Hello, tonight a look at the new urban art of Aboriginal Australia.
There's been a revolution in the past 10 years or so in terms of worldwide interest in the
power of traditional Aboriginal art.
But perhaps fewer people are in touch with urban Aboriginal artwork art from the cities,
which was first mounted as a comprehensive exhibition just over a decade ago in Sydney.
This work is often more political with strong colour and imagery, with artists using all
kinds of techniques including computer art.
Tonight we meet several urban artists and we also visit a gallery in New York that specialises
in their work.
Along the way the program touches on some important issues such as Aboriginal ownership
of imagery and the question of copyright, issues currently in the news with calls for
Australia's Copyright Act to be expanded to address the specific concerns of Indigenous
artists.
As you'll see it's a very interesting program that opens a window on the great variety that
exists in the work of Aboriginal artists.
I think in the early 1980s, mid 1980s specifically there was an art movement that Australia saw
alive with Aboriginal artists who were living in Sydney and Melbourne and along the eastern
seaboard of Australia and I don't think that's properly been documented, I don't think it's
been talked about enough.
The continent of Australia is Aboriginal to start with, it's not Asian, it's not European,
it's Aboriginal and therefore the artistic roots and traditions should come out of that.
I've called my shows the urban aboriginal and people are really very curious about that,
they want to know what that's about so I try to make it very clear that I'm dealing with
I call it that because I want to be clear that we're not dealing with the traditional
work.
Jan Weiser's gallery is the first international art gallery to specialise in urban aboriginal
art.
I felt that it was really important that people see what the contemporary artists are doing
that it's a living, growing art, it's not something that is done, I mean even the contemporary
art is living and I think people should know that, it's not, this is an ancient art that's
just being pulled out of cupboards and museums.
They've really upgraded their space there and they've spent a great deal of time on
putting together new reception areas, got classical elements and a lot of different
design features and so the artwork has to stand up to this very elaborate reception
area and yet they're a little conservative minded, they're an investment banking company
so I think something that has ties to people's roots as versus abstract art would be more
interesting to them and certainly the colours.
What do you think about this piece?
I think this is good, I saw a slide of it, it's really, the colours are so vivid.
Yeah, it's great, I think it would elicit a lot of comment too and interest, people
walk into corporations, they tend to have their minds strictly on business but this
may divert them a little bit which would be interesting.
Yeah, would they like that?
I think so, I think so, we're all human.
And I immediately recognise their appeal for corporations because of the bright colouration,
the fact that they seem to have an integrity about them, they're made by indigenous people
and when nowadays so much of what's produced in the art market is suspect, the motivation
and integrity of this work resonates with people.
They respond to it, they think it's authentic.
So it's quite a different scene to the Australians or the Galway system but she's just very
classy and very hard working and very honest and you know we're very lucky to have her
you know.
Hi Bronwyn, how are you?
That's good.
I just wanted you to know that Anne Spencer from the Newark Museum was here today to look
at the pieces that she's decided to purchase of yours.
But I just normally wouldn't exhibit overseas because I just don't see the relevance of
it.
You know I'm more interested in showing in Newtown than I am in showing in New York really.
I mean I'm more interested in seeing what happens in regional areas and doing things
in Australia but the opportunity presents itself and if you've got someone really good
who you know you can trust looking out for you overseas then do it but otherwise don't
because I've been ripped off heaps of times and I wouldn't do it if I didn't, you know
I wasn't referred to someone.
That came out of when I went on trial in 1972 I was charged with murder and I came before
the High Courts and Mr Justice Roden and myself he was a barrister then, Adrian Roden.
We decided that we would challenge the jury system and we asked that I be judged by some
of my peers.
In 1972 when Gordon Siren was up for murder he knew the Australian legal system was notoriously
harsh on Aboriginal offenders.
He desperately wanted some Aboriginal faces on the jury.
Well I found out that Aboriginal people didn't never before had Aboriginal people done jury
service and I was really shocked and I didn't believe that it happened in this country and
I thought to myself you know you rotten so and so's you know what a rotten bloody society
you know how can I get back at them, how can I get back at them.
He became an artist and the result, judgement of his peers, marks the beginning of a wave
of political painting which continues to this day.
But the origins of urban Aboriginal art go a long way back.
