1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

throughout.”6 However, as the Press report explained, “The inclusion of contemporary Maori art as a major component of a New Zealand art exhibition is a new development and one that has caught the Australian imagination”. It was noted that Joanna Mendelssohn and Susan Cochrane Simons, art critics for the Bulletin and the Sydney Morning Herald, respectively, had made specific mention of it. Direct parallels may be drawn with the present international reception of Australian art. Of the exhibition “Aratjara, the landmark survey of Aboriginal art now showing at London’s Hayward Gallery”, I read in the Australian Weekend Review 7: For Australia’s culture-brokers it provides further, somewhat depressing, confirmation that Aboriginal art is the only Australian art that fascinates die rest of the world. Bernard Luthi makes this point brutally clear in his catalogue essay when he writes: “In cultural terms, Australia was a non-existent continent - and it had remained so to this day!” Presumably he doesn’t mean that white Australian artists have produced nothing of value, merely that Europeans and Americans remain indifferent to Australian versions of art they make themselves.” Likewise, Europeans and Americans also seem largely indifferent to the kind of aft non-Maori New Zealanders make^whielv©tF^e^basfrtrfihe quaJky-of-their^represent^ion-^iWrTrienmaTT^rkEnkereveiyoTlS'Here _as_regrefabfe. But the report continues: Australian curators have been reluctant to accept this conclusion and have persisted in exporting exhibitions of “international style” art to cities like London, Paris, Osaka, Los Angeles and New York. Y In 1987, the Art Gallery of NSW sent a Perspecta exhibtion - supposedly representing the best and brightest achievements of Australian art during the preceding two years to Frankfurt. The list was narrowed to 17 white artists and the show was a predictable non-event. 6 Bernice Murphy, Figuring Culture: Introduction to Headlands, Headlands: Thinking Through New ZealndArt (Sydney, 1992),12. 7John McDonald, Work on sacred ground, The [Australian ] Weekend Review, 28-29 August 1993, 7.