Paper short abstract:

This paper examines alleged breaches of Aboriginal cultural protocol that result from contemporary artists' engagements with historical images depicting Indigenous Australians.

Paper long abstract:

In Australia, visual artists have incorporated and referenced historical images of Aboriginal people in contemporary artworks for at least two decades. Their use of still and moving images from the past, sourced from national and international archives and coffee table books, commonly serves to critique and deconstruct the 'raw histories' (Edwards 2001) signified by such historical pictures. Whilst artists such as r e a, Brook Andrew, Alan Cruickshank and Helen Johnson have attempted to destabilise colonial representational regimes and create an alternative presence for the Aboriginal subjects originally depicted, their contemporary works have evoked criticism. In this paper, I focus on the critique that these artists' use of historical images depicting Indigenous Australians constitutes a breach of Aboriginal cultural protocol. In particular, I examine how artists of Aboriginal background make use of the rules and principles encompassed by Indigenous cultural protocol to manage the act of reclaiming imagery from the past. My analysis of two protocol incidents, both of which resulted in the withdrawal of (part of) an artwork from exhibition, will demonstrate the complexity of ethical engagements with historical images of Aboriginal Australians and address the role of Aboriginal agency within such engagements.