Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Fuchs' lecture was accompanied by some sl ides of works selected from the NGA collection and he obviously arrived at the selection a short time before. The first image to flash up on screen was an unidentified carving from a generic place in Arnhem Land (artisUlocation not given), accompanied by the commentary that he did not know much about Indigenous a rt and so he would not bother to talk about it. A pity given that the Indigenous collection at the National Gallery of Australia is one of the best in the country. Then followed slides of colon ial paintings of country, particularly Tasmania, which depicted the van ishing local Indigenous people as the 'flavouring' mentioned earl ier. We seem to have been providing the seasoning for the past two centuries. The works, unintentionally selected, only served to echo the horrific history suffered by Palawa people on that island . Next came an image of desert country by Hans Heysen where Fuchs stated emphatically that, 'For me this is the definitive painting of Central Australia.' Following the talk I was introduced to him and he confused me with a Maori curator he had met in New Zealand ( I can only presume) and proceeded to rail against 'second-rate Maori art' that he had just been subjected to in Aoteoroa. An easy enough m istake to make I guess, since we all look much the same south of the equator. I must admit that I found myself thinking much the same thing in return , as I looked at this short, pasty-faced wh ite male, institutional d irector from Europe, over here expounding upon his badly misinformed , misgu ided and subsequently dangerous views . However, to paraphrase one of h is other quotes from that lecture it all seemed beyond the pale indeed . So, in these po-mo, po-co, recon 2 times this millisecond before the New (Judea-Christian ) Millenn ium, we would do well t o look back, remember/acknowledge what has happened i n this country. Its effects are still reverberating throughout a l l levels of society, and wil l continue to reverberate well into the next century. The past cannot be ignored . It cannot be swept aside by those pretending, or wishing it d id not really happen. I wasn 't responsible; it's not my fault. And you cannot pat yourself on the back and th ink that 'the Indigenous issue' has been dealt with . We are not a side issue, a bitter condiment, nor some addendum to a rambling pre-amble. We are the First Peoples of this country and as such must feature, first and foremost and throughout all aspects of culture relating to this land. We need to be wary of creating spectacle over substance as th is only serves to reinvent the World Expositions and Fairs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when I nd igenous nations and their respective cultures were d isplayed as exotic curiosities. We come from here: always have, always will . In a later d iscussion with Blair French, Curator of the exhibition where the work was shown , I was informed that the artist was an Indigenous artist who was retracing their heritage. I intended no offence to the artist, but felt that it would have been constructive for the audience to know the context in wh ich the statement was made. 2 As in 'postmodern', 'post-colonial' and 'reconciliation' *Editors' Note I ndigenous art has been foregrounded in the APT (see introduction). The comment was I believe misunderstood and was in fact deference to an Indigenous speaker to respond on ind igenous issues. There is, however, no more important issue in Australia than apology for past wrongs to I nd igenous peoples or acknowledgement of present concerns and I extend an apology to Judy Watson for not mentioning her language, Waanyi . Dr Caroline Turner 1 25