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.
Watch | Tony Albert introduces you to his Aboriginalia
Contemplation (from 'Mid Century Modern' series) 2016
Vintage pinball
Installation view featuring Headhunter 2007
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.
Brothers (details) 2013
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.
Warakurna The Force is with us #2 2017
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...
On the 26 May, National Sorry Day remembers and acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly separated from their families and communities.
The date is significant because on that day in 1997 the Bringing Them Home report was tabled in the Australian Parliament, an inquiry into government policies and practices where children were removed from their families with the intention of assimilating them into white Australian culture. This resulted in what became known as the ‘Stolen Generations’.
After the Labor Party won the Federal election in 2007, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered a formal Apology to all Indigenous Australians, the Apology was the first item of business when parliament opened on 13 February 2008.
Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past mistreatment . . . The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future . . . For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry. We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation. For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written . . . A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.[Kevin Rudd AC served as the 26th Prime Minister of Australia, from December 2007 to June 2010 and again from June 2013 to September 2013. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party]
Tony Albert's Sorry 2008
In the artwork Sorry 2008, Tony Albert introduces us to a forest of faces, each sharing elements of history with those stolen from their people, land and culture. Each represents a false identity, manufactured black faces made to fit a white society.
Sorry (detail)
Sorry installed
Albert ‘repatriates’ these souls through the act of re-contextualisation, by giving each a sense of Aboriginality and a ‘proppa’ identity. With an Aboriginal person buying, owning and re-introducing these items into the world as ‘Aboriginal’, Albert is essentially liberating these identities. Through being re-Aboriginalised, they each seem more real, more proppa, in the company of kindred souls.
Like many Aboriginal people, Albert identifies with these kitsch faces on a personal level. Growing up, Albert moved between north Queensland and Brisbane, and had few role models in the media with whom he could identify. Cartoons, such as Eric Jolliffe’s Witchetty’s Tribe — although outwardly racist — were almost the only representations of Aboriginal people which were popularly available. For Albert, collecting trips to second-hand shops as a child remain a fond memory:
My sister and I grew up going to second-hand shops or, as we called them, ‘smelly shops’. We would always be asking mum to take us there — it was so exciting. I think this is where my passion for collecting began. I would salvage black dolls, books and ephemera from baskets of old toys, stuffed animals and other people’s junk. I have always had a fascination and connection to ‘aboriginalia’ . . . Smelly shops are like treasure chests, full of the most wonderful and exciting things, but to find what I wanted I had to explore and hunt through everything . . .
Albert revels in the sense of irony in the work Sorry, with the impetus of such a momentous and joyous event being an apology. On yet another level, Albert presents us simply with a word — bold letters on a wall — indicative of an Indigenous Australian response to the apology.
From its conception it was always intended to be installed in various formations. Sorry was originally commissioned by QAGOMA in 2008 for the exhibition ‘Contemporary Australia: Optimism’; given that it coincided with the Australian Government’s Apology to the Stolen Generations, Sorry was intended to make a positive statement. Sorry is just a word which means nothing if it is not backed up by real outcomes. By turning the work on its head I’m asking the viewer to consider the very real situation that Aboriginal people still find themselves in today.
Sorry installed as Yrros
