2026-04-28T08:02:19Z https://www.index-journal.org/oai

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/identity 2024-09-28

Identity Greg Lehman Index Journal 2020-03-01 Issue en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2020.1 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/identity

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/identity/introduction 2026-04-21

Introduction Paris Lettau Helen Hughes Giles Fielke Amelia Winata Perri Sparnon Index Journal 2020-03-01 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2020.1.0 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/identity/introduction

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/identity/guan-wei-australerie-ceramics-and-the-binary-bind-of-identity-politics-by-alex-burchmore 2026-04-28

Guan Wei’s “Australerie” Ceramics and the Binary Bind of Identity Politics Alex Burchmore Index Journal 2020-03-01 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This paper considers Australian artist Guan Wei's use of Aboriginal Australian-inspired motifs in seven related series of porcelain vases and dishes created in 2012 and 2014 in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, once considered China's "Porcelain Capital". Although significant for their quantity and their transposition of his signature style to a new medium, neither these ceramics nor the artist's engagement with Aboriginal Australia in these and earlier works have received substantial critical attention. As one of the most prominent representatives of the "post-Tiananmen generation" of Chinese *émigrés* who arrived in Australia after 1989, Guan Wei's art has instead been consistently tied to a multiculturalist identity politics that foregrounds his combinations of Chinese and Euro-American iconographies. In contrast to this prevailing critical perspective, his ceramics create an idiosyncratic and exotic vision of Australia in which White Australians are either absent or appear as malign intruders. Like the eighteenth-century fashion for Chinoiserie once inspired by export ware manufactured in Jingdezhen, Guan Wei's "Australerie" aesthetic blurs fact and fiction, East and West, to uncover a site of imagined encounter that exceeds the binary bind of identity politics, beyond the censure or control of White Australian viewers. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.1.1 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/identity/guan-wei-australerie-ceramics-and-the-binary-bind-of-identity-politics-by-alex-burchmore

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/identity/good-representation-by-ella-cattach-and-elliot-yates 2026-04-13

Good Representation Ella Cattach Elliot Yates Index Journal 2020-03-01 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 The philosophical conception of art as a domain of *exceptional*, *problematic* freedom has found itself in tension with the growing contemporary demand for “good representation” and its new (but not altogether unrelated) sense of “the problematic.” The normative concept of good representation enjoys a largely unquestioned and untheorised dominance in a mainstream culture increasingly inflected by liberal social justice discourses—a dominance that has also diffused into the field of contemporary art. In this paper, we consider the problematics of the problematic with respect to art’s fundamental disobedience: its inability to conform to the schematic prescriptions and parameters of good representation. The unique bind of the contemporary artist, we find, is to make work that is at once aesthetically problematic and socially unproblematic—exceeding the existing parameters of representation while being contained by them. Via a critique of the essentially kitsch, commodified character of good representation and its auxiliary media chatter, and through close readings of the overlap, interplay and interference of both senses of the problematic in the work of the late American artist Mike Kelley and contemporary Australian artist Matthew Griffin, we make the case that the imperative for good representation is an obstacle art must wrangle in order to fulfil its problematic vocation. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.1.2 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/identity/good-representation-by-ella-cattach-and-elliot-yates

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/identity/evanescence-of-an-artist-s-model-by-katrina-kell 2026-04-25

Evanescence of an Artist's Model: Jules Lefebvre's *Chloé* Katrina Kell Index Journal 2020-03-01 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 The nude *Chloé* (1875), by French artist Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911), is a much-loved Melbourne cultural icon, which has hung in the Young and Jackson Hotel since 1909. From that time on *Chloé* has been the subject of controversy and mythologising, particularly in relation to the identity of the Parisian model who sat for the painting. This paper explores the untold past of *Chloé* and the reductive identities that have been inscribed on Lefebvre's artistic rendering of a nude female body. There are interesting echoes between class warfare in Paris antecedent to the artwork's creation, and *Chloé's* manifestation as mythic war maiden to generations of Australian servicemen. In 1875, France was still reverberating from its humiliating capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War, and the ensuing rise and brutal repression of the revolutionary Paris Commune by Versailles government troops that resulted in the deaths of up to 25,000 Parisians. Tensions between the bourgeois population of Paris and the proletariat, who had pinned their hopes on the Commune's egalitarian principles, festered during the period of post-war rebuilding and renewal. By interrogating the inter-class tensions in late-nineteenth-century Paris and how they may have influenced the details Lefebvre chose to reveal, and possibly conceal, this paper contributes new interpretations and understandings to one of Melbourne's most celebrated cultural icons. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.1.3 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/identity/evanescence-of-an-artist-s-model-by-katrina-kell

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/identity/framing-the-voice-voicing-the-frame-on-brook-andrews-vox-by-rex-butler 2026-04-26

Framing the Voice/Voicing the Frame: On Brook Andrew’s *Vox: Beyond Tasmania* (2013) Rex Butler Index Journal 2020-03-01 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2020.1.4 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/identity/framing-the-voice-voicing-the-frame-on-brook-andrews-vox-by-rex-butler

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/identity/wrestling-with-paul-serusier-by-tai-mitsuji 2026-02-18

Wrestling with Paul Sérusier: A visual contranym in the fields of Brittany Tai Mitsuji Index Journal 2020-03-01 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 In Paul Sérusier's *La Lutte Bretonne* (1890-1), a crowd gathers around two men. The pair are wrestling, caught in a moment of tense and fugitive struggle that remains permanently unresolved on the artist's canvas. At a glance, one finds in the work confirmation of the 19^th^ century Parisian conception of Brittany's culture---a culture which is seemingly ossified and unchanging. However, this paper advocates for a second glance. Running parallel to the depicted struggle, the painting itself grapples with two divergent cultural identities: one static, the other evolving. The work constantly oscillates between the conditions of the modern and the idealised past, as romanticised exoticism, faux nativism, Japoniste influences, and the artist's own subjectivity all compete to define the provincial scene. Through a close examination of the formal and thematic minutia of the work, this paper reveals how definitional binaries are eroded by the internal logic of the painting. It submits that the work is a visual contronym---a single entity whose delicate multivalence not only accommodates but actively supports incompatible cultural identities, within the same brushstroke. This paper demonstrates both the affirmative and subversive elements of *La Lutte Bretonne*, which at once reinforce and dismantle the retrograde ideal of Brittany. This focus represents a marked departure from much of the scholarship on Sérusier, which historically has tended to position the artist as a framing device for the Nabis, or for his mentor Paul Gauguin. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.1.5 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/identity/wrestling-with-paul-serusier-by-tai-mitsuji

