The newly opened The Art Gallery of New South Wales’ brand-new Sydney Modern structure heralds a new era for the organization. The Yiribana Gallery, wholly dedicated to the work of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, has a new home in addition to the new temporary exhibition spaces.
The Yiribana Gallery, which opened in the 1990s and has been housed in the museum’s original neoclassical structure with a sandstone exterior, Doric columns, and a triangular pediment, has presented a minimal selection of contemporary Australian art, primarily by white male artists, for many years. Additionally, because it was on the basement level, most tourists frequently gave up trying to find it.
The opening of the Yiribana Gallery in 1994 was a turning point because it provided modern Indigenous artists in Australia with a location to exhibit their work. Although Indigenous artists’ work had been on show at the museum since 1973, it was in a space known as the “Tribal” or “Primitive Art Gallery.” By naming it “Yiribana,” which in the Sydney-area Aboriginal language of Dharug means “the way,” it was apparent that Indigenous art was a part of contemporary Australia and not just its distant past. Despite this, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that the accession numbers changed from “P” (for primitive) to “IA” (for Indigenous Australian). That artwork from this collection department was displayed in other museum areas.
One of the pioneering organizations was the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which began seriously collecting works by Aboriginal artists in the 1950s. However, the Australian art world did not become interested in Indigenous art until the 1970s. Before that, it had been a succession of “fits and starts,” according to Bruce Johnson McLean, assistant director for Indigenous engagement at the National Gallery of Australia, who spoke to ARTnews. However, “from 1970, we started to talk about the movement because it does collect a lot of communities, a lot of people,” he said. Artists like Albert Namatjir, who painted landscapes in traditional European representation, and Nym Banduk, who painted with an Indigenous dot technique on bark, gained some notoriety in the middle of the 20th century. “
Australia’s acknowledgment of its indigenous art has been a little haphazard from the beginning. When local institutions first began collecting, crafts like weaving and bark painting were viewed more as folk art than high art. According to Johnson McLean, “there was just no way to engage with it or understand it in the places that you need to do at a museum.” Similar to this, one of the most well-known Australian artists, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, will have a major retrospective exhibition organized by two eminent curators, Indigenous Australian women Kelli Cole and Hetti Perkins (who spearheaded the Art Gallery of NSW’s Indigenous art accession change), opening the following year.
While documents, such as the 1966 Lindsay Report, which served as the National Gallery’s founding document, precisely specify an emphasis on Indigenous art should be made, institutions lacked Indigenous staff members who could explain the significance and value of the works. According to Johnson McLean, “a lot of the items were quite appropriately collected for their artistic merit.” Only decades later, starting in the 1990s, when organizations began hiring Indigenous Australians more frequently and dedicated entire galleries to Indigenous art, such as Yiribana, did cultural competency begin to take hold.
Gagosian has been one of the supporters of the secondary market since the 2019 exhibition of Martin’s collection of Indigenous Australian art, placing pieces with private collectors and institutions. Neri claimed that Indigenous Australian artists’ works are appealing because they currently have a lower price point than other secondary market works that the gallery may deal in, although high-quality works are rare and difficult to source, in addition to the “ecological understanding of the conditions of existence and survival.”
Many collectors view Indigenous Australian art as “an unreliable investment, but there are also a lot of individuals who truly appreciate it,” according to renowned Indigenous Australian artist Brook Andrew, who coordinated the 2020 Sydney Biennale.
Since 1994, Andrew has had his artwork displayed in Europe. He noted a gradual change from exoticization to a welcome examination of what a term like “Indigenous art” actually means, particularly in Australia, where there are hundreds of autonomous Indigenous communities. The title itself frequently categorizes the work of these artists: “Indigenous” might group an artist with others who have little in common with them other than region, despite the “primitive” connotation being lost.
The Sydney Moderns exhibition space, which is 75,000 square feet, is nearly twice as large as the Art Gallery of NSW. To commemorate its opening, the gallery commissioned large-scale works from nine artists, including three Aboriginal Australians: Jonathan Jones, whose work will be unveiled next year on a land bridge and will include cool burnings by Aboriginal people every year; Karla Dickens, whose 6.5-foot-long mixed-media panel depicts hooded figures, and Lorraine Connelly-Northey, who has recreated her Waradgery people’s traditional narrbong-galang.
According to Pinchbeck, Indigenous Australian art is “getting just absolutely enmeshed inside all convos about Australian art” as a result of initiatives like these and others taking place across the nation. It now has a prominent position.