In the 19th century there were a number of Aboriginal artists working in a European style
soon after white settlement.
For them it was a period of massacre and dispossession but they continued to document the life of
their people.
Some alcohol and ego, some depression and oppression.
These drawings are by artist Tommy McCrae.
He resisted all attempts to be moved off his native land and fought for the rights of his
people.
It would take another 150 years before the first exhibition of Aboriginal urban art was
mounted in 1984.
In the intervening years between this century and last, artists practising across cultural
genre survived principally because of tourism.
Just what effect have these overseas imports had on the boomerang business here?
They've had a very very damaging effect on the Aboriginal industry most particularly.
I can remember a time when Aboriginals just about had the field entirely to themselves
and it was pretty good because Aboriginal people were doing their own thing, it's the
sort of thing that we're naturally adept at doing you know but nowadays it's very hard
and most particularly since this gentleman in Queensland who is not even an Australian
has the registration to design on a boomerang.
I don't know how or how the government ever allowed him to do this.
There are so many ironies when it comes to what's real art and what's not and one of
the ironies is that if it hadn't been for the souvenir industry there probably wouldn't
be such a substantial manifestation of fine Aboriginal art today and many crafts, many
traditions simply continued as a consequence of souvenirs.
Bill Onus was perhaps the first Aborigine to start making boomerangs in anything like
a big way and now his son is one of the few Aborigines still carrying on as an entrepreneur
in the business.
Well it was quite by accident.
My father had had a shop for as long as I could ever remember and he threw boomerangs
and made souvenirs and on Sundays employed artists in his shop and you know like any
of those sort of touristy things people would come and watch people paint and I was doing
the same thing, I would talk to people who were painting and I guess in some sort of
way it rubbed off.
It's not a career I'd recommend to anybody, I mean before it really sort of started to
take off for me there had been previous 15 years of spray painting, panel painting, plumbing,
taxi truck driving and you know that survival show.
His work now features around $20,000 apiece and is sought by museums and private collectors.
Today's revolution in Aboriginal urban art began in the early 80s.
In Sydney a group of art students banded together to form a cooperative.
They called it Bumaali.
I can remember coming back from Ramanginning after visiting there in 1986 with Avril Quail
and realising that there is a real community of artists in such a small place and that
it was important for artists in our environment studying, working here in Sydney to come together
to pull our knowledge and some of the frustrations that we were experiencing while we were going
to Sydney College of the Arts and just combating that institutional racism and people's attitudes
towards Aboriginal artists who live and work in the city.
We'd all had experiences at art school where they told us we couldn't paint in an Aboriginal
style because we weren't proper Aboriginals and only half of us was real and the other
half wasn't or something, you know which part of you is Aboriginal, everyone just jokes
and says which part do you think, my toe or my nose or my head or my eyes.
So we were a bit disenfranchised and that's when we started that and the response was
unbelievable in mainstream I suppose you'd call it, non-Aboriginal people came and supported
it and Koori's really supported it because they could see that it was a focus and a face
for their work.
It was an exciting time for us artists and it was quite on the cutting edge of being
political and it just opened a lot of doors for us.
That co-operative is now 10 years old.
It actively promotes Aboriginal urban art and trains member artists in business management.
The aims and objectives I guess were that it was an all Aboriginal operated organisation
so it was creating and promoting and marketing and directing our art and culture on our terms.
It's also been this real guilt complex of what to do with Aboriginal people because
people have tried to hide their history, all the massacres and so on and the dispossession
and the theft and rape and everything that's happened that's been in Australia's history
and so the art goes along with that baggage of white people's Aboriginal problem.
It isn't a problem for Aboriginal people, it's we've got this white problem not the
other way around.
People have had trouble dealing with that and therefore they've had trouble dealing
with Aboriginal art.
Of course the people in urban centres in the South East largely are those people who are
most affected by that history and therefore they're the people that historically were
dispossessed most and so on and they're also the Aboriginals that are next door.
They're the people that confront you every day and so therefore they, you know, people
have tried to marginalise them or not see them.
It's better to deal with those Aboriginals that are 20,000 miles away.
Even though that art, the urban Aboriginal art has been very bright and colourful and
very strong and aggressive, people try to ignore it because it's too close for comfort.