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/identity/multiple-selves-by-vivian-k-sheng 2026-04-23

Multiple Selves: Nikki S. Lee's *Projects* Vivian K. Sheng Index Journal 2020-03-01 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Between 1997 and 2001, New York-based South Korean conceptual photographer Nikki S. Lee created a series of performative photographic works titled *Projects*. To make these works, Lee infiltrated select social and cultural groups, including drag queens, exotic dancers, yuppies, Latinos, black hip-hoppers, lesbians, senior citizens, neo-swing dancers, Japanese youth, skateboarders, Ohio trailer-park dwellers, Asian tourists and Korean schoolgirls. Lee dramatically altered her appearance through a blend of clothing, makeup, diet, hair extensions, use of hair dye and tanning salons. After transforming herself, in her own words, into someone who looks like “eighty percent of any person from whichever group,” Lee approached each chosen community with a point-and-shoot camera and announced her artistic intention of becoming a member for a short period of time. She adopted their postures, behaviours and mannerisms and joined in their everyday activities. As a record of her temporary membership, Lee asked a friend or a passer-by to take snapshots of herself in the disguise of other group members. This article draws on the theoretical works of Alison Weir, José Esteban Muñoz and Paul Gilroy in the discussion of Lee’s performative photographic works, which image and imagine identity as relational, formed and reformed via identification with diverse others. It investigates how Lee’s practice, via strategic engagement with vernacular popular cultures and stereotypical images of varied social and ethnic groups, might forge intercultural, interpersonal interactions marked by spontaneous tolerance and openness outside governmental initiatives, and provoking new reflections on one’s encounter with alterity and difference. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.1.6 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/identity/multiple-selves-by-vivian-k-sheng

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law 2024-09-28

Law Desmond Manderson Ian McLean Index Journal 2020-10-23 Issue en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/editors-introduction-by-desmond-manderson-and-ian-mclean 2026-04-22

Editors’ Introduction Desmond Manderson Ian McLean Index Journal 2020-10-23 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.0 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/editors-introduction-by-desmond-manderson-and-ian-mclean

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-1-lawscapes/the-dancer-from-the-dance-by-desmond-manderson 2026-04-06

The Dancer from the Dance: Images and Imaginaries Desmond Manderson Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Public space is not a metaphor. The long history of writing about it has always had a strikingly material dimension. This essay examines a range of important artworks in which the relationship between public space, justice, and politics are given compelling visual form. But in the age of neoliberalism and in the shadow of the pandemic, our conceptions of public life are under unprecedented pressure. What kinds of images of public space populate our own imaginary, and with what effects on our understanding of democracy and the public good? This essay argues that the visual imaginary of the public sphere is not just an illustration of political values and conflicts, but plays a vital part in their constitution. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.1 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-1-lawscapes/the-dancer-from-the-dance-by-desmond-manderson

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-1-lawscapes/figuring-folk-justice-by-helen-hughes 2026-04-17

Figuring Folk Justice: Francis Howard Greenway’s Prison Scenes from Newgate, Bristol, 1812 Helen Hughes Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This paper offers a reading of Francis Howard Greenway’s two 1812 paintings, *The Mock Trial* and *Untitled \[Scene inside Newgate\]*. Greenway executed the paintings while an inmate of Bristol’s Newgate Prison in 1812 awaiting transportation to New South Wales in 1813, where he would, in 1816, become the inaugural acting Civil Architect under Governor Lachlan Macquarie. At this time, mock trials, staged both inside and outside prisons, had a range of purposes—from the parodic and cathartic to the utilitarian and quasi-legal. Mock trials belong to a broader repertoire of folk justice, including skimmington rides, ducking, bridling, effigy-burning, and rough music or charivari, which were popular in parts of Europe dating back to at least the medieval period, though beginning to wane in usage by the nineteenth century. In England, such informal means of folk justice existed in relation to the traditions of the common law courts in a range of ways: sometimes as a complement, other times in direct contradiction. By capturing the proceedings of a convicts’ mock trial nested within the authority of a city and county gaol, Greenway distils into an image the pluralistic English lawscape at the tail end of the long eighteenth century. It is not the sheer coexistence of different legal institutions glimpsed in Greenway’s paintings that makes them significant, but rather the complexity of their interrelationship. Greenway’s *Mock Trial* borrows from the symbolic vocabulary of folk justice and the common law courts simultaneously, establishing a visual tension between them. His paintings ultimately seem to affirm a certain investment in common law on the part of its excremental convict class, but visualise this investment in the form of a dispute or struggle. 10.38030/INDEX-JOURNAL.2020.2.2 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-1-lawscapes/figuring-folk-justice-by-helen-hughes

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-1-lawscapes/emanuel-de-witte-s-interior-of-the-oude-kerk-delft-by-david-s-caudill 2026-04-25

