1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

fringes cf Austral! communities through including Acerigins cf the world. , cut the art being made on small Aboriginal the north and centre. The wor.< of urban artists, urban artists, is virtually invisible to the rest The sense of being an outsider is very important to Australian culture. A.s outsiders on the edge we have developed an outsider’s viewpoint, which is critical by nature. It is only logical tnat the main impact Australia has made internationally is through journalism, the critical outsider’s observation of events. Whether we like it or not the most powerful Australian internationally is media magnate Rupert Murdoch. Even in art the most prominent Australian is a journalist, Time Magazine critic Robert Hughes (whose Australian origins make him particularly well equipped to understand what he describes as "the culture cf complaint" .) We seem to have positioned ourselves too firmly on the edge to do anything other than develop a tradition of making art which is a critical commentary on other cultures. I think the best prospect for a strong Australian art can only be a hybrid strength. The remarkable rise to pre-eminence cf Aboriginal painting in the Central Desert was the result of the artists’ interaction with the non-Aboriginal materials and the white art world. The art produced in the major cities is the result of a dialogue with a distant European tradition. I suppose very much the same way as art in ancient Rome was a commentary on art in still more ancient Greece, and art in parts of South East Asia has been a commentary -on art in China. During the 1580s the international mannerisms of postmodern appropriation fostered a generation of Australian artists whose work directly and systematically analysed Western culture from the viewpoint of a remote colony. Imants Tillers was perhaps the most emphatic in presenting the character cf Austra 1ian art as hour.d up in the idea of mechanical reproduction. Lind y Lee's re w cr x i n z of European hixen ' s examination of the R ■ jsslan revelu 11ensr y a v a nc.—s-arde and Susa n Nom e ' s c a r x r e o r e s e n t a t i o r . s c i D i s n e y l a n d ail c e r i v e c s p e c i a 1 s l g n i f i c a n ce i it o r« ^ r i r i c c 5 1 1 c r. o - 1 s i c e t n e t a diticr.a cc " i z r* n e v a l i u c e c .