I mean you can take on rap singers from America that have their aggression and everything
else, that's perfectly alright because that's out of the other side of the ocean, they're
talking about issues that don't have to do with Australians.
I wrote this piece after reading an article by Frank Devine in The Australian and I wrote
some more inflammatory stuff than this, but it wasn't really for public consumption so
I wrote this poem using all the letters of the alphabet.
Abbeys, blacks, coons, darkies, expecting free gifts here, injustice, kindness, land,
moderation, not offered, peacefully, quickly, resourcefully, sincerely, tactfully, under
very weak, xenophobic, yoghurt zookeepers.
I use a lot of text in my work because, well, I'm a very direct person, I'm a very direct
sort of person, my message is very direct and I like to communicate to as many people
as possible.
It's a collaboration with Sean Leahy, the cartoonist with the Courier Mail in Queensland.
The main reason I do these sorts of works is to make the little people feel good about
themselves. I'm putting up things that many Aboriginal people are thinking, I'm actually
doing it.
Aboriginal urban art has a raw edge which taps into the wounds of Australia's psyche.
No one's work is more unsettling than that of Gordon Bennett.
I'm putting up things that many Aboriginal people are thinking, I'm actually doing it.
My grandmother was one of the women in the images where she got taken away when she was
young and grew up in a home and she became a servant at the age of 15 and so she was
like the main inspiration behind the work and then couldn't really deal with the work
very well in terms of looking back at the past and how Aboriginal people in this country
weren't allowed to voice their feelings and so when she sees my work on the wall she
really likes the work but then on the other hand she gets very upset because she thinks
I'm going to get arrested or we're going to get jailed or something like that.
That stuff about time hasn't really changed for my grandmother and my mother, they still
sort of live very much within that time frame.
I think this work is very political but it's political and it's a very optimistic work
in general, it's very beautiful. It makes its statement but it's not beating you over
the head with the ugliness of the world around us.
Artists who belong to Bamali challenge the stereotypic view of what it means to be Aboriginal.
Identity is a recurring theme for many Aboriginal artists who see themselves as invisible in
Australia's multiracial society, yet at the same time still marginalised.
I think my work's motivated by how I live my life on a daily basis. I think it's the
many different parts of me and how they connect to many different areas. I'm a very different
person when I'm with my family, although my family know that I'm a lesbian and accept
that. I'm a very different person when I'm with friends who I work with, with artists
and I think what I've learnt to do is to adapt in many different ways.
The ideas of trying to search for an identity that I could actually say, you know, this
is my identity has led me to discover that I have many identities and I'm never actually
in that one all the time.
I've been a racist because I've got cousins who are really black and probably are no good
drunken blackfellas. I've got cousins that I've heard them say that about. And I thought
that I was better than them at one stage and didn't really want to know about them. I know
both sides and knowing both sides I should paint about it because I'm on both sides.
I'm part Aboriginal and I'm part white. I'm a magpie I suppose.
I don't like people telling me I should do political work because I'm an Aboriginal artist.
What I do is the work that I actually formulate comes out of experiences, my experiences.
So like the New South Wales acquisition this year was you don't even look Aboriginal because
I always get that, you don't even look Aboriginal. So I did a painting about it and the New South
Wales art gallery bought it. So it was there for everyone to see.
I say to say well you know I don't really care what you think. I can paint about it,
I can be it but genealogically I'm not going to deny anyone in my family you know. I'm
really proud of my family.
And there are also some artists whose Aboriginal heritage was deliberately suppressed within
the family.
My great-grandmother was the last full-blooded and she's buried on Davie's station. When
I was a little girl I wasn't told about my Aboriginality and I think that came from the
fact that a lot of Aboriginal people weren't allowed into schools and into universities
or anything like that and my father was pretty protective so I guess he withheld a little
bit of information rather than have me go through a lot of the ordeals that other people
like himself had gone through.
I guess it's sad that the heritage was actually withheld for such a long time but then when
it was revealed it was like yes I know now what it's all about and what I felt in my
heart.
The work that I'm making is as much fed by aesthetics which I have been trained in I
guess through the Western system as it is you know thinking about a particular area
of country in North West Queensland that a lot of this is related to or about perhaps
an idea of mapping like mapping an area where massacres or things like that have occurred
and sort of perhaps showing some of the concealed history of Australia.
