The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

CAMPFIRE GROUP All Stock Must Go! All stock must go! (Dry run) 1996 Installation-performance event, 1996 The artists of the Campfire Group 1 have coordinated a permanent performance installation event which potentially involves a cast of thousands. 2 A cattle truck stocked with Aboriginal art for sale is positioned outside the entrance of the Queensland Art Gallery. For three months, artists will be producing and selling art in a 'black market' atmosphere. The event is choreographed like a dual edged sword. It makes as much fun of itself as it does the 'industries' it represents. In broad terms the performance deals with art museum practices and the commodification of culture which targets three intersecting arenas: an international perception of Aboriginal art and culture as a 'takeaway' product; a national agenda where Aboriginality becomes a convenient flag– bearer; and the regional realities of producing art for cash and cultural survival. Pivotal to this work is the dysfunctional truck, a token of a displaced people. It is not only a platform for artists to sell their work from, but has direct associations with a recent past where cattle trucks were used to herd Aboriginal people onto reserves to be processed for assimilation into the white world. Today, Aboriginal people have repossessed these vehicles and adapted them for their own use. As a reference to cultural loss and reclamation, the truck is systematically dismantled, painted, stacked in the Gallery as a growing installation and auctioned at the close of the Asia-Pacific Triennial. It is proposed for the 1999 Triennial that the marked 110 I ART I s T s: PA c I FI c truck parts be reclaimed and reassembled. Invariably there will be missing parts, causing a new form to appear, an identity altered by the journey of dislocation that preceded its Advertising and marketing ploys will be used to parody the process of how we understand and gauge both the cultural values and economic values of art-a process not unlike the positioning of a young initiate on the threshold of gaining acceptance into a different cult(ure). It speaks of being inside or outside. We are invited to enter the museum but choose to stay outside-a theatrical act of not capitulating to aesthetics external to the culture and instead defining our own edge. The only presence this event has inside the Gallery is a relayed transmission via video monitor, with live-to-air coverage captured on a camera. It becomes a sanitised version of the outside reality for inside Gallery audiences who can view it from a comfortable distance. Those inside the Aboriginal art industry know the massive contribution Indigenous artists make to our cash economy. If you are an artist with a buyer on the spot, 'Cash is King!' 3 Many Indigenous artists work on these terms, whether it be through their community arts centre, arts advisers, private patrons, family, dealers, or tourists. The theatre of cultural transaction occurring outside focuses on why Aboriginal art gains acceptance and accommodation inside contemporary art, while exposing the fact that the majority of cultural works (more than ninety-five per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists in Queensland alone) are produced in a cash market outside public galleries. This may help illuminate why you rarely see 'blackfellas' inside these places. On the national scene, if you are inside the Australian public gallery system your work is perceived to have reached a higher moral ground and the chosen few in this arena become symbols of our national identity. 'Is Aboriginal art and culture the only thing Australia has to offer as truly unique?' 4 Aboriginal art and culture is a commodity high on the list of priorities for overseas visitors to Australia, who have been known to spend $45 million in one year. Aboriginal people represent approximately 1.7 per cent of Australia's population, yet are responsible for a considerable figure (thirty to fifty per cent) of Australia's entire visual art production. This is a telling position. 5 Well over two-thirds of Indigenous Australian art, from so-called souvenirs to fine art pieces, leaves the country. In this unfolding drama the Queensland Art Gallery represents the white man's keeping place, with its own code of entry which must, by virtue of the tradition it belongs to, be at variance with the cultural codes of those selected. However, this gallery obviously accepts the challenge and, indeed, embraces it. The artists play cultural brokers involved in transactions across cultural boundaries and, as such, must continually adjust the product for different marketplaces. The whole process is based on Indigenous perspectives of the collective where collaboration between elders and 'youngers' get converted into big names, little names and no names. Artists, directors, curators and collectors are all drawn into this collaborative marketplace to tell it 'how it is'. Plenty of gift opportunities! Bargains galore! All credit cards accepted! All Stock Must Go! Margo Neale, Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, Queensland Art Gallery Michael Eather. Co-Director, Campfire Artist's Group, Brisbane,Australia 1 Campfire Group (Aboriginal Corporation) is an artists' collective made up of (essentially) Indigenous representatives initiating contemporary art projects based on cultural exchange and cultural collaboration in an effort to provide a bridge between contemporary Indigenous art practice and the world An open invitation will be extended to Indigenous artists, from small community producers to art centres and high-profile artists from around the country, to set up shop. An expression widely used by Central Desertartists, especially in relation to sales at Alice Springs, atourist mecca. - 4 Michael Eather and Marlene Hall, Introduction, Balance 1990: Views, Visions. Influences, Queensland Art Gallery, 1990,p.11. These statistics are taken from an article by David Langsam, 'Aboriginal art: Australia's hidden resource', ArtMonthly, March 1996, pp.4-5. However. they should be read as indications only and are not definitive.