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Cross PoseBody language against the grain

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Cross PoseBody language against the grain

Dr Sally Butler

Gordon Bennett Notes to Basquiat: In the future everyone will know their place and be content 1999synthetic polymer paint on linen183.0 x 183.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 1999.Reproduced courtesy of the artist’ estate and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

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Cross Pose – Body language against the grain brings together Australian artworks from The University of Queensland Art Collection that use the human body as an expression of complex subjectivity and visual politics. The exhibition explores how artists map the socially and politically regulated body and push back against this control. Bodies in these artworks adopt a pose to intervene with conventional political thought, investing it with new forms of association. The body’s sensory language helps to shape the political in ways that differ from the spoken and written word.

Introduction

Cross Pose focuses on Indigenous perspectives, featuring artists who explore the complex terrain of their subjectivity within frameworks created by the self and others. The artworks both declare and contest standpoints of individual and collective identity, and negotiate alternative approaches to national subjectivity and sovereignty. Bodies in these artworks collectively assert a politics of self-determination. The non-Indigenous and collaborative artworks included in the exhibition provide a historical context to this snapshot of the politics of Indigenous subjectivities.

cover:Darren Siwes Marrkidj Wurd-ko (Cross Pose) Group 2011from the series ‘Dalabon Dalok (Dalabon Woman)’Giclée print on pearl paper, edition 5/10120.0 x 90.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2011.Reproduced courtesy of the artist and GAGPROJECTS/Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide.

left:Luke Roberts Australian Gothic (Couple) 2009from the series ‘Australian Story’camera: Kevyn ChaseGiclée print on paper, edition 2/5image 174.5 x 103.0 cm; sheet 190.0 x 130.3 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010.Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

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left:Tony Albert No place warrior 2009watercolour on Arches paperimage/sheet 76.0 x 57.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010.Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf, Sydney.

following page:Alick Tipoti Kuyku Garpathamai Mabaig 2007linoprint on paper, edition 3/45image 204.0 x 120.0 cm; sheet 239.0 x 139.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2008.Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Aboriginal Art Network, Sydney.

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The figure of the human body has loomed large over contemporary art since the 1960s. International fascination with abstract art abated at this time in deference to the more explicitly political overtures of conceptual art, and performance art in particular. Artists of this era engaged with a global society conditioned by two world wars and what increasingly evolved in the twentieth century as the ‘theatre of bloody conflicts among identities’.2 Cold War power structures seemed to explode into an infinite horizon of unpredictability and kaleidoscopic political subjectivities. Spurred by improved media communication, an unwieldy global image of contested ethnic, cultural, national and religious identities grew in visibility and scope. Scholarly discourse responded to this volatile image of global politics with a concept of political aesthetics.3 The manner in which political ideas presented themselves through artistic expression provided a method for understanding unprecedented political plurality and uncertainty. In Aesthetics and world politics, Roland Bleiker argues that art offers alternative insights to conventional political analysis, and a capacity to cultivate

‘a more open-ended level of sensibility about the political’.4

The body in art has played a key role in expressing these open-ended political sensitivities. Gesture, stance, demeanour, and a whole sensory repertoire of body language in art engage us in ideas about what constitutes the self and how we understand ourselves as subjects – particularly as political subjects. This subjectivity is determined by ways in which the body is regulated and framed by external influences. The self is never purely a self; it always involves others. Philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy calls this a condition of ‘being singular plural’.5

Amelia Jones’s influential Body art/Performing the subject (1993) was the first sustained study of the political potential of body art’s capacity to enact complex subjectivity.6 Jones focused on feminist performance art of the late-twentieth century to argue that the body did not represent subjectivity so much as it performed the subject through a process of dynamic subject formation. Performance art exemplifies the body’s ability to place subjectivity in flux. During performance

The body in art and world politics

The problems that currently haunt world politics, from terrorism to poverty, are far too serious not to employ the full register of human intelligence to understand and deal with them.

Roland Bleiker 1

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Christopher PeaseNoble Savage 3 2014oil on canvas65.0 x 100.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2014.Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gallerysmith, Melbourne.

Robert Dowling Werrat Kuyuut and the Mopor people, Spring Creek, Victoria 1856oil on canvas52.0 x 108.5 cmCollection of The University of Queensland. Gift of Marjorie Dowling, 1952.