Emanuel de Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft: Images of Life as Religion, Individualism, and the Critique of Legal Ideology David S. Caudill Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Dutch Calvinism incorporates the idea of *office*—all Christians have a life-task, and one need not be in the clergy to be in a spiritual calling. This suggests that all of one’s daily life is religious (not simply prayer or church attendance) and renders Calvinism a worldview. Calvinism also stresses the isolation of individuals who must find their own way to God—without a priest as mediator. Representations of this individualism, as well as the idea that a merchant’s “office” is equal to that of the clergy, appear in Dutch Golden Age paintings of formerly Catholic church interiors. A reduction in the significance of churches is, for example, depicted in the whitewashed, icon-free *Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft*. Merchants are conducting business in the nave of the church. Papal authority has given way to Christians with direct access to the scriptures and to their salvation. Neo-Calvinist politician Groen van Prinsterer identified a “religion of unbelief” as the driver of the French Revolution—for Groen, every ideology is a religion, whether deistic or otherwise. Groen’s disciple (and Prime Minister) Kuyper restated this view as two worldviews in conflict, Christianity and Modernism. Dooyeweerd, a law professor, expanded Kuyper’s array to four ideologies: Greek, Catholic, Enlightenment, and Biblical. The first three celebrate the autonomy of human reason, but Dooyeweerd discerned ideological commitments in all four. This almost sounds postmodern—the rejection of the Enlightenment subject—and mirrors the notion of “belief-structures” in Critical Legal Studies. While Golden Age paintings of church interiors did not anticipate modernity, they reflect the enduring Calvinist notion that all of life is religious, which parallels both (i) postmodern critiques of legal ideology, a theoretical project, as well as (ii) recent and very practical analyses, such as Bruno Latour’s, of the natural sciences as crucially important even as they reflect pre-theoretical commitments and social structures—these latter analyses have implications for scientific expertise in policy debates and in the courtroom. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.3 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-1-lawscapes/emanuel-de-witte-s-interior-of-the-oude-kerk-delft-by-david-s-caudill

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-1-lawscapes/clothes-maketh-the-man-by-shane-chalmers 2026-04-15

Clothes Maketh the Man: Mimesis, Laughter, and the Colonial Rule of Law Shane Chalmers Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This article ventures into the mythology of modern law, through the artwork of Anglo-Australian artist S. T. Gill, to interrogate the concept of equality that both promises and is the promise of “the rule of law”. The scene is colonial Australia in the mid-nineteenth century. The call is *Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aboriginal People* (ca. 1830), a proclamation that both illustrates and enacts the promise of the rule of law. The response is Gill’s *Native Dignity* (1860), a painting that plays on the racialised and racist contradictions within the promise (of equality, of the rule of law). By offering a histrionic reading of *Native Dignity*—a reading that focuses on the figure of the *histrio*, whose role it is, traditionally, to represent society’s mythologies through burlesque—the article offers a new reading of Gill’s artwork that thickens our understanding of the role of clothing, laughter and the rule of law in colonial and anti-colonial Australia. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.4 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-1-lawscapes/clothes-maketh-the-man-by-shane-chalmers

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-2-lacunae/law-less-silence-extraordinary-rendition-the-law-and-silence-in-edmund-clarks-negative-publicity-by-clare-fuery-jones 2026-04-25

Law-<i>less</i> Silence: Extraordinary Rendition, the Law, and Silence in Edmund Clark’s Negative Publicity Clare Fuery-Jones Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Photographs by Edmund Clark (1955–) in *Negative Publicity*—his collaborative publication on extraordinary rendition—allude powerfully to both the law and silence as metaphysical constructions which act as background and reference points to a variety of human thought and experience. Both the law and silence manifest felt effects: these are not merely abstract terms, but generative frameworks of action which contribute to shaping what we do, and how we are in the world. Clark’s exploration of extraordinary rendition is, I argue, a nuanced discourse on how this damaging practice can be interpreted as an effectual product of the law and silence. His photographs use the power of silence to prompt a self-reflective response on extraordinary rendition, as seen in light of these two metaphysics. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.5 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-2-lacunae/law-less-silence-extraordinary-rendition-the-law-and-silence-in-edmund-clarks-negative-publicity-by-clare-fuery-jones

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-2-lacunae/earle-s-lithography-and-the-force-of-law-by-keith-broadfoot 2026-03-23

Earle’s Lithography and the Force of Law Keith Broadfoot Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 In Augustus Earle’s 1826 lithographic print, *View from the Sydney Hotel*, a representative of the law turns his back on a lone Aboriginal man in the foreground of the image. Is Earle therefore showing us that in colonial Australia the law turns a blind eye to the fate of Aboriginal people? Undoubtedly yes, but a close analysis of the image reveals that Earle has even more to tell us about the nature of law in Australian colonial society. Drawing upon Giorgio Agamben’s thesis that the ontological status of law is determined by what occurs in the supposedly excluded state of its suspension, this article argues that Earle’s image demonstrates how the emergence of art in Australia is inseparable from questions of law. With Earle, the violent inscription of what Agamben, after Derrida, refers to as the force of law is one with the mark of the artist. If this is a relation that is visible in Earle’s work, it is proposed that the history of Australian art that follows after Earle is, however, the forgetting of this original inter-dependence. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.6 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-2-lacunae/earle-s-lithography-and-the-force-of-law-by-keith-broadfoot

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-2-lacunae/forensic-listeningin-lawrence-abu-hamdans-saydnaya-the-missing-19db-by-james-parker 2026-04-26

Forensic Listening in Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s <i>Saydnaya (the missing 19dB)</i> James Parker Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This essay offers a critical account of Lawrence’s Abu Hamdan’s *Saydnaya (the missing19db)*, which debuted at the 13th Sharjah Biennial and was central to the artist’s Turner prize nomination in 2019. The work concerns an acoustic investigation into Saydnaya Military Prison, in Syria, where an estimated thirteen thousand people have been executed by the Assad regime since 2011. The essay begins by situating *Saydnaya (the missing 19dB)* in relation to Abu Hamdan’s broader artistic, political and jurisprudential project before turning to the work’s specific exemplification of what the artist calls “forensic listening”. In doing so, I draw out the conversation the work inevitably stages with John Cage’s *4’33”* (1952). Abu Hamdan’s work can, I suggest, be understood precisely as a critique of the twin conceptions of sound and silence advanced by Cage and taken up by his inheritors. But unlike Cage, Abu Hamdan’s work presents itself as already jurisprudential. It works with, on and against legal techniques and idioms; gathers, presents and interprets evidence; stages virtual trials; and makes explicit doctrinal claims; all with a view to intervening in political struggles in which questions of law are directly implicated. If, in Cage’s thinking, the power relations that produce and mediate sound and silence are systematically elided, for Hamdan, it is precisely these power relations and their material residues that we are asked to listen out for. But it is not a matter of simply appealing to legal structures of critique and condemnation either. In the final analysis, *Saydnaya (the missing 19dB)* poses “forensic listening” as a technique of resistance available to the least empowered, precisely as a function of their disempowerment in fact, and independent of law’s recognition or authorisation. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.7 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-2-lacunae/forensic-listeningin-lawrence-abu-hamdans-saydnaya-the-missing-19db-by-james-parker

