on installation activated by performance (IAP) informed by sculpture, choreography, industrial design, and performance art. Emphasis is placed on this as marginalised or misunderstood experts are integral to this research. LIM’s process driven IAP is achieved through developing and utilising transdisciplinary, transformative mixed methods (TTMM) research to produce creative outcomes. Lightning in the Middle (LIM) IAP examines gender identity by bringing together concepts from Indigenous Knowledge, astrophysics, and feminist philosophies to consider the beneficial impact of nonbinary identity on contemporary society. AC/DC songwriter Bon Scott was aware the band’s name also meant ‘bisexual’, and when a journalist asked Bon if they were the AC or the DC, Bon replied, “Neither, I’m the lightning flash in the middle.” Bon Scott embodied the role of the trickster, an archetype common in First Nations traditions of the world. To the Lakota (Lakhota Lakhota), Teton Sioux (Thithunwan) people of the northern Turtle Island (North America), the trickster is called Heyokha, a person in the community who connects with the science of lightning that engages in unconventional and contrarian behaviour. Artist Bon Mott embodies this concept through their artistic practice by departing from the normative binary approach to gender by identifying as neither man nor woman, but as lightning. The name Intergalactic Plasma comes from emerging scientific research that shows the plasma/energy we call lightning is powered by cosmic rays. Originating from supernovae (dying stars) explosions in intergalactic space, cosmic rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere and produce a runaway breakdown of quantum particles that create a pathway for lightning. As feminist philosopher and physicist Karen Barad and writer and performance artist Amrou Al-Kadhi argue, the quantum world is one filled with contradictions and non-binary states of being. LIM concluded with Intergalactic Plasma: a way back to go forward: a photographic collaboration of artists who are immersed in the performance and creation of lightning to challenge exclusive gender norms and promote inclusive social and artistic practices. Bon Mott’s collaborative portraits of these artists are featured on high-quality silk, which performs like plasma when activated by choreography and movement. By looking back to the ancient knowledge systems of Indigenous people, collaborating with queer and Indigenous communities, and researching modern astrophysics, we may consider expansive and inclusive states of being to find our own quantum pathway forward.
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ItemAboriginal contemporary dance practice: embodying our ways of being, knowing and doing through dance storying( 2020)Abstract The Master of Fine Arts project embodies a practice of journeying to identify the connection between my Lama Lama Ayapathu Gugu Yalanji identity and dance practice. This is realised in a rematriating learning paradigm that enables a distinct dance lexicon and pedagogy specific to my Aboriginality, while emphasising heterogeneity with Aboriginal Contemporary dance and Aboriginal peoples. The project employs a transdisciplinary method encompassing Aboriginal worldviews, protocols and values specific to my Lama Lama Ayapathu Gugu Yalanji identity to safely navigate and negotiate Pama|Bama ways of being, knowing and doing within the academic space. This is inclusive of practice-led learning, dance cycle, storying, life writings and old ways for new ceremonies. In the cycle I learn of the social structures and socio-cultural disruption of my cultural identity to establish a social, cultural and political standpoint in the project, together with the herstory of Indigenous contemporary dance in a chronological order, including its social and political foundation, to situate myself within the Indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) contemporary dance genealogy. With the knowledge I place my embodiment as an Aboriginal woman, mother and dancer central to the learning. In the project, I engage narrative, autoethnography and embodied writing techniques to create an immersive mapping of my embodiment of Country to contextualise Aboriginal contemporary dance within its artistic and cultural entirety. This is practiced through a body of creative work: four exhibits embodying my sense of belonging, and a written thesis in autoethnographic representation within a colonial ethos and practice. In this project, I learn my cultural knowledge comprises of both fluid and fixed consciousness, and Aboriginal contemporary dance is a means of expression for cultural revitalisation, healing and education. Therefore, in this practice Aboriginal contemporary dance performs as a medium for knowledge transmission within contemporary society. The connection between my Lama Lama Ayapathu Gugu Yalanji identity and Aboriginal contemporary dance is a manifestation of self-knowledge, elevating social, cultural and political perspectives of my Aboriginality.