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art, the body is always ‘in the moment’, and in a constant state of transformation. But it is the effort to document the body’s performance in all kinds of media that underpins what Jones defines as the ‘body/subject’. Jones argues that the ‘body/subject’ in photography, film, video, and even text, becomes a ‘complex extension of portraiture’ that does not fix subjectivity, but rather anticipates it, rendering it open-ended. Art’s inscription of the body as a performed subjectivity is centrally at stake here, as Jones writes:

…it is precisely the relationship of these bodies/subjects to documentation (or, more specifically, to re-presentation) that most profoundly points to the dislocation of the fantasy of the fixed, normative, centered modernist subject and thus most dramatically provides a radical challenge to the masculinism, racism, colonialism, classism, and hetero-sexism built into this fantasy.7

Michael CookMajority Rule (Bus) 2014inkjet print on paper, edition 3/3140.0 x 200.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2014.Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane.

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Moving forward several decades, we encounter a new generation of the body/subject’s challenge to the fixed, normative subject in the Dalabon Biyi/Dalabon Dalok (2011) series by Australian artist Darren Siwes (1968–). These photographs, which involve Siwes’s Dalabon kinfolk adopting poses within metal frames that reference Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) Vitruvian man (1490), present a political challenge that is global in scale. Da Vinci’s image is regarded as an icon of Western anthropocentrism but, in Siwes’s photographs, Western methods of subjectivity and regulation are forced to confront an Aboriginal worldview. Dalabon men and women decentre the singularity of the Vitruvian mindset and displace (white) man as being the centre of ‘his’ world. As the Dalabon figures shift through a series of poses, they collectively perform the multiplicity and complexity of the body/subject. Set in the landscape of Dalabon homelands, Western constructs of the subject negotiate an Indigenous politics of people, place and time. While Dalabon subjectivity manifests as variable and complex, it remains grounded in a politics of land rights, sovereignty and self-determination.

The body/subject is arguably most effective when it executes interventions such as those seen in Siwes’s series of photographs. A similar intervention is visible in the documented Maiwar performance (2014), the result of a collaboration between American artist Dave Hullfish Bailey (1963–) and Sam Watson (1952–). Watson, of Birri Gubba Aboriginal heritage, is a renowned activist for Aboriginal social justice and civil rights and playwright. He was one of the founding members of the Black Panther party in Australia and is the author of The Kadaitcha sung (1990), Black man down (1996) and Oodgeroo – Bloodline to country (2009). Bailey is an artist with Native American ancestry who lives in Los Angeles. His research-based conceptual art practice involves highly experimental and innovative collaborations and ‘interventions’ into everyday life across the world. Like Siwes’s photographic series, Bailey and Watson’s series of collaborative performances displace normative structures of control over Indigenous subjectivities. Their performances involved unannounced ‘deflections’8 to the regular route of the CityCat ferries on the Brisbane River, a deviation sanctioned by the Brisbane City Council.

The body/subject in Australia

Darren SiwesMarrkidj-ngan (Star Pose) Group 2011from the series ‘Dalabon Dalok (Dalabon Woman)’Giclée print on pearl paper, edition 5/10120.0 x 90.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2011.Reproduced courtesy of the artist and GAGPROJECTS/Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide.

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The CityCat performance required the ferry to pause in front of a small park at the end of Boundary Street in the inner-city suburb of West End. (Boundary Street gained its name from the infamous boundary that excluded Aboriginal people through a curfew from Brisbane’s colonial settlement, with similar racial exclusions noted as late as World War II.9) At the riverbank site of the performance, Watson and the other participants, all of whom came from Aboriginal families long connected to the Brisbane area, raised the Aboriginal flag as a symbol of Aboriginal sovereignty. Maiwar performance allowed Watson to physically intervene into the time and space of river commuters, but it also invoked a sensual register of Aboriginal subjectivity. The river’s rhythms cradling the CityCat also became a site of historical Aboriginal sovereignty. Watson described it thus:

The river itself, the ebb and flow, is very connected to our women’s fertility cycles. The shape of the CityCat, the motions of the CityCat, that’s been a very powerful element. It was very evident to our performers at the first performance … they, through their families, had had longstanding relationships to Boundary Street dating back to Moreton Bay settlement.10

This politicisation of natural rhythms flowing between Aboriginal women and their homelands performs a profound mode of sovereignty that endures with present generations of the Aboriginal population. Sovereignty over Australian land runs in their blood and the politics is corporeal and charismatic. As Jones argues, it is not the mode of representation that matters so much as how body art stimulates the sensory shapes of thought.

