Present Encounters : Papers from the conference of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 1996

Margo Neale Cultural Brokerage In The Aboriginal Stockmarket - Installation Art As Social Metaphor My response to the session entitled History/MemoryNoyages is more of a cu ltural narrative than an academic autopsy. 'Visual art is only partly visual: the invisible part is what is consecrated within the art system : it is those preconditioned notions, sets of underlying discourses . . . ' 1 those references to histories, hidden and otherwise, which reveal the tributaries that nourish and inform the meaning of works. The raucously visible cattle truck fu ll of a 'mob of blackfel las' selling art from the back of the truck presented by Campfire Group 2 and entitled All stock must go! is loaded with irony and references to the invisi ble. Its visibility at the entrance to the Queensland Art Gallery belies those aspects of a hidden black history which have only recently become visible. The black atmosphere plays with historic and contemporary indices for commodities and consumers i n many market places, between international consumption o f Aborig inal art as a 'take-away' product and the national exploitation of it as a convenience item - the flag bearer of Australian identity. These collide with the visible reg ional realities of artists producing for economic survival and cultural maintenance. The Campfire Group, which operates from F i re­ works Gallery in Brisbane, is a gutsy raw mob with a unique and refresh ing quality of 'telling it how it is'. Pivotal to this metaphor and the invisi ble is the use of a dysfunctional cattle truck, a token of a d isplaced people which has been repossessed by the dispossessed . It not only provides a platform for selling commodities, culture and ideas, but also draws potency from d i rect associations with a remembered and not too distant past - a past which used trucks like this, particularly in Queensland, to herd people into depots for assimilation into a 'brave new world' (a term recently resurrected by the cu rrent government) . One of our most famous black artists who first came to prominence in the 1 940s was Al bert Namatjira, an Aranda man from the Central Desert. His ability to pai nt in the watercolour landscape style of his white mentor Rex Battarbee, was held up by the government at the time as an example of the success of their assimilationist policy. Black people could become white people with the right discipline. Namatj ira's reward for becoming so 'well assimilated' was, would you believe , a truck - that icon of privilege and mobility, heavy with irony in the context of this paper. Another iconic image is the oft-published photograph of Namatji ra proudly leaning out of the wi ndow of his gleaming tray-back truck with h is name emblazoned across the front door of the cabin. Available for sale from the back of the Campfire truck at the Asia-Pacific Triennial is a pa inting by Queensland artist, Vincent Serice , embedded amongst piles of fabric, beads, coolamons and assorted products by artists ranging from h igh profile artists like Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Richard Bel l, to local young artist Bianca Beetson . But Serico's work provides the key to the invisible - functioning as a visual label for the whole installation . Titled The road to Cherbourg (a former mission some three hours northwest of Brisbane) , it chronicles Serico's experience of mission life and the memories of his elders: captivity, a rriva l , adaptation and mock release. Three birds represent aspects of the parody - the mopoke, a symbol of death and foreboding ; the parrot, referring to riotous good times; and the wagtail, the messenger of happiness - all linked to the chu rch i n this image, they convey despair and confusion and finally 'liberation' on the road to Cherbourg , which is seen as the Promised Land overseen by white guardian angels. The i ndelible nature of this h istory is engraved as bird tracks on the cattle truck as they are in the pai nting. Other works by Serico show the transition from ceremonies held in bora rings, to the rituals of dispossession and despair played out on pension day in drinking circles and gambl i ng rings. A similar remembered journey occurred in South Australia and is imaginatively depicted by Anne Newmarch in the painti ng As the Serpent Struggles. A group of Aboriginal people 76