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

retu rned from hunting one day to fi nd their camp empty. Being unfamiliar with white technology they mistook tyre tracks for the imprints of the rainbow serpent, believi ng that it took the people away: maybe to a better place, another Promised Land? Th is journey story provides an interesting inversion of the Trojan horse syndrome - believing with good faith in someth ing that proves to be deceptive . Putting the question of i ntent aside for a moment, an analogy between the Campfi re truck and the Trojan horse begs the question of who is inside and who is outside i n this instance. The requested location of the truck outside the Gallery asks the same question . Although installation art was embraced as a new art form in the 60s and 70s, its roots are ancient. It is an appropriation of a tribal past we all share: Stonehenge in England; the Pukumani funera ry poles from the Tiwi people of Bathurst Island i n Arnhem Land, Australia; or the dap-ay, a social and ritual gathering place found i n mountain villages in The Philippines. The ritual spaces of yesterday defined by objects, performance and interactivity still characterise the i nstallations of today as places of contemplation , celebration or commemoration . The transference of 1 00 painted log coffins from Central Arnhem Land for i nstallation i nside the National Gallery of Australia became a permanent contemporary installation , positioning the institution as brokers of a residual and present past. However, the cattle truck installation, All stock must go! differs from this form of instal lation by being neither permanent not institutionalised . I ndeed , its power resides in its subversion of the i nstitution which played host to its creation . It conforms to what FX Harsono descri bes i n h is unpublished paper from the 1 993 APT, 'The I nstallation as the Language of Social Concern' as art that 'cannot be separated from the problems of society'. He defines it as a form of art which is presented by that segment of society experiencing the problem exposed by the work and communicated directly as a theatrical work using multi-med ia to engage in storytelling. The story is built up by i nvolving the observers who are integral to the issue being addressed . Art as a concept may be a recent and, to a certain degree, Western invention, but structurally i nteg rated systems of visual production witnessed at the cattle truck site have always existed , whatever term we apply. It may also be assumed that visual commodities have been and are still manufactured more or less alongside those systems to satisfy different needs, such as gift g iving at Chinese ceremonies and the Aborigi nal rom or trading ceremony where poles are crafted and gifted in a ritual of diplomacy to a neighbouring tri be or trading partner. Simi larly hawkers and gawkers spin their magic i n and around the cattle truck site - a dynamic u rban culture underpinned by traditional trading practices is expressed alongside the need for cash , and it is perfectly clear that in this a rena 'Cash I s King ! ' - an expression widely used by desert artists who work the tourist ma rket in Alice Springs. Part of the conceptual framework intended with th is installation, but not fully pu rsued , was a reference to cultural loss and reclamation whereby parts of the truck were painted , dismantled and were to be stockpiled i nside the Gallery for auction. 3 The marked truck parts were to be reclaimed from their foster homes and reassembled at the 1 999 Asia-Pacific Triennial . I nvariably such a process would result in an inability to locate all the parts so that the missi ng parts would cause a new form to appear. The emerging identity altered by the journey of dislocation that preceded it has direct relevance to the fragmented identity suffered by many Aborig inal people today with particular pertinence to issues surrounding the 'Stolen Generation'. 4 All stock must go! has associations not only with cattle and removal trucks but also with the realities of cultural and economic survival, the appropriation of white marketing strategies and systems, a situation where the majority of Aboriginal artists (over 90%) work outside galleries i n this simulated arena of being 'on the fri nges'. We were invited in, but chose to stay outside: we a re at but not in the Gallery. This element of self-determination differentiates the 'then' from the 'now'. Black hands may hold the steering wheel of this truck but the real question today is: 'Who is changing the gears?' government policy of self-determination conti nues to be subject to the vagaries of the government of the day. 77