Watson’s son, Sam Wagan Watson, evokes this sensory mode of politics brilliantly in a poem also devoted to Boundary Street’s infamy, last exit to Brisbane… In the poem, the city is a body with scars – a body that remembers.

above and following page:Dave Hullfish Bailey + Sam WatsonMaiwar performance 2014 (video stills)single channel digital video, edition of 5duration 0:12:00, looped Courtesy David Pestorius Projects, Brisbane.

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last exit to Brisbane ...

Sam Wagan Watson

Boundary St.

that forged black scratch

a vein from Southbank to West Endwith a tail swallowed by the chocolate river

this is the line, the limitwhere the dark-skin were told –

DO NOT CROSS!

a fence raised to protect the colonial domiciles of angels andgadflies

and even today, at rush hourthat tar permanently keeps the scar aliveand the dead languages buriedto only escape in the bitumen heat-hazeand fall upon deaf earsas this boundary continues to stay trueto its makersdenying the junkyard dingothe treasures of the city

no access to Easy St.fringe-dwelling in white-light staticon the last exit to Brisbane.11

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A corporeal sensual intelligence is inherent in referencing the body across all aspects of Indigenous art and culture. Mabel Edmund’s (1930–2010) paintings are a case in point. Edmund was a Queensland Aboriginal artist/activist whose work involved a dimension of the body/subject. In 1970, Edmund became the first Aboriginal woman elected to local government in Australia.12 Edmund particularly advocated political self-representation and self-determination for her people, and this spirit of self-determination underpinned her art. Edmund wrote, ‘Each painting that I paint takes a little part of me with it.’13 Her paintings of Aboriginal subjects involve both traditional body painting and more mundane activities, such as collecting mussels. But all of her art was inspired by the artist’s frustration at the dire state of Indigenous society and politics in Australia. In her 1992 autobiography No regrets,14 the artist describes how the inspiration to paint occurred when she experienced a sense of helplessness while witnessing violence involving Aboriginal people in Alice Springs. Edmund notes that art became a method for expressing her complex subjectivity:

I paint pictures from my childhood experiences, places that I have seen and remember, symbols and art from the caves around Laura in the Cape York region. But mainly pictures that have a legend or story to tell, that live for me as I am painting it.15

Subjectivity is habitually perceived of as a state of mind, but the body/subject reinstates the fact of flesh in what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls the mind/body duality.16 The body’s full scope of sensory organs contribute to the interface between self and others, or where the self coexists with others. There is an interesting play on co-existing subjectivity in the photograph by Luke Roberts (1952–) titled Australian Gothic (Couple) (2009). The image shows Roberts and the artist Richard Bell appropriating the pose of ‘national identity’ from the famous American gothic (1930) by Grant Wood (1891–1942). Australian Gothic (Couple) differs in its deeply rendered cynicism regarding stereotypes that regulate ethnic and gendered identity. Bell and Roberts adopt the pose of simplistic typology. Similarly, austrALIEN (2007) by Tony Albert (1981–) invokes cynicism regarding stereotypical native identity with his image of

Mabel Edmund The Goanna Men c.1992batik on silk100.5 x 128.5 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, transferred from UQ Press, 1998.Reproduced courtesy of the artist’s estate.

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a white alien posing with shield and spears. Both artworks effectively disorientate and alienate a conventional image of Australian subjectivity. While whiteness is in the image, it is decentred and politically re-coded. Thus, the bodies in these images present a far more complex Australian subjectivity.

The exhibition’s inclusion of Robert Dowling’s (1827–1886) painting Werrat Kuyuut and the Mopor people, Spring Creek, Victoria (c.1856) illustrates how artists have long used the body to define subjects. What differs between the past and contemporary work is that the majority of today’s artists seek to leave the subject more open-ended and complex; they resist definition. There is an interesting reversal at play between the symbolism of white faces in Dowling’s work and that in Albert’s austrALIEN. In Albert’s work, we are not entirely certain of the identity behind the white-faced alien. Is the figure meant to symbolise white Australians being alienated from a sense of origin, desperately posing as ‘natives’? Or does the white face represent Indigenous Australians being alienated from their sense of self and belonging through colonialism’s project of

dispossession and displacement? The white face in Albert’s work refuses to define a subject and instead performs a process of disorientation: a process of questioning and, possibly, transformation.