This is actually about flying over a place where there were fires burning so this is
the actual fires and they're sort of actually burning out so you know they're sort of burning
out from here and from the air you can actually see these marks of sort of like almost like
gold rings but it's also an area where there's Hornet Bank station where there were massacres
of Aboriginal people and it's also very close to Carnarvon Gorge where there were arts sites
a lot of arts sites with Aboriginal arts sites that whole connection of massacre genocide
of that particular group.
Urban artists are inspired by their heritage history and their own experiences yet like
most artists they've also been influenced by post-modernism and the popular practice
of appropriation but appropriating imagery from traditional Aboriginal art has serious
ramifications the significance of which many urban artists are only beginning to understand.
The question of homage or appropriation is one of the most difficult ones I think in
Aboriginal Australia today. There are numerous examples of non-Aboriginal people taking imagery
without permission then reproducing it in some way that is pretty well understood to
be undignified and you know people get really angry about that. What's more difficult however
is young Aboriginal people themselves taking imagery without the appropriate knowledge
to reproduce and there are some strange situations for example the Department of Education in
Western Australia used to print newsletters which encouraged Aboriginal people in Western
Australia to paint bark paintings like the top end and even provided diagrams on how
to do this.
Some images like these astronaut-like figures called Wanjinas are in themselves the spiritual
property of specific communities.
Nine years ago I was doing some Wanjinas and this friend of mine from Palm Island she just
said oh you can't do that and I said well I'm Aboriginal naive you know like this and
she said no you can't do it. They're from the Kimberley area and that started my interest
in copyright and the understanding of ownership.
Ironically many years later Bronwyn Bancroft herself fell victim to a t-shirt manufacturer
who stole a section of one of her paintings and reproduced it by the hundred.
The effect on the producer of the work in many traditional areas the artist who paints
this particular thing is at the same time the custodian for the thing visually and they
also are obliged to maintain the story to look after it to keep it strong.
Appropriated without permission it can force a traditional artist into moral and physical
decline Linonis has seen it happen.
For many people the story the song the image is part of their own existence and it's incumbent
upon them to look after it so it creates extraordinary problems.
Traditionally if I can say that that Aboriginal people didn't use other people's imagery unless
you were granted permission and you were normally granted permission through some sort of
relationship I mean actual physical family relationship.
So how does Linonis by heritage a Wiradjuri from New South Wales explain his work distinguished
by its use of rock or cross hatching which culturally belongs to Australia's top end.
I didn't find anything in Wiradjuri imagery that had any appeal to me when I was starting
out I think if anything it was probably more a reflection on the fact that I was looking
but not seeing and in my particular case it was quite accidental.
I found myself in Maningreda in 1986 where I met an old man whose name I can't say now
but he encouraged me to look at the environment in totally different ways and it had the most
extraordinary effect on my life and my work.
I was very much a landscape painter.
I saw things in that sort of Australia Felix type of way.
Wide panorama, gum tree on the left, sheep on the right.
It wasn't quite that bad.
And this man encouraged me to see the things that were in the air and the water and in the soil.
So it became much much more alive than ever before.
Now when I look I see things.
Now what's interesting is that I'm slowly returning to a different type of rock
which is more to do with that central New South Wales, that Murray River connection where my father grew up.
But how sacred are the origins of a particular image?
Ron Hurley when he lived in Paris happily combined the style of papaya dot painting from Central Australia
with a favourite European icon.
This is hardly a tea towel.
Well it's the use of things.
I mean if you steal something and you use it for a commercial purpose
but my purpose is just a one-off image to explain something that belongs to my country and equally belongs here.
My ancestry is Irish.
My grandfather was from County Cork.
My grandmother was a full-blood Aboriginal.
Myself I came from an urban background.
I was born in Brisbane and I lived there all my life.
And it's not tribal in any way, shape or form.
So I don't have any tribal reference in that sense.
Not in a visual sense.
All our people's art and their language are all destroyed.
This is like contemporary art and it's like pop art and this is pop art in the 60s and 70s.
What I look for is honesty and honest approach.
That's going to open up a lot of definitional problems.
Curator and critic John Mundine is dismissive of any artist, especially urban Aborigines,
who appropriate imagery from other tribes before first exploring their own heritage.
Well I mean by honesty and art they aren't telling their own story.
Their own story isn't about Western desert art.