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-3-icons/no-stickers-on-hard-hats-no-flags-on-cranes-by-agatha-court 2026-04-28

No Stickers on Hard-Hats, No Flags on Cranes: How the Federal Building Code Highlights the Repressive Tendencies of Power Agatha Court Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This essay explores the role of the law in controlling political imagery that sits outside the realm of acceptable neoliberal discourse. This controlling role is revealed through the Code for the Tendering and Performance of Building Work 2016 (the Code) and its enforcer the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). While ostensibly about improving productivity by regulating the procurement of building work by government, the Code also seeks to preclude the presence of trade union stickers, flags and other images on construction sites. The impact of the Code on construction trade unions and the political voice of their members is a topic that has not been much researched, yet its effect is significant. This essay outlines the legal mechanisms through which the Code operates, the meaning and impact of Trade Union art and imagery, and how the political expression embodied in such imagery has been delegitimised by the neoliberal state. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.8 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-3-icons/no-stickers-on-hard-hats-no-flags-on-cranes-by-agatha-court

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-3-icons/spectropolitics-and-invisibility-of-the-migrant-by-dorota-gozdecka 2026-04-27

Spectropolitics and Invisibility of the Migrant: On Images that Make People “Illegal” Dorota Gozdecka Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This article focuses on invisibility of migrants and asylum seekers deemed "illegal" in visual imagery concerning migration. It focused on the Australian NO WAY and the British GO HOME poster campaigns to examine how those implicitly depicted without their physical appearance are construed as "ghostly" entities that can be disciplined with the help of the law, but at the same time, left completely outside the workings of the legal system. It argues that spectrality of the migrant leaves her out of the frame for a reason. As the unknown spectre a figure of invisible asylum seeker can affect legal imagery of the community and legitimate the decisions that would be difficult to justify if the figure were instead right in front of the spectator's eyes. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.9 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-3-icons/spectropolitics-and-invisibility-of-the-migrant-by-dorota-gozdecka

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/law/part-3-icons/murals-as-a-play-on-space-in-the-islamic-republic-of-iran-by-samuel-blanch 2026-04-28

Murals as a Play On Space in the Islamic Republic of Iran Samuel Blanch Index Journal ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Iranian street murals are mined for insight into the political and religious proclivities of the Islamic Republic. As a function of sovereign power over physical street space and the urban canvasses offered up by the sides of Iran’s apartment buildings, the murals purport to offer privileged access to the changing techniques and enduring purposes of a revolutionary regime that, as Chelkowski and Dabashi argue, is “in full semiotic control of the representation of itself.” Against this thesis of representational mastery, however, this essay argues that Iranian murals exceed the logic of sovereign control. Through perspective illusionism and their own material ambivalences the murals “play on space”, challenging the terms of sovereign control. They materially disrupt both the legal claim about the competence of sovereign decision over space and the aesthetic claim about the mastery of public images. The murals suggest a limit to sovereignty located not, as in Benjamin, in the capacity of the sovereign subject, but rather in the evasiveness of the cement and paint of space itself, and in older Neoplatonic approaches to space that the murals share with older traditions of Persian painting. 10.38030/index-journal.2020.2.10 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/law/part-3-icons/murals-as-a-play-on-space-in-the-islamic-republic-of-iran-by-samuel-blanch

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/monument 2025-11-09

Monument Tristen Harwood Index Journal 2021-12-17 Issue en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2021.3 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/monument

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/monument/in-the-soil-that-nurtures-us 2026-04-17

In the Soil that Nurtures Us: A Certain Death to the Colonial Myth Suzannah Henty Index Journal 2021-12-17 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 The removal of the monument to slave owner Edward Colston in Bristol during the Black Lives Matter uprising in 2020 did more than denounce the ongoing celebration of colonial legacies. It was a public execution to colonial mythmaking. This paper examines such colonial mythmaking in the context of the settler-colonial nation-state of Australia. By situating Thomas Woolner’s Captain Cook (1879) within the context of settler-colonial nation building to link its protection by police at the height of the 2020 BLMS protests, this paper emphasises the value of colonial monuments to the five-hundred-year history of modern colonisation. Colonial monuments in Australia serve a militarised function to narrate the lie of a just settlement on the grounds of *terra nullius* and deny First Nations sovereignty. Woolner’s sculpture, this paper argues, protects itself from the memory that the nation-state longs to forget. 10.38030/index-journal.2021.3.3 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/monument/in-the-soil-that-nurtures-us

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/monument/abstract-sculpture-or-colonial-monument 2026-04-22

Abstract Sculpture or Colonial Monument?: Deception and Reception in the Commemorative Landscape of Newcastle, Australia, 1970 to 2020 Nikolas Orr Index Journal 2021-12-17 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Contemporary reception of colonial monuments in Australia is informed by global debate on race, memory and representation in public space, typified in the decolonial and anti-racist movements Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter. While art historians and anti-colonial iconoclasts alike easily conceive of statues as objects for critique, non-figurative sculpture is no less effective when deployed as an ideological tool. Given the typically progressive politics of twentieth-century abstractionists, this study asks how comfortable these artists are with the nation-building function often ascribed to their work by political elites. Through a thematic survey of the commemorative landscape of Newcastle, NSW, this article describes a city punctuated by patriotic references to war, colonialism, and Indigenous absence, exemplified in modernist sculptor Margel Hinder’s (1906–1995) *Civic Park Fountain* (1966). Recounting its relaunch in 1970 as a memorial to Captain James Cook and its vandalism in 2020, the article examines changes in public reception of the fountain, from hostility towards abstract art and government spending to outrage at colonial symbols. Archival reconstruction of Hinder’s responses to local government demonstrates her silence on the fountain’s assimilation to colonial celebration. When contrasted with Hinder’s activities as a lobbyist and camouflage designer, this finding reveals a complex political biography. Without ignoring Hinder’s concern for Aboriginal rights, her attitude towards the instrumentalisation of her work is at best ambivalent. Beyond challenging the apolitical readings of Hinder’s work in existing scholarship, this study provides a key example of the ideological malleability of abstract public art. By producing “empty” signifiers to then “fill” with meaning, abstract sculptors and administrators together help to shape the semiotic and racial topography of urban space. 10.38030/index-journal.2021.3.1 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/monument/abstract-sculpture-or-colonial-monument