Art historian Terry Smith describes Dowling’s paintings of Aboriginal subjects as being similar to ‘dioramas of exotic peoples being developed for the then relatively new phenomenon: museums of natural history’.17 White painted faces such as those depicted in this painting are an expression of mourning in Mopor culture.18 However, in the passing of more than 150 years, the white ochre’s mourning symbolism expands into an entire national consciousness. After Albert’s white-face symbolism, the bodies in Dowling’s paintings arguably take on another life. They refuse exoticism and instead adopt a pose of alienation. The white faces, which Dowling ostensibly intended as documentation of the looming extinction of primitive ritual, now peer down through history with a far more complex symbolism that incorporates experiences of subjugation and resistance. Dowling’s depiction of white faces now unite with

contemporary expressions of body art to haunt the stereotypes of identity and reinstate the performance of open-ended subjectivity that constitutes a human sense of self.

Perhaps the most radical challenge to Western structures of subjectivity occurs in art that is often inaccurately perceived as the most ‘traditional’. The contemporary sculptures and painting from the Aurukun community in Far North Queensland are formally inspired by longstanding cultural traditions. But these forms are vehicles for political expression, as they are profound expressions of the body/subject from an Aboriginal perspective. Aurukun is the community that achieved a landmark legal decision in land-rights politics. The Wik Peoples v. The State of Queensland (1996) High Court decision established a principle that recognised co-existing pastoral and Native Title leases. When the decision was announced, several community members who were present celebrated in the High Court’s forecourt with dance and song. Their bodies performed an expression of sovereignty over their land that was partially recognised by this decision. This sovereign body is central

to their art. Whether it is Craig Koomeeta’s (1977–) simple white dots representing body painting or the carved figures similarly adorned with body paint, the ‘skin’ is political. It is the skin of self-determined Aboriginal subjectivities that take shape in the event of engagement with ‘others’ through contemporary art.

Body painting’s symbolism as sovereign skin is a recurring motif in contemporary art by Indigenous Australians. In addition to featuring in the work of Edmund, Albert and the Aurukun artists, this motif recurs throughout the Cross Pose exhibition in the work of Gordon Bennett (1955–2014), Christopher Pease (1969–), and Alick Tipoti (1975–). The common tendency is to interpret the re-presentation of body painting in contemporary art as a sign of cultural authenticity. But this completely ignores the context of contemporary art and the point that Jones makes about the body in art as a re-presentation. Within the context of contemporary art, the re-presentation of body painting is a radical challenge to normative modernist subjectivity. Artists such as Bennett and Pease explicitly make this challenge,

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but works by the Aurukun artists and Edmund are no less political. It is naïve to think that contemporary art simply presents a new space for so-called ‘traditional’ artists to be ‘traditional’. Art is the global interface between the self and others for all, and the sensibilities of body language in art respond to the need to uphold the complexity of this co-existence.

Notes1. Roland Bleiker, Aesthetics and

world politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 1.

2. Jean-Luc Nancy, Being singular plural, trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), xii.

3. See particularly Jacques Rancière, The politics of aesthetics: The distribution of the sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London and New York: Continuum, 2004).

4. Bleiker, Aesthetics, 2.5. Nancy, Being singular plural, xii. 6. Amelia Jones, Body art/performing

the subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).

7. Amelia Jones, “‘Presence’ in absentia: Experiencing performance as documentation,” in “Performance art: (some) theory and (selected) practice at the end of this century,” ed. Martha Wilson, special issue, Art Journal 56, no.4 (Winter 1997): 12, http://art.usf.edu/file_uploads/presence.pdf.

8. David Pestorius, “Artist biography of Dave Hullfish Bailey and Sam

Watson collaboration,” unpublished manuscript, e-mail to the author, 31 August 2013. These CityCat ‘deflections’ were first conceived by Dave Hullfish Bailey in 2003 and subsequently developed into collaborative performances with Sam Watson.

9. See H.C. Perry, Memoirs of the Hon. Sir Robert Philp, K.C.M.G., 1851–1922 (Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson & Co., 1923), http://members.optusnet.com.au/~dbelling/boundary.html.

10. Sam Wagan Watson, cited in Pestorius, “Artist biography.”

11. Sam Wagan Watson, Itinerant blues (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2002), 47.

12. Mabel Edmund, No regrets (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1992).

13. Ibid., 98.14. Ibid.15. Ibid., 97–98.16. Maurice Merleau-Ponty,

Phenomenology of perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962).

17. Terry Smith, Transformations in Australian art: The nineteenth century – Landscape, colony and nation Volume 1 (Sydney: Craftsman House, 2002), 54.

