Tony Albert: Visible

Tony Albert, Girramay/Yidinji/Kuku, Yalanji peoples, Australia, b.1981 / Brother (Our Future) 2013 / Pigment print, ed. AP 1 / 150 x 100cm / Purchased 2013 / Collection: The University of Queensland / © The artist / Image courtesy: Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney

Tony Albert, Girramay/Yidinji/Kuku, Yalanji peoples, Australia, b.1981 / Brother (Our Future) 2013 / Pigment print, ed. AP 1 / 150 x 100cm / Purchased 2013 / Collection: The University of Queensland / © The artist / Image courtesy: Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney / View full image

Contemporary Australian artist Tony Albert’s exhibition ‘Visible’ not only showcased major works from the last 15 years, it also included new work not previously exhibited. The title of the exhibition speaks to one of Albert’s often used quotes ‘Invisible is my favourite colour’, a response which frames the exhibition. In Albert’s practice, he explores representations of Aboriginal people through a mix of humour and poignancy, while tackling issues of race and representation head on.

Tony Albert invites you to see ‘Visible’ at the Queensland Art Gallery

In his conceptually driven practice, he often re-appropriates and recycles items of vintage kitsch that feature Aboriginal images or imagery: objects the artist calls ‘Aboriginalia’. Growing up, Albert’s family would often visit the second-hand shops of regional and suburban Queensland, where he would find piles of Aboriginalia — plates, ashtrays, cups and saucers — and choose pieces to keep. As a teenager, his childhood collection continued to grow, but took on more political connotations. After graduating from the Queensland College of Art in 2004, Albert began to incorporate these once fashionable, mass-produced objects into his artworks, to question the historical and contemporary representations of Aboriginal people within Australian society.

Tony Albert, Girramay/Yidinji/Kuku, Yalanji peoples, Australia, b.1981 / Sorry 2008 / Found kitsch objects applied to vinyl letters / 99 objects / The James C. Sourris AM Collection. Purchased 2008 with funds from James C. Sourris through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tony Albert

Many of Albert’s early Aboriginalia works directly address the racial histories and legacies embodied by these objects such as the large, text-based wall installation Sorry 2008. Collaborative projects, which Albert undertakes with fellow artists and Indigenous youths, are also an important element of his practice. Following a number of workshops with young Aboriginal people, Albert produced ‘Brothers’ 2013, a series capturing the marginalisation and criminalisation often experienced by this vulnerable demographic. The photographs that make up his 2017 series ‘Warakurna – The Force is with us’, which were produced in collaboration with children from one of Australia’s most remote desert communities, paint the youths in a positive, heroic light – to themselves as well as to the viewer.

Albert presents the complexities of contemporary experience, allowing us to engage with the hard truths of our past and to make visible our Indigenous people, in the hope that we will strive to create a better future together.

Know Brisbane through the QAGOMA Collection / Delve into our Queensland Stories / Read more about Australian Art / Subscribe to QAGOMA YouTube to go behind-the-scenes

‘Visible’ has been developed to coincide with the interactive exhibition ‘We Can Be Heroes’ at the Children’s Art Centre, GOMA. Albert collaborated with children and artists from Warakurna to create a number of artworks including the photographic series Warakurna – Superheroes 2017 and illuminated paintings featuring the Mamu, the fearful trickster spirits found in Warakurna.

‘Tony Albert: Visible‘ / Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) / 2 June – 7 October 2018