Their own story is about art in Brisbane or art in Sydney or art in Canberra or Melbourne or whatever.
And they should be using the iconography of their own people.
What Manuel was saying was that he didn't like this piece here, the turtle with the blue,
because it wasn't traditional. So do you agree with him?
Yeah, it's something about the drink time.
So bad luck to have blue. Bad luck to have blue in the Aboriginal paintings.
It's got to be original colours.
What about if Okuri has been brought up and lived all his life in the city?
Do you think, is he still alive?
To him it might be nothing, but to us it's our legend not to put blue in our paintings.
People have to start from somewhere. They often go to those reference points,
whether it's like traditional art either from the top end or central Australia,
because it's like here's Aboriginal culture.
And then they gain that confidence within themselves and like well I can do different things.
I don't have to just be copying something that really doesn't have a lot to do with me,
because I'm not from that area and this isn't my story.
And people understand that a lot more now than say five years ago.
And that was a tricky area to get into because you didn't want to slam anybody for what they were doing,
but you wanted to sort of encourage them to have a broader scope
and to realise that they had to create their own signature.
It shows a lad coming back from town there with one flag and all of us waiting.
There's only one flag in between seven, maybe eight of us,
and we might be lucky enough to have one or two drinks each.
So then that goes and we're all just sitting there trying to work out another way to rake up for another flag.
What I like about Harry's work is that it's very much an individual style.
Personally I get a bit bored looking at a lot of urban artists
who feel that they have to slip into that stereotype of what is known as Aboriginal art.
There's a lot of kids down the school.
They're playing together, one big happy family type of thing.
Sometimes there'd be one kid who could be lousy, you know, with lies.
And then it would spread around to a couple of other kids.
Anyway, the teacher finds out they seem to be really pissed off, eh?
And they don't really care who knows about it.
Harry, who comes from Kaurra, is of the Wiradjuri Nation
and first became involved in art as a student at the Ayora Centre
and I understand that Harry was first interested in photography
but discovered that painting was a much more useful medium
for interpreting his stories, his feelings and experiences.
I think considering that Harry's only been painting seriously for the past three years
his work is becoming very well known
and he's going to be very much an artist in demand
so I think you should brace yourself, Harry.
You'll have a lot more exhibitions to paint for
and a lot more commissions coming through.
Open fire family night
Oh, I go back
Yeah, I go back
Oh, I go back
Yeah, I go back
I go back
The way urban and regional arts developed is that people are largely telling
well, I think people start out in an autobiographical way
talking about their families and where they come from
and how they live now
and I think that's most important because it's rewriting a history
through that story about their family, that autobiography
they're retelling a history about non-stereotypical Aboriginality.
Robert Campbell Jr. talks a lot about his own life
and he was actually painting before he painted commercially
He was painting for his own family, really
and recording things in his life and injustices that happened to his people
before he started to paint commercially
but it's something that he's lived through, he's lived and experienced it himself.
Uncle's aunties, cousins too
Grandfather, grandmother sing sweet tunes
Piano, accordion, guitars in tune
Sound of someone playing tune
Oh, I go back
Yeah, I go back
Not all those people are confrontational. It's Ian Abdullah who paints work
these almost very nice reminiscences about his life as doing labouring things
and itinerant work out in the country and so on
and things that quite often a lot of country white people can relate to as well.
Music
Ian started painting in about 1988
when he was about 40
and by 19, I believe it was 89 or 91, I'll have to check
he was named South Australia Aboriginal Artist of the Year
in very short order
and they're all about his life growing up on the Mary River
in the 50s and 60s
and it's about how he's painting them so his children will know
what his family had to do to survive
I guess you could compare them to what we would call sharecroppers here
Music
When Grandfather came over to see the work
before he goes back out to the museum
as far as Australian Aboriginal artists are concerned
Do you love it as much?