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/monument/digging-for-honey-ants-revisiting-the-papunya-mural-project 2026-04-28

Digging for Honey Ants: Revisiting the Papunya Mural Project John Kean Index Journal 2021-12-17 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 The creation of murals at the Papunya School in 1971 is cited as the event that inaugurated the Western Desert painting movement. The truth of this claim is in fact more complex, confounding and consequential. This essay will demonstrate that few outside the Papunya community saw the murals *in situ*, and that the mythic status now enjoyed by these icons has been constructed *post factum*. The subject of one of the murals, the local Honey Ant Dreaming, and the broader social and ontological context in which it was created will be examined. It will show how the Honey Ant Mural played into a dynamic shift in intercultural relations that was already underway. Rather than being a singular monument, the Honey Ant mural signals a more substantive challenge to the infrastructure of the assimilation era. The subject of the largest mural, the tunnels and chambers of the Honey Ant site leading to Papunya, make visible the songlines and kinship networks that connect Aboriginal people and country—these are the unseen verities that govern life in Central Australia. The authority of men previously relegated to duties as manual workers, became apparent as they painted resonant icons in a pedagogical setting. The customary power of these settlement workers was manifest through the depth of their relationship to the images they created. Already an artist and provocateur, Kaapa Tjampitjinpa was critical to this process—it was he who negotiated the form of the Honey Ant mural with local custodians and school authorities alike. Kaapa’s achievement was to give tangible form to the totemic landscape on which the colonial edifice was sited. 10.38030/index-journal.2021.3.2 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/monument/digging-for-honey-ants-revisiting-the-papunya-mural-project

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/monument/the-slapstick-routine-of-parisian-monumentalism-robert-desnos-and-jacques-andre-boiffard-s-pygmalion-and-the-sphinx-1930 2026-03-16

The Slapstick Routine of Parisian Monumentalism: Robert Desnos and Jacques-André Boiffard’s “Pygmalion and the Sphinx” (1930) Ursula Cornelia de Leeuw Index Journal 2021-12-17 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This essay considers the 1930 essay “Pygmalion and the Sphinx” by Robert Desnos, originally published alongside Jacques André-Boiffard’s photographs of Parisian monuments in the journal Documents. I focus on Desnos and Boiffard’s tragicomic depiction of the municipal council of Paris’ failure to reconcile a fragmented sense of national identity through the erection of public monuments. As implicated by its title, “Pygmalion and the Sphinx” compares the “statuemania” of the Third Republic to the Greek myth. As Desnos and Boiffard reveal, within the monumental form is an antagonism between the civic ideal of ‘Pygmalion’ and the brute substance of the statue’s material, or the Sphinx. This tension inevitably collapses the idealist endeavour of monumentalism; a moment of folly opened by the laughter it evokes. Boiffard focuses the pedestal of the monument, and the rigidity of its material when exposed against the urban landscape. These photographs launch a base materialist perspective repeated by Desnos in his comic imagination. This term is further contextualised by the writings of Georges Bataille in Documents, whereby laughter is integral to the critique of idealism. In this essay, I read Desnos and Boiffard alongside Bataille to illuminate how monumentalism prepares its toppling in the ‘fall’ of the slapstick’s laugh. 10.38030/index-journal.2021.1.5 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/monument/the-slapstick-routine-of-parisian-monumentalism-robert-desnos-and-jacques-andre-boiffard-s-pygmalion-and-the-sphinx-1930

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/monument/towards-transformative-propaganda-a-history-of-student-activism-at-the-australian-national-university-2020 2026-04-23

Towards Transformative Propaganda: A History of Student Activism at the Australian National University (2020) Iva Glisic Index Journal 2021-12-17 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 March 2021 saw the unveiling of a new addition to the vast collection of public artworks at the Australian National University (ANU) campus in Canberra. The piece—an installation entitled *A History of Student Activism* at the Australian National University—compiles and presents the first comprehensive history of sixty years of student activism at ANU, and sits proudly in the common area of the Marie Reay Teaching Centre. The work comprises a large-scale wall-mounted timeline designed by Joanne Leong, complemented by a pair of moving-image artworks by Esther Carlin and Aidan Hartshorn, all ANU alumni. This article considers A History of Student Activism in the context of contemporary debate on the role of public monuments, and the extent to which public art can drive collective emancipatory action. Drawing on a recent study of the activist potential of art in the twenty-first century by Dutch artist Jonas Staal, this article tests the extent to which A History of Student Activism might serve as a reference point in the turn towards transformative propaganda art. 10.38030/index-journal.2021.1.4 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/monument/towards-transformative-propaganda-a-history-of-student-activism-at-the-australian-national-university-2020

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/monument/thinking-the-soul-beyond-property-on-susan-howe-s-souls-of-the-labadie-tract-by-aodhan-madden 2025-11-20

Thinking the Soul Beyond Property: On Susan Howe’s Souls of the Labadie Tract Aodhan Madden Index Journal 2021-12-17 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2021.1.6 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/monument/thinking-the-soul-beyond-property-on-susan-howe-s-souls-of-the-labadie-tract-by-aodhan-madden