Featured image detail: Tony Albert’s Brother (Our Future) 2013

#TonyAlbert #QAGOMA

Related Stories

  •
    Read •

    Tony Albert gives familiar objects a new voice

    Tony Albert has obsessively collected what he calls ‘Aboriginalia’ since his childhood. His artistic practice involves collaborating, repurposing and reimagining popular culture paraphernalia, social and political movements, in order to tell the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Recognisable to an Australian society of the not-so-distant past, and drawn from the trinket cabinets of many white Australian households of the 1950s and 60s, the kitsch ashtrays and decorative boomerangs that feature in Albert’s works also float in our collective subconscious, like fragments in a vast psychological universe, discarded, until now: Albert, an empathetic, opportunistic thrift-store shopper, rescues them. Unearthed and re-contextualised, he renders them strange and reveals the uneasiness behind their existence. Since childhood, Tony Albert has been a collector of Aboriginalia Interesting fact One of Albert’s earliest collections, and his most substantial, is of vintage Aboriginalia – objects produced for commercial consumption (in tourist, design or art markets) featuring ‘Aboriginal’ images. Growing up in regional Queensland and suburban Brisbane, Albert accompanied his family on regular trips to local thrift shops, and among the piles of second-hand clothing and discarded household ephemera, Albert would often find objects decorated with Aboriginal-like designs or faces. Something about these pseudo-Aboriginal objects appealed to the Aboriginal boy living in white Australian suburbia. By themselves, these items are simply fragments of an ignorant past; en masse, however, Albert sees them as the remnants of a much larger historical meteor, with the power to change the landscape of our own personal planets. The objects commonly depict naked children playing with animals; bearded men — naked or with a loincloth — often wearing a headband and holding a tool of some description (usually a boomerang or spear); or young women with bared breasts. The figures are set within a landscape — the ubiquitous xanthorrhoea or eucalypt nearby — or dancing around a fire. Sometimes their bodies are painted, or there are patterns painted on their tools. Perhaps it was a way for white Australia to connect indirectly with Aboriginal culture without having to interact with any individuals; hence, the proliferation of tea towels, plates, paintings on black velvet backgrounds, ashtrays, coasters, playing cards and small sculptures — cultural collateral that captured only the vaguest likeness of Aboriginal peoples. Albert uses these same objects to tell the stories of the people they replaced. He gives them back their dignity, while bringing to light the contemporary issues that stem from our unresolved history. Through his practice, Albert says what we already know in a way that we can process, using objects familiar to us — using humour to depict the brutal truth. Sometimes, the poison is also the antidote. Albert’s works, which are culturally and historically educational, and created with an optimistic stance, make our unsettling past seem almost palatable — at least, at first. The history is uncomfortable; he merely asks us to remember it, and to guard against its repetition, offering a way forward so that the cycle can be broken. Artists such as Destiny Deacon, Daniel Boyd, Brook Andrew and Vernon Ah Kee also repurpose and reclaim objects and imagery of Aboriginal people. More often than not, the images these artists rework were originally taken by ethnographers or anthropologists, and without the permission of those depicted. These artists highlight the stereotypes and misrepresentation of an entire country of sovereign First Nations peoples, and bring them back into our living, breathing society. The works remind the viewer that living descendants of these same misrepresented subjects are able to tell their own stories, and tell them truthfully. In Albert’s 2010 reworking of Daddy’s Little Girl 2 1994 by Gordon Bennett (one of his greatest artistic influences), he addresses Bennett directly, saying that: ‘The cycle of racism is ever present. We must hope that it will be broken’. The production of culturally problematic mass media, the derogatory items in tourist shops, and the social stereotyping of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, can’t be changed overnight, but, in the name of breaking the cycle, Albert takes items that are typically belittling — be they media stories, objects or historical events — and shows the individualism behind them. He reframes his chosen subject in a way that is true to his lived experience and the experiences of those around him. By reclaiming the dispossessed and misrepresented in history, and instilling the truths, or perceived truths, he hopes that there will be real change in our world. Tony Albert has spent a lot of time supporting other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in their careers. He inspires and encourages curators, artists, art workers, community members and elders to tell their stories, and he works in many different corners of the art world — as a mentor, board member, collaborator, judge, panellist, collector, donor. In 2003, Albert and a group of artists established the proppaNOW collective, to challenge an art market that expected them to produce ‘dot’ paintings, and to create a network of conceptually like-minded artists. proppaNOW provided mentorships and encouragement — a mode of practice that he continues in his solo career, by facilitating workshops and collaborations all over the country. For Warakurna – The force is with us 2017, he worked with 40 artists from the Warakurna community; Pay attention 2009–10 involved 25 artists, including Richard Bell, Vernon Ah Kee, Archie Moore, Judy Watson, Judith Inkamala and others; and he worked on Frontier wars (Flying Fox Story Place) 2014 with Alair Pambegan, just to name a few. It seems fitting that Albert’s first major solo exhibition, ‘Visible’, curated by Bruce Johnson McLean, is being staged in Queensland — it’s the home of his ancestors, it’s where he was born, and it is where his career as an artist was first realised and continues to be fostered. In our globalised world, it is increasingly easy to connect with others and share our stories, while referencing the many social, political and historical happenings that influence our lives and culture. Albert taps into the use of social media,...
  •
    Read •

    Bronze sculptures reference dillybags & termite forms

    Visit the latest Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation featuring the powerful scultpures of walama 2000 until 11 August 2024. The exhibition ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri’ celebrates the work of Queensland artist Judy Watson — born in Mundubbera and lives and works in Meeanjin/Magandjin/Brisbane — in her most extensive solo exhibition to date. walama (illustrated) consists of 17 bronze forms — these forms range in size from 30 centimetres to 1.5 metres in height — each mound has its own characteristics: a jaunted lean, dimples, or patinaed colouration. The work draws its title from the Eora Nation’s word for ‘return’, and speaks to a shared understanding of the importance of returning to Country. These bronze sculptures reference upturned dillybags and tall termite forms. Each moulded form is distinct in form and colour, as though each vessel holds stories of place and time. Judy Watson ‘walama’ 2000 The spirit of much of Watson’s work stems from the Waanyi homelands of her grandmother and great-grandmother in the Gulf Country of north-west Queensland. ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri’ are Waanyi words written by the artist’s son, Otis Carmichael, meaning ‘tomorrow the tree grows stronger’. Just as a young tree grows in strength, the act of reclaiming and voicing Indigenous language encourages a regeneration of culture. The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country. It is customary in many Indigenous communities not to mention the name or reproduce photographs of the deceased. All such mentions and photographs are with permission, however, care and discretion should be exercised. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are respectfully advised that this exhibition contains images of ancestors, now deceased, and references to strong themes of colonial frontier violence.