We don't see that much of it
I think if people think of two dimensional Aboriginal art
they think of the non-urban artists
but I think the more they're shown
in a gallery like Jan Weiss's gallery
gives people the opportunity to see the range of expression
coming out of that tradition
I first fell in love with her colour
and this is a surprise to me that I like this one so much
because it's really just black and white
When I bring out Sally's prints from the drawer
first of all they're so vibrant, they're so alive, the patterns are so wonderful
that I never get a negative response
and mostly people buy one when they see it
because they're unusual for this market
and they're brilliantly printed
Music
The two artists that we've collected so far
Sally Morgan and Bronwyn Bancroft
I'm particularly attracted to because I am interested in the patterning
in the case of Sally Morgan, her wonderful use of colour
Music
The United Nations was looking for an artist for their Human Rights Stamp Series
and they decided they wanted to use an Aboriginal artist
and they came to me and selected one of Sally Morgan's pieces for the stamp
so the image was chosen from this print here called Outback
So the stamps were issued in 1993
and this is the stamp of the image
There were five artists that were issued that year
and Megreeton was one of them
This is Rack Picasso
Music
Australia's Sally Morgan was in fact one of only two living artists
selected by the United Nations
Music
I also have an understanding of the impact that Aboriginal art is having in Europe
because it's like nothing else on earth
It's unique to this continent
and it's just a bit sad that the Europeans have to realise it first
or the Europeans or the Americans have to realise it first
rather than the Australian people
There's a big interest in the urban movement of Aboriginal painters
simply because they understand the evolution of art
Perhaps I was in the right place at the right time
but the people I met were very, very interested
I want to see your work
When do you show me your work?
Next week
Next week?
Yes
Yes, we will have another opening here
There's a lot of people
I visit galleries all the time
and we have far more interesting art generated in Australia
Maybe it's because of our isolation
It's something that makes us work harder
It's equally as impressive
and the standard of work at home is world-class
Music
We're starting to see an infiltration of Aboriginal artists
into those very Eurocentric art establishments
and that's a very positive thing for people of my generation
to keep working towards and to be a part of
Music
The Aboriginal Memorial came about from an idea I had
of doing a large installation of poles
People were making these burial poles or hollow log coffins
and they were actually making them for the outside world
as an art piece for the outside world
In 1988, when Australia celebrated 200 years of European settlement
Aboriginal artists from Ramanginning had this to say
What we said to the organisers of the Biennale was that
if we were going to take part, they just had to accept what we were going to do
and I knew that it was a big forum, a big international forum
a big stage to say something
and so we made this statement
This is what 1988 means to Aboriginal people
It means 200 years of death
It means 200 coffins
and that's what we were trying to say in an upfront, straight way
and that's where we sort of laid that down as a challenge
for white Australians to do something about it
You realise how people in other countries
whether they're from an art establishment over there
or whether they're from a general public
they don't understand that the separate histories that took place here in Australia
and it's too easy for them to lump Aboriginal people together in one big group
and they don't realise that there are many nations within Australia
and that our histories have started from different points in time
Even international curators have preconceived ideas about Aboriginal art
The colourful statements in this work are from a conversation Fiona had
with a visiting black British curator
What she remembers as a child
She kept it hidden deep inside
For she's special and she'll always be
She will never lose her
I think that they assume that there's a lot of anger
there's a lot of politicalness in the work
and that would be correct
but I think there's a strength in looking at what we're speaking about
and what we're articulating
Certainly looking at my peers in the non-Aboriginal art world
we've come a long way in a very short time
and it's quite revolutionary how it's taken for granted now
that if there is an international exhibition
we must include somebody who is termed an urban Aboriginal artist
It's a category or a term that I don't like using
because I think it doesn't validate my culture as a Butchler artist
and I think until the day I'm recognised as being a Butchler artist
then I know I would have achieved what I've set out to do
and that's to educate people about my particular nation within Australia
Make a sound, make a wish for a time to come
See it to believe, live for life
Well I've been very fortunate that a lot of my history is still connected to the land
my traditional country which encompasses Fraser Island
and the surrounding mainland
and I grew up in Harvey Bay and that's still in my traditional country
which belongs to the Butchler people
For me the work I show in general is very connected to the earth generally
I use the word spiritual, I think the work I show is very spiritual
and that's what this art's all about
I mean it's so connected to the land and it's so intense, it's so spiritual
that I felt it really belonged, it fits my sensibility
and I just fell in love with it, it's real, it's very true
there's not a false note about it
I think what it's done for my immediate family
is given them a strong base and inner strength
and the knowledge that we are the traditional landowners for that country
and that would never be taken away from us
It may not be there legally but every time we step foot within our own traditional boundaries
that strength is so inherent and it's been inherent in my upbringing
And what about the swirls, what does that make you?
