The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Tracey Moffatt Australia b.1960 Untitled 1 from 'Something more' series 1989 Direct positive colour photograph on paper 90 x 150cm Purchased 1992 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery Hetti I don't share Brian and Nikos's pessimism for Australia's intellectual and cultural life. I think, for a comparatively small population, Australians - and especially Indigenous Australians - have a significant international presence. But I take Nikos's point about the myth of the Keating era, and wonder if it's not better to know your enemy - to draw the line in the sand. Let's not forget a people's movement has arisen out of the conservatism of our recent times. Howard has deftly taken multiculturalism off the agenda, by tainting it as political correctness - something he obviously doesn't suffer from! I wonder if some of our artists have fallen for it hook, line and sinker - or is their position the result of a general worldwide malaise? When I worked at Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co– operative there was a perceptible, growing pressure on artists to exhibit in a non-identity-based context, either exhibitions or commercial galleries. A few (and they are now some of the most successful ones), even chose not to be professionally associated w ith other artists who share their identity. 116 APT2002 Hannah That is the argument of artists like Tracey Moffatt who have said they do not want to be ghettoised in terms of their cultural identity - a position that is fraught with paradox, particularly in the instance ofTracey's work which draws so strongly on her Aboriginality. I wonder if this argument was a necessary strategy at a particular point in time - one that now needs to be revised. What would you say to artists and curators who claim to be bored with debates about multiculturalism and identity politics - that these are old arguments which fetishise identity and get us nowhere? Brian I think that while the official rhetoric of multiculturalism has probably passed its use-by date, the reality is that in Australia one seems to have to argue these notions again and again. Labelling someone multicultural is also boxing them in, never allowing their work to compete in the mainstream or indeed become better than the mainstream. It is also not recognising that this is a nation of immigrants, that the mainstream was once composed of boat people. So it is always a matter of who is labelling whom .