18. John Jones, Robert Dowling: Tasmanian son of Empire (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2010).

Richard BellUz vs Them 2006 (still)single-channel digital video, edition 2/5duration 0:02:20Collection of The University of Queensland. Gift of Richard Bell through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2009.Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

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List of WorksTony Albert Born Townsville, Queensland. Girramay people. Lives and works Sydney, New South Wales.austrALIEN 2007type C photograph, edition 2/5image 144.0 x 90.0 cm; sheet 153.0 x 102.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2008.

love boxes 2007mixed media on vintage playing card boxesfive boxes, each approx. 9.2 x 6.2 x 2.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2008.

No place warrior 2009watercolour on Arches paperimage/sheet 76.0 x 57.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010.

Dave Hullfish Bailey Born 1963 Denver, Colorado, United States of America. Lives and works Los Angeles. Sam WatsonBorn 1952 Brisbane, Queensland. Munaldjali/Birri-Gubba peoples. Lives and works Brisbane.Maiwar Performance 2014video, colour, sound, edition of 5duration 0:12:00, looped Courtesy David Pestorius Projects, Brisbane.

Richard Bell Born 1953 Charleville, Queensland. Kamilaroi people. Lives and works Brisbane, Queensland.Uz vs Them 2006single-channel digital video, edition 2/5duration 0:02:20 Collection of The University of Queensland. Gift of Richard Bell through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2009.

Gordon Bennett Born 1955 Monto, Queensland. Lived and worked Brisbane, Queensland. Died 2014 Brisbane.Outsider 1988oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas290.5 x 179.5 cmCollection of The University of Queensland. Purchased with the assistance of the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council, 1989.

Notes to Basquiat: In the future everyone will know their place and be content 1999synthetic polymer paint on linen183.0 x 183.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 1999.

Figure 2003from the series ‘How to cross the void’synthetic polymer paint over UV inkjet print on paperimage/sheet 78.5 x 61.5 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010.

Michael Cook Born 1968 Brisbane, Queensland. Bidjara people. Lives and works Sunshine Coast, Queensland.Majority Rule (Bus) 2014inkjet print on paper, edition 3/3140.0 x 200.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2014.

Debbie Coombes Born 1979 Darwin, Northern Territory. Tiwi people. Lives and works Pirlangimpi Community, Melville Island, Northern Territory.Off to the Footy 2013ochre on linen120.0 x 40.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2014.

Ray Crooke Born 1922 Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works Yorkey’s Knob, Queensland.Islanders no.2 n.d.oil on board91.5 x 121.2 cmCollection of The University of Queensland.

William Dargie Born 1912 Melbourne, Victoria. Lived and worked Melbourne. Died 2003 Melbourne. Study for ‘Mr Albert Namatjira’ (Also known as Study for ‘Portrait of Albert Namatjira’) 1956oil on oilboard46.7 x 38.2 cmThe StuartholmeBehan Collection of Australian Art, The University of Queensland.

Robert Dowling Born 1827 Essex, England. Arrived Australia 1839. Lived and worked Tasmania and Victoria. Died 1886. London, England.Werrat Kuyuut and the Mopor people, Spring Creek, Victoria 1856oil on canvas52.0 x 108.5 cmCollection of The University of Queensland. Gift of Marjorie Dowling, 1952.

Mabel Edmund Born 1930 Rockhampton, Queensland. Darumbal and South Sea Islander peoples. Lived and worked Rockhampton. Died 2010 Rockhampton.The Goanna Men c.1992 batik on silk100.5 x 128.5 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, transferred from UQ Press, 1998.

(untitled) 1993gouache on paperimage 65.5 x 45.5 cm; sheet 76.7 x 56.5 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, transferred from UQ Press, 1998.

Samantha Hobson Born 1981 Lockhart River, Queensland. Kuuku Ya’u people. Lives and works Cairns, Queensland.Old men met 2008synthetic polymer paint on canvas167.0 x 105.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland. Gift of Michael Rayner AM through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2014.

Craig Koomeeta Born 1977 Aurukun, Queensland. Wik-Alkan people. Lives and works in Aurukun and Cairns, Queensland.Apelech: Young People 2004ochres with synthetic polymer binder on Belgian linen91.4 x 61.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland. Gift of Professor Alan Rix through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2014.

Duncan Korkatain Born 1949 Aurukun, Queensland. Wik-Alkan/Wik-Nathan people. Lives and works in Aurukun.Puch girl 2006ochres with synthetic polymer binder on milkwoodoverall 80.0 x 24.0 x 26.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland. Gift of an anonymous donor, 2009.

Stewart KorkatainBorn 1946 Aurukun, Queensland. Wik Ngathan people. Lives and works in Aurukun.Puch boy 2010ochres with synthetic polymer binder on milkwood, feathers, beeswax and grassoverall 106.0 x 33.0 x 39.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010.