The swirls
Aboriginal people are going to have to take a lot more interest in their art forms
and make sure that it isn't bastardised or prostituted
and once that happens I'm sure we'll see artists become very, very established
and they'll become household names like Picasso and Francis Bacon and the like
I think it transcends being Australian, it comes from Australia
it's the feel of the countries there, the feel of the land
if you see the colours when you're there you really feel the land when you see this work
but it transcends that, good art has to transcend a local place and this art does
I think that the real thing that urban Aboriginal artists will do in Sydney or Melbourne or whatever
is to give people here pride in their heritage
and I think that's the primary role of urban Aboriginal artists, that's what they've got to do
and that's why I said they have to be honest about what they're saying
so it can't be just shallow sloganeering, it has to be definitely studied and deep
and the statements have to be strong and true
Guwana, guwana, guwana, guwa
Inane kapuana, inane kapuana
Euna, ula ula, ula eipie
Guwana, guwana, guwana, guwana, guwa
Inane kapuana, inane kapuana
Euna, ula ula, ula eipie
Guwana, guwana, guwana, guwa
Inane kapuana, inane kapuana
Euna, ula ula, ula eipie
Guwana, guwana, guwana, guwa
An interesting program that really opens a window on the great variety of work being explored by urban Aboriginal artists
Several of them have exhibitions on over the next few months so look out for those
Also a sculpture by Ron Hurley who we met tonight has been unveiled in Queensland where it was commissioned by the Queensland Government
It commemorates the six Aboriginal tribes of South East Queensland and is right on the banks of the Brisbane River in the city
On what was once Aboriginal ceremonial grounds
Next week a special masterpiece program about the Sydney Opera House
The program explores the tumultuous history of Australia's major architectural icon
And we meet its architect Yern Utzon in his first television interview for 20 years
It's a great program so cancel anything else you've got on and join us then at 8.30 next Monday night, good night
I'm ready
Gordon, what are you doing?
The sprinkler started dripping
I'll call someone
Thank you
Gordon, where are the yellow pages?
On the movie show this week
Michelle Pfeiffer stands and delivers in dangerous minds
There are no victims in this classroom
Nick Noah is the first victim
What does that mean?
The story begins
Here's the story
The story begins
There are no victims in this classroom
Nick Nolte stars in the new
Merchant Ivory production, Jefferson in Paris
And Emma Thompson and Jonathan Price
Play unusual lovers in Carrington
But he's just an disgusting pervert
You always have to put up with something
A window on the world of film
8 o'clock Wednesday on the movie show
When a young girl accuses her father
Nobody knows who to believe
A struggle between truth and lies
A Shadow of Doubt
Your movie of the week, 9.30 Thursday
Friday night
We follow would-be bodyguards
Through one of Britain's toughest training courses
Unrelenting
And humiliating
The course is designed to weed out the weak
The courses are taken extremely seriously
And if someone doesn't make the grade
They don't pass, it's simple as that
Find out what it takes
To join the elite profession of bodyguards
8.30 Friday
Feel free to celebrate
Aurora at Darling Harbor is here
The Aurora New World Festival at Darling Harbor
A face from every place on the planet
Proudly supported by SBS
Good evening
Who could resist a movie with a title like
Searching for My Wife's Husband
Which is the one we're about to see
All will be revealed in just a little while
I don't want to spoil the plot for you
But it does involve the rules and regulations
Of Muslim marriages and it is hilarious
It's the very successful work of Moroccan filmmaker
Mohammed Abdurrahman Tadzi
Who's managed to mix the old with the new
Deliberately so
There's a tradition of Arabic filmmaking
In which the acting style is very broad
There's an acknowledgement of playing to an audience
In contrast to the more naturalist style
Adopted by some of the more serious
Contemporary filmmakers
So while the presentation is in the tradition
Of classic comedy, the themes are modern
Starring as the man who wants it all
Is Bachir Shkirej
His three wives are played by Amina Rashid
Naima Nemchaki
And Muna Fetul
This film has been called
A Hymn to Cohabitation
And I think that's exactly right
We're going to have a good time with
Searching for my wife's husband right now
Tamu, get in the car and we'll finish our work here
Thank you
I
Likens
The partners