The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

The first APT featured the work of four Aboriginal artists: Judy Watson (an alumnus of Boomalli) and three of the Petyarre sisters: Kathleen, Gloria and Ada Bird Petyarre. Watson’s unframed pigmented canvases reflected a personal response to country and experiences, while the works of the Petyarre sisters demonstrated the diversity of expression of Aboriginal Australia as each sister painted the same story and country — Mountain Devil Lizard — using their own unique artistic vision. These four Aboriginal artists were shown together with non-indigenous Australian artists in an all-Australian installation exploring land and country, and the bonds that are embraced and shared through contemporary expressions. In his foreword for the APT1 publication, Director Doug Hall presciently remarked: The art of the Pacific is also an area of developing interest and one which relates to the extraordinary appreciation, which has emerged in the last two decades, of contemporary Aboriginal art, and to changes in the attitudes and approach in Australian art practice generally in the last twenty years. 4 APT2 (1996) featured three Indigenous Australian artists, Destiny Deacon, Richard Harry and Lin Onus, as well as the Campfire Group. Interestingly, Lin Onus was chosen as part of the Pacific contingent, along with a group of Torres Strait Islander ‘feathered dance wands’ by Richard Joeban Harry, while Destiny Deacon, a Melbourne-based artist with north Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage, and the Campfire Group, a collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from Brisbane, were included as part of the Australian contingent. Onus’s major installation, A stronger spring for David – toas for a modern age 1994, celebrated the life, work and humour of Aboriginal inventor David Unaipon through a group of toas made from household and mechanical objects. Deacon recreated her living room, complete with her extensive collection of Aboriginal kitsch, to give an idea of how the ‘other half’ lives. The Campfire Group’s All stock must go! ( Dry Run ) 1996 was a remarkable installation featuring a non-functioning truck parked outside the Gallery and filled with Aboriginal paintings. The positioning of the art truck outside the gallery space deliberately and ironically reflected the outsider position of Aboriginal art; its only presence inside the Gallery was on a live-feed video monitor — a sanitised and easily digestible form of what was happening outside, in Aboriginal communities. Distressingly, this pointed intervention is as relevant today as it was in 1996. MICHAEL RILEY Australia 1960–2004 Wiradjuri people NSW Sacrifice (portfolio) (detail) 1993 Colour cibachrome photograph on paper, ed. 1/1 / Ten sheets: 51 x 61cm (each); five sheets: 61 x 51cm (each) / Purchased 2002 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery 46