ART-PRESENTATION: Everywhen At Harvard Art Museums

Indigenous Australians are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia, descended from groups that existed in Australia and surrounding islands prior to European colonisation. Australia has a tradition of Indigenous Art which is thousands of years old, the best known forms being Rock Art and Bark Painting. Evidence of Indigenous Art in Australia can be traced back at least 30,000 years.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Harvard Art Museums Archive

The exhibition “Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia” surveys contemporary Indigenous Art from Australia, exploring the ways in which time is embedded within Indigenous artistic, social, historical, and philosophical life. The exhibition is organized around four interrelated themes (Seasonality, Transformation, Performance, and Remembrance) all of which are central to Indigenous Art and Culture focusing on the last 40 years of Indigenous Art. The exhibition showcases more than 70 works drawn from public and private collections in Australia and the United States, it also includes historical objects from the rich collections of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology to underscore both the continuity of cultural practice and remarkable adaptive innovations. For Indigenous people, the past is understood to be part of a cyclical and circular order known as the “Everywhen”, conceptions of time rely on active encounters with both the ancestral and natural worlds. Indigenous Art has roots in a culture that is thousands of years old, but it didn’t begin to take its prevailing present shape, colored paints on canvas until the early 1970s. That’s when Geoffrey Bardon, a white schoolteacher, encouraged senior Indigenous men to paint designs they had shown him onto small pieces of hardboard, using cheap but colorful acrylic paint. This occurred at a remote government settlement in the Northern Territory called Papunya. Works by some of the most significant contemporary Indigenous artists are on view, including Rover Thomas (Venide Biennale 1990), Emily Kam Kngwarray (Venice Biennale 1997), Judy Watson, Doreen Reid Nakamarra, DOCUMENTA 13, Vernon Ah Kee, (Venice Biennale 2009), and the visual and performance artist Christian Thompson, who was recently mentored by Marina Abramović in Australia.The exhibition reflects the ways in which the art historical landscape has shifted since then. Indigenous art is no longer positioned as “other”, but as another form of contemporary art that demands our attention.

Info: Curator: Stephen Gilchrist, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Duration: 5/2-18/9/16, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00, www.harvardartmuseums.org