Appropriation, how appropriate is it?
April 13, 2008
Aboriginal artist Richard Bell once proposed that "Aboriginal art: it's a white thing." Meaning it has little to do with its primary producers and everything to do with market agendas. Toorak couple Ivan and Pamela Liberto certainly understood this when they forged and sold $300,000 worth of "Rover Thomas" paintings.
Nat Thomas (no relation) admits that she admires "the balls it took to go through with the idea" and has here forged her own series. There is plenty to like in this show that also pays dubious tribute to Mora and Nolan et al, but is Nat too impressed by the Libertos' "performative" and "conceptual" chutzpah? A friend of Rover's said even he might have approved, as he was only trying to tell his stories.
But in the whitefella dreamings of the auction houses, what tales get told, or sold? Ones told by an idiot, full of dots and umber but signifying nothing.
Dylan Rainforth