Week 11: The Art of Australia with Edmund Capon

This week was the first episode of the ABC's new program The Art of Australia, hosted by former director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Edmund Capon. It was a fascinating episode covering the period in Australia's history from convict art to the turn of the twentieth century. What I loved the most about Capon's take on this period was his commentary concerning the figures of Aboriginal people within this art. Instead of only discussing the aesthetics of these historical works, Capon pointed out that artists of this time either included Aboriginal figures in their paintings as a novelty figure or as a subversive preservation of a race they believed was dying out.

Joseph Lycett, Aborigines using fire to hunt kangaroos, c1820, watercolour and gouache on paper, [Image Source: Sydney Living Museums]

Eugene von Guerard, Stony Rises, Lake Corangamite, 1857, oil on canvas, [Image Source: National Gallery of Australia]

With this perspective, it is saddening to view these works and their naivete. It is also upsetting to learn more about white Australian intent to wipe out Aboriginal people such as in Tasmania where a clearance policy was enacted by George Augustus Robinson and significant proportions of the population were transported to Flinders Island where they died of disease, soldier brutality and broken hearts. Happily, the common thought at the time that the Aboriginal race was doomed evidently became disproved, although not without so intent. Capon interjects this history with the work of contemporary artists such as Ricky Maynard, a direct descendant of the incorrectly-believed "extinct" lineage of Tasmanian Aboriginals whose work comments on this family trauma.

Ricky Maynard, Broken Heart, 2005, gelatin silver print, [Image Source: Stills Gallery]

 So far I am very much enjoying the series because not only has it covered artists I am already familiar with from previous art theory subjects, but it is introducing me to new ones such as Maynard, and highlighting aspects of the work that I had overlooked, particularly in regards to the incidentally included Indigenous figures. I think it will be great to continue moving chronologically through Australian history since colonisation until we reach the mid to late twentieth century when Aboriginal artists finally became appreciated and respected.

The Art of Australia, Tuesday 8.30pm, ABC1