Heart of Artness

In 2003, Brisbane artist Richard Bell lambasted the white anthropologists, art historians, dealers and curators who presumed to judge Aboriginal art. Here he discusses Bell’s Theorem (Aboriginal Art: It’s A White Thing), racism and his rise from fringe-dweller to renowned contemporary artist, collected by London’s Tate Modern. His gallerist, Josh Milani, salutes Bell’s provocations: ‘The more he offends people, the more I put his prices up’.

When Judi Muller retired with a good pension, she decided to sell low budget Indigenous art as a personal act of reconciliation. Mark Chapman tailored his art supplies business to suit the desert conditions in which Indigenous artists work. Sydney contemporary artist Ruark Lewis is involved in a creative ‘conversation’ with Yolngu artist Barayuwa Munungurr.

The world of Aboriginal art is like a giant hive that attracts all kinds of people, who interact in diverse ways with the artists. In ‘Meet the Matrix’, we meet three committed collaborators: Dallas Gold, who runs RAFT gallery; Joseph Brady, multimedia digital artist and Jeremy Cloake, yidaki (didgeridoo) expert.

Since the 1960s, the Yolngu artists of Australia’s tropical north have wielded art and culture to win legal and political rights. They’ve been abetted in this quest by white people embedded in the community. Anthropologist Howard Morphy and art centre manager Will Stubbs reflect on these remarkable milestones.

Three Yolngu artists take us to the site of a massacre of their people in North East Arnhem Land in 1911 and beyond, to the powerful art and heart of Yolngu culture today. The thriving Buku-Larrnggay Mulka art centre is run by a former criminal lawyer who has learned to live in a 'two-ways world', where Western and Aboriginal views sit side by side.

Contemporary Aboriginal art is a powerful part of Aboriginal life and culture. But behind the artists lies a network of Western managers, dealers, critics, curators and collaborators. Heart of Artness features the voices of Aboriginal artists from remote and urbanAustralia and investigates their significant relationships with white folk.