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/secession 2025-06-09

Secession Cameron Hurst Giles Fielke Index Journal 2022-12-08 Issue en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2022.4 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/secession

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/secession/editors-introduction 2026-04-09

Editors’ Introduction Giles Fielke Cameron Hurst Index Journal 2022-12-08 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 In the fourth issue of *Index Journal*, the polyvalence of the word secession extends across six art historical papers of diverse style and subject matter. For some contributors, secession is inseparable from dominant narratives of modern European art history. Others take the term as a starting point for writing non-European art histories; these papers examine the complex receptions of Australian Indigenous art, posit anti-nationalist trajectories of artistic development and ruminate on attempts to create new governance models in Australian community arts organisations. 10.38030/index-journal.2022.4.0 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/secession/editors-introduction

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/secession/1900-pyrrhic-victory-the-press-campaigns-surrounding-the-faculty-paintings 2026-04-27

1900—Pyrrhic Victory: The Press Campaigns Surrounding the Faculty Paintings Ilona Sármány-Parsons Index Journal 2022-12-08 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 In 1894, Gustav Klimt was commissioned to create a series of allegorical paintings for the University of Vienna. When the paintings were revealed in 1900, professors and the general public voiced strong resistance to their permanent installation. Art historical literature on the Vienna Secession and the Faculty Painting affair has tended to take the position of advocating for modern art, casting the entire debate as a fight for artistic freedom wherein Klimt was a victim of conservative philistines. Other literature on the Faculty Paintings focusses on the erotic message of the pictures; the works are viewed as documents of a sexual identity crisis that burst to the surface in fin de siècle Vienna. This article is a newly translated English version of a chapter titled “1900—Pyrrhic Victory: The Press Campaigns Surrounding the Faculty Paintings,” from Secession expert Ilona Sármány-Parsons’ book *Die Macht der Kunstkritik: Ludwig Hevesi und die Wiener Moderne* *(The Power of Art Criticism: Ludwig Hevesi and Viennese Modernism)* (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2022; translated from Hungarian edition, Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2019). Contrary to the two aforementioned framings of Klimt’s Faculty Paintings, the article examines the role of art critics in the affair and argues that the discourse around the event actually reveals reasonable criticisms of philosophical, rhetorical and artistic stagnation in the Secession movement. While a broad spectrum of contemporaneous critical voices are invoked, the influential critic Ludvig Hevesi’s contributions to the debate come under particular scrutiny. 10.38030/index-journal.2022.4.1 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/secession/1900-pyrrhic-victory-the-press-campaigns-surrounding-the-faculty-paintings

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/secession/anthony-mannix-secessions-from-systems 2026-04-08

Anthony Mannix: Secessions from Systems Anthony White Index Journal 2022-12-08 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 The Australian artist Anthony Mannix (1953–) has been publishing and exhibiting his writings, artworks, and artist’s books since the early 1980s. As a self-taught artist with lived experience of diverse mental health, or what Mannix prefers to call “mixed realities,” a question has been asked repeatedly of his work: is it connected to the broader conventions, institutions, and networks which make up the contemporary art world? In this essay, Mannix’s interest in traditions of art which rebelled against conventions; his efforts to set up novel exhibition structures within which his work could be appreciated; and the acerbic critiques within his work of the mental health system are understood as forms of secession through which the artist consciously sought to establish alternative institutions and paradigms for the production and reception of his art. 10.38030/index-journal.2022.4.2 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/secession/anthony-mannix-secessions-from-systems

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/secession/fugitive-abstraction-in-gordon-bennett-s-stripe-series-by-scott-robinson 2026-04-20

Fugitive Abstraction: Gordon Bennett’s <i>Stripe</i> Series Scott Robinson Index Journal 2022-12-08 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 In this paper, I analyse Gordon Bennett’s *Stripe* series of abstract paintings, examining in particular their connection to the work of Frank Stella and the aesthetic modernism of Michael Fried and Theodor Adorno. Focusing in part on *Number Nine* (2008) from the *Stripe* series, I develop the notion of ‘fugitive abstraction’ to describe the achievement of Bennett in the abstracts as both exposing and averting the racialised gaze that constrained the reception of his work. Rather than read the paintings as positing an identity, I explore how Bennett sought to escape from such a framework. I argue that the abstracts offer a compelling, aesthetically rich experience whose demand emerges from the formal attributes of the paintings. This contrasts with the dominant critical reception of Bennett, as well as more recent scholarship that incorporates the abstracts into a developing, progressive narrative of his practice. I suggest that, in attempting to avert this dilemma, Bennett sought to expose the limitations of his critical reception, and exceed them by painterly accomplishment. By locating Bennett more firmly in the modernist tradition, I propose that we can more deeply engage with the *Stripe* series, as well as better understand Bennett’s wider project. 10.38030/index-journal.2022.4.3 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/secession/fugitive-abstraction-in-gordon-bennett-s-stripe-series-by-scott-robinson

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/secession/australia-in-the-world-s-art-colonies 2026-04-27

Australia in the World’s Art Colonies: The World in Australia's Art Colonies Rex Butler Index Journal 2022-12-08 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Work by Australian artists made during time spent overseas in art colonies before returning, and the work of artists who lived in art colonies overseas and did not return has almost entirely been erased from Australian art history. Therefore the participation of Australian artists in art colonies across the world has largely remained unwritten. This paper presents an outline and framework for further work to be done on the histories of art colonies in Australian art history. It is first of all something of an exercise in an expanded art history, including those artists who should rightly be part of a more widely encompassing account of Australian art, but, more than this it proposes that the art colony as such contests the idea of a national art history: that, beyond the specifics of any particular art colony, the principle of the art colony—of artists from different countries or from different regions of the same country living and working together—challenges the assumption that modern art must come from an identifiable people and place within modern state formations. We argue that the art colony is always international or even transnational in character. Therefore the art colony in modern art might be best understood as a forerunner to contemporary art in its crossing of spatial and temporal borders and its flattening of (if not its complete doing away with) imposed hierarchies. 10.38030/index-journal.2022.4.4 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/secession/australia-in-the-world-s-art-colonies