Christopher Pease Born 1969 Perth, Western Australia. Minang/Wardandi/Balardung/Nyoongar peoples. Lives and works Perth.Noble Savage 3 2014oil on canvas65.0 x 100.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2014.

Luke Roberts Born 1952 Alpha, Queensland. Lived and worked Europe 1984–1987. Lives and works Brisbane.Australian Gothic (Couple) 2009from the series ‘Australian Story’camera: Kevyn ChaseGiclée print on paper, edition 2/5image 174.5 x 103.0 cm; sheet 190.0 x 130.3 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010.

Darren Siwes Born 1968 Adelaide, South Australia. Ngalkban people. Lives and works Adelaide.Marrkidj Wurd-ko (Cross Pose) Group 2011from the series ‘Dalabon Dalok (Dalabon Woman)’Giclée print on pearl paper, edition 5/10120.0 x 90.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2011.

Marrkidj-ngan (Star Pose) Group 2011from the series ‘Dalabon Dalok (Dalabon Woman)’Giclée print on pearl paper, edition 5/10120.0 x 90.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2011.

Alick Tipoti Born 1975 Waiben (Thursday Island), Torres Strait Islands, Queensland. Kala Lagaw Ya people. Lives and works Waiben (Thursday Island). Bill Young (Printer) Bill Young Studio (Printworkshop)Kuyku Garpathamai Mabaig 2007linoprint on paper, edition 3/45image 204.0 x 120.0 cm; sheet 239.0 x 139.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2008.

Dr Sally Butler is Senior Lecturer in Art History at The University of Queensland and a freelance curator and arts writer. Recent relevant publications include Our Way, Contemporary Aboriginal Art from Lockhart River (2007) and Before Time Today: Reinventing Tradition in Aurukun Aboriginal Art (2010), both published by University of Queensland Press and both books accompanying exhibitions presented at The University of Queensland Art Museum.

Biography

Samantha Hobson Old men met 2008synthetic polymer paint on canvas167.0 x 105.0 cmCollection of The University of Queensland. Gift of Michael Rayner AM through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2014.Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne.

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Curator’s Acknowledgements

I would like to express appreciation for the knowledge about Indigenous art that I have gained from the artists with whom I have worked over the last two decades. Research for this exhibition was conducted during my Fellowship at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at The University of Queensland (UQ), for which I am most grateful. Research collaborations with Professor Roland Bleiker from UQ’s School of Political Science and International Relations have been inspirational in developing my work in visual politics. Dave Hullfish Bailey, Sam Watson, and David Pestorius generously facilitated the loan of Maiwar performance, and Sam Watson assisted in allowing us to reproduce Sam Wagan Watson’s poem. As always, The UQ Art Museum staff have been instrumental in developing the exhibition, and have provided a rich source of wisdom about the artworks held in the University’s Art Collection. I would particularly like to thank Dr Campbell Gray and Michele Helmrich for their ongoing support and contributions to my research, and Evie Franzidis for her editorial skills.

UQ Art Museum Acknowledgements

The UQ Art Museum thanks Dr Sally Butler for guiding this project, which stems from her research. We also acknowledge the assistance of David Pestorius Projects and artists Dave Hullfish Bailey and Sam Watson, Sam Watson for assisting with the reproduction of Sam Wagan Watson’s poem, copyright holders, editor Evie Franzidis, and all those who have contributed to the project, including our Art Museum team.

back cover:Ray Crooke Islanders no.2 n.d.oil on board91.5 x 121.2 cmCollection of The University of Queensland.© Ray Crooke/Licensed by Viscopy, 2015.

First published in 2015 by The University of Queensland Art Museumon the occasion of the exhibition:Cross Pose – Body language against the grain

The University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, Australia16 May – 9 August 2015

© The University of Queensland, the artists and authors 2015

Views expressed in the publication are not necessarily those of the publisher.

This publication is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced by any means or process without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Curator/Author: Dr Sally ButlerCoordinating Curator: Michele HelmrichProject Manager: Gordon CraigEditor: Evie FranzidisCopyright: Kath KerswellCatalogue Design: Brent Wilson Photography: Carl Warner, except for pages 13,14 and 24 (video stills)

The University of Queensland Art MuseumThe James and Mary Emelia Mayne CentreThe University of QueenslandSt Lucia Queensland 4072 Australia

Acknowledgements

ART MUSEUMUQ