1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

I tend to see Australia as a large friendly dog, which likes to roll over and have its stomach scratched by someone bigger and more powerful so we can at the same time have the pleasure of biting the hand that scratches us. It's a kind of resistant dependence which suits us very well. Australians take a rather self-righteous pride in being the underdo the smaller, less favoured, more challenged participant in a struggle, whatever that struggle may be - world war, world finance or world art. We like to see that as an excuse for our own failings and a basis for criticizing anyone bigger than we are. Australia has always seen itself- as being on the edge of something bigger and more, significant, and remote from the centre. The notion of being on the edge of the world is built into white Australian society. Our national airline used to have an advertising slogan "Fly Qantas to the world" as if the world was somewhere else and we had to use an aeroplane to get to it. In contemporary art a similar situation existed when the terms of John Power *s bequest to the University of Sydney provided funds for collecting the contemporary art of the world, and it was considered controversial when Australian art_.was included, in this by those responsib for the purchasing. Because we are accustomed^to being on the^edge, it hasnjt maaemuch difference what we were on the edge of, and we have made the transition smoothly from being on thr edge of a European emoire to now being on the edge of Asia, a sort of soft white underbelly. The greater, more significant culture, whatever it was, was over there. The very big adjustment which the majority of Australians have had to make in the past ten years, certainly in the art world, is to acknowledge the fact that white Australian society is actually on the edge of something not out there but something which is right here and has been for 40,000 years. The ancient culture of which we are on the margin is not the European tradition, but the indigenous one. The world-view of white Australians is being turned inside out, and as usual, we're on the edge. The international admiration for Aboriginal art nas given a very strong indication that as far as the rest of the world is concerned rhe main game is not what's happening in the big cities cn the southern coastal