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/secession/against-capitalism-and-nationalism-at-the-venice-biennale 2026-04-27

Destruction or Secession?: Critiques of Capitalism and Nationalism at the Venice Biennale Stefania Portinari Index Journal 2022-12-08 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 1968 saw the May revolt in Europe, a series of events where students protested all-pervading capitalist systems and an ever-encroaching hyper-commodification of art. The protests proliferated beyond student quarters, with the Venice Biennale vernissage plagued by infamous demonstrations. Several artists and even a few national pavilions closed their exhibitions for weeks on end: a true secession from the art world powers that be. A few years later, in 1974, the Venice Biennale reached a breaking point when the event was cancelled once again. Yet this period of turbulence was also one of dynamism, allowing the Biennale’s content to fully align itself with international trends in the nascent global contemporary art world. This article examines—through interpretation of archival documents and a critical analysis of Biennale art market sales and discourses of the 1960s and 70s—how these upheavals reverberated through the Venice Biennale's history and impacted international relations around the exhibition. In doing so, it contributes to scholarship on the history of the Venice Biennale and provides fundamental clarifications on the institution's origins. I add to critics’ opinions of the years following the 1968 edition and recall Biennale successes that have remained in the shadows. Analysis throughout the article is drawn from archival documents under-utilised until now. 10.38030/index-journal.2022.4.5 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/secession/against-capitalism-and-nationalism-at-the-venice-biennale

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/secession/refusal-as-repair 2026-04-23

Refusal as Repair: Reflections on *Disorganising* Amelia Wallin Index Journal 2022-12-08 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This article examines the relationship between art and crisis through a personal account of the *Disorganising* project initiated by West Space, Liquid Architecture, and Bus Projects in 2020. The article was written alongside the final stage of the *Disorganising* project, which coincided with the lifting of Melbourne's sixth and final lockdown and the "opening up" of Australia's states and territories. Drawing from the lived experience of the author, the opening section, "Living from Work," explores the experience of *Disorganising* during the pandemic. "Repair" situates *Disorganising* within a contradictory climate of crisis that tasks artists with economic recovery, and considers its possibilities as a reparative curatorial strategy. "Refuse" looks at examples that counter these expectations of recovery through the different modes of refusal practiced in *Disorganising*, including the refusal of productivity and competition; existing in contradiction; taking pause; exceeding timelines; being in duration; and working through the mess. The final section, "Return," considers what might happen next. By way of conclusion, this article considers "How to End *Disorganising*?" It reflects on the contradictions of the project and asks how one might evaluate projects of this nature. 10.38030/index-journal.2022.4.6 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/secession/refusal-as-repair

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time 2025-06-01

Liquid Time Verónica Tello Index Journal 2024-08-21 Issue en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time/liquid-time 2026-04-27

Liquid Time: Editor's Introduction Verónica Tello Index Journal 2024-08-21 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5.0 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time/liquid-time

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time/history-retold 2026-04-18

History Retold: Papermoon Puppet Theatre’s Mwathirika Kate O'Connor Index Journal 2024-08-21 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This paper focuses on the work of Indonesian multidisciplinary art group, Papermoon Puppet Theatre and its performance, *Mwathirika* (2010), a powerful contemporary representation of the injustice buried within established historical narratives and its ongoing impact across Indonesian communities. Running for approximately sixty minutes, the performance restages the history of genocide in Indonesia that commenced 30 September, 1965, resulting in the massacre of approximately one million people. Since the horrific events took place, the Indonesian military has continued to conceal its involvement in the lead up to the mass killings. Papermoon's *Mwathirika* deconstructs the history of Indonesia's 1965–66 genocide, using puppetry as a device for communicating the complexities of how the history is written, remembered, and documented. While the memory of the events is perpetually altered through ongoing political discussions, writings, and testimonies, Papermoon shows how Indonesia's volatile history can be examined through creative re-enactment in strategic ways that ethically commemorate and help to articulate the trauma of the events. Through the intersections of puppetry, silence, symbols, and intimacy, Papermoon offers alternate ways of dealing with the problem of communicating Indonesia's traumatic history. 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5.1 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time/history-retold

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time/re-staging-chaos 2026-04-21

Re-staging Chaos: Ander and the Underground Chilean Cultural Scene Juan José Santos Index Journal 2024-08-21 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This essay traces the author's interest in the Chilean underground, focusing on the two cultural epicentres active from the early 1980s in Santiago: El Trolley and Matucana 19. It analyses how, from the second decade of the twenty-first-century perspective, it is possible to critically engage with histories of the 1980s curatorial work. It focuses on the author's curatorial project entitled *Ander* (2022), which was shown at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Chile. The essay charts the author's curatorial methodologies for engaging and re-staging the activities and the "vibe" of El Trolley and Matucana 19, prioritising intergenerational dialogue, archival knowledge, and sensory, affective encounters with the past to impact the present. 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5.2 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time/re-staging-chaos

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time/rethinking-about-exhibitions 2026-04-22

Rethinking About Exhibitions: *Towards a Mystical Reality* through Exhibitionary Space Yu Jin Seng Index Journal 2024-08-21 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 In 1974, Redza Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa organised the exhibition *Towards a Mystical Reality*:* A Documentation of Jointly Initiated Experiences*. Piyadasa and Esa taught fine art at the Mara Institute of Technology (MIT, now known as Universiti Teknologi Mara) in Kuala Lumpur. They were part of a broader intellectual movement centred on a critical attitude towards dominant aesthetic conventions circumscribed by Euro-American notions of art. *TMR* advanced a decolonial method of thinking about art and artmaking. In 2011, Sulaiman Esa restaged *TMR* at the National Art Gallery, Malaysia, as part of the retrospective exhibition *Raja'ah: Art, Idea and Creativity of Sulaiman Esa from 1950s-2011*. Esa has subsequently restaged *TMR* across multiple venues in South East Asia, establishing this exhibition as a case study and entry point in how methodologies for exhibition histories as a discipline can be developed within the context of Asian art. I propose the possibility that the intersections between the curatorial and restaging break the impasse between historical art and the exhibition. This essay reflects on how I restaged *TMR* by reconstructing an exhibition model of the exhibition in order to expand existing understandings of "exhibitionary spaces." 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5.5 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time/rethinking-about-exhibitions

