Describes the art of the Australian Aborigines including rock painting and engraving as well as sand and bark painting; also discusses the symbolism found in these works.

This book aims to redefine Australia’s earliest art history by chronicling for the first time the birth of the category "Aboriginal art," tracing the term’s use through published literature in the late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Susan Lowish reveals how the idea of "Aboriginal art" developed in the European imagination, manifested in early literature, and became a distinct classification with its own criteria and form. Part of the larger story of Aboriginal/European engagement, this book provides a new vision for an Australian art history reconciled with its colonial origins and in recognition of what came before the contemporary phenomena of Aboriginal art.

This book is an investigation of the way the Aboriginal art phenomenon has been entangled with Australian society’s negotiation of Indigenous people’s status within the nation. Through critical reflection on Aboriginal art’s idiosyncrasies as a fine arts movement, its vexed relationship with money, and its mediation of the politics of identity and recognition, this study illuminates the mutability of Aboriginal art’s meanings in different settings. It reveals that this mutability is a consequence of the fact that a range of governmental, activist and civil society projects have appropriated the art’s vitality and metonymic power in national public culture, and that Aboriginal art is as much a phenomenon of visual and commercial culture as it is an art movement. Throughout these examinations, Fisher traces the utopian and dystopian currents of thought that have crystallised around the Aboriginal art movement and which manifest the ethical conundrums that underpin the settler state condition.

The art of the Australian Aborigines is widely recognised as being the oldest art form in the world, preceding that of the Americas and Europe by many centuries. For thousands of years, however, the only art forms practised by the Aborigines were rock painting and carving, bark painting, sand painting and body painting using natural ochres, wild desert cotton, charcoal and birds' down, often carried out as part of ceremonial activities. It was not until 1971 that the Aborigines of the Papunya Tula settlement in the deserts of the Northern Territory were introduced to methods of painting on canvas and board using modern materials. This book commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Papunya Tula painting movement - the birthplace of contemporary Aboriginal painting. The work of eighty Papunya Tula artists, including some of the best known Aboriginal painters - Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Michael Nelson Tjakamarra and Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri - is illustrated in this book in two hundred full-colour reproductions which demonstrates the vibrancy and sophistication of the art. Patrick Corbally Stourton's introductory text examines the events which led to the birth of this extraordinary painting movement, and illuminates the mythology of Dreamings which lies behind every Aboriginal painting.

Featuring over 240 colour plates, this volume canvasses an extraordinary diverse range of Aboriginal art. The 27 essays by leading authorities and 13 interviews with key artists are accompanied by an extensive chronology.

Selected works from the Gallerys collection illustrating the state of recent and contemporary Aboriginal art; organised by region; Arnhem Land, Groote Eylandt, Port Keats, Bathurst and Melville Islands, Western Desert and Kimberley.

A very comprehensive look at Aboriginal art from traditional to contemporary art. Lively discussion and beautiful presentation.