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time/maps-and-circulations 2026-04-09

Maps and Circulations: A Way of Expanding Biennials through Time and Space? Anita Orzes Index Journal 2024-08-21 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This article proposes an act of remembering, shifting its focus away from the physical exhibition space to concentrate on the exhibition's broader context. In particular, this paper aims to explore what new perspectives the analysis of the circulation of ideas and people and the use of maps can contribute to the study of biennials. A biennial is envisaged as an exchange zone where heterogeneous networks intersect, merge, or confront and create maps of relationships. Giving visibility to these networks through map-making enables us to articulate dense multidirectional plots in the history of biennials and to trace a transnational history of complex geographies, relationships, and overlapping cartographies. With this in mind, this article analyses materials produced during the first three editions of the Havana Biennial (1984–1989). Employing geospatial visualisations and the study of currents of thought, this investigation shows a complex map of institutional, professional, and personal relationships that connected the Havana Biennial with other artistic events in Latin America. Likewise, this map of relations comes to “expand” our understanding of the Caribbean biennial, including other places, temporalities, agents, and mega-exhibitions—the knowledge provides valuable tools to see and understand the biennial from a wider perspective. Keywords: Havana Biennial, São Paulo Biennial, Transnational Networks, Circulations, Restaging Exhibitions 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5.7 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time/maps-and-circulations

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time/time-after-time 2026-04-18

Time, After Time: Or How to Work with History Camila Galaz Index Journal 2024-08-21 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This is a report and documentation of lectures from a three-part workshop run in 2019 for the Channels Video Art Festival and Free Association. These lectures outline methodologies of working with re-performance and re-enactment in contemporary video and performance art. Positioned as a guide for artists, the lectures unpack the process and implications of drawing from historical source material when creating art, the importance of understanding the intentions of oneself as an artist and the audience's position, and ethical concerns when working with archival documents. Drawing on examples from artists including Omer Fast, Jiwon Choi, Yoshua Okón, Petrit Halilaj, and Silvia Kolbowski, the lectures analyse the method of re-enactment for creating complex artworks. 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5.6 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time/time-after-time

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time/bush-women-and-bush-women-25-years-on 2026-04-25

“Bush Women” and “Bush Women: 25 Years On”: Notes on Making and Re-Making an Exhibition Darren Jorgensen Index Journal 2024-08-21 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 In Melbourne, 2018 is remembered for the re-curation of *The Field* exhibition after fifty years (as if we had forgotten the original show). In Fremantle, 2018 will be remembered as the year of *Bush Women* (the original having been largely forgotten). The show caught some momentum of the women's art movement from remote Australia when it was first hung in 1994, with paintings by Daisy Andrews, Queenie McKenzie, Pantjiti Mary McLean, Paji Honeychild Yankarr, and Tjapartji Bates. As with *The Field*, photographs of the original installation were used to repaint walls in colours from another age and construct idiosyncratic folding screens. The original curator, John Kean, was on hand to put everything into place, and the Andrews family from Fitzroy Crossing came to speak and perform a spectacular *joonba* on the opening weekend. The different contexts for the Bush Women exhibition, in 1994 and 2018, speak however to changes in the politics around the exhibition of both Aboriginal and women artists in Australia. Since 1994 discourses and institutional policies around decolonisation and feminism have meant that an original exhibition of Aboriginal and women artists by a male curator would be more problematic. While the 1994 iteration of Bush Women was innovative amidst a boom in Aboriginal women’s painting of the 1990s, it is also one whose curatorial methodologies belong to their time. A closer investigation of both exhibitions, however, reveals that behind Kean, a non-indigenous, male curator, lie a network of women working behind the scenes as art coordinators and researchers. In the 1990s these women included art centre coordinators, while in the 2010s they were Fremantle Art Centre (FAC) workers Erin Coates and Sheridan Coleman who pored over old files, tracking people through old addresses and phone numbers to find work that had disappeared into community, public and private collections. 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5.4 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time/bush-women-and-bush-women-25-years-on

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time/sculpting-history 2026-04-19

Sculpting History: A Formal Analysis of Michael Stevenson's *The Fountain of Prosperity* (2006) Anna Parlane Index Journal 2024-08-21 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Art historian Amy Knight Powell has suggested that a key characteristic of form is its temporal “promiscuity.” Reliably unfaithful to its original moment, form is open to de- and re-contextualisation: as it enters into different settings and new liaisons it is capable of taking on numerous alternative associations. This paper analyses Berlin-based New Zealand artist Michael Stevenson’s *The Fountain of Prosperity (Answers to Some Questions About Bananas)* (2006) in light of Knight Powell’s observation. Focusing on the sculpture’s installation in Stevenson’s 2011 survey exhibition at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, I uncover a Duchampian methodology underlying Stevenson’s research-based practice. In its use of found material, contemporary research-based art builds on conceptual art, institutional critique and appropriation art practices, and like them is situated within the genealogy of the readymade. However, as with the apparently anti-art gestures of the readymades and conceptual art, the aesthetic motivations and formal innovations of research-based art tend to be neglected. The historical material such artists present is frequently read as a didactic illustration of their archival sources, with the artwork itself reduced to little more than a prompt for a history lesson. By exploiting the promiscuous temporal elasticity of form, works like *The Fountain of Prosperity* in fact demonstrate the sculptural logic that underpins the use of found objects in contemporary art. 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5.3 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time/sculpting-history

oai:https://www.index-journal.org:issues/liquid-time/aise-aise-hai 2026-04-15

Aise Aise Hai Shivanjani Lal Index Journal 2024-08-21 ScholarlyArticle en CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 10.38030/index-journal.2024.5.8 https://www.index-journal.org/issues/liquid-time/aise-aise-hai