Tyson Yunkaporta

The phrase “White people just don’t get it,” is seldom deployed with integrity, but in this rare case Stephen Page, artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, might be onto something. Because the reviews are mixed for Dark Emu, and some people really aren’t getting it. Not that brother Steve cares. He doesn’t read reviews. “I don't need reviewers telling me what my story should be,” he says. “They got no identity. This is not a casual conversation, like sprinkling salt over your food.” The conversation he refers to is the see-sawing of celebration and backlash around a controversial book that inspired the production, Dark Emu Black Seeds, by Gunditjmarra author Bruce Pascoe. The book, which Page describes as a “game changer”, is a meticulously curated collection of early settler accounts revealing previously unheard-of practices of Aboriginal agriculture, farming and permanent settlements including stone architecture. The genius of the book is that Aboriginal people are not making this claim, but the settlers themselves, which makes it very difficult for white Australia to refute. It also raises questions about why this record of sophisticated land management was erased from Australian history. “What they are scared of, what they were always scared of, was the Aboriginal economy,” Page says. “They spent time detailing what they were observing, but then wilfully erased it. They came with a system map of how to colonise a nation and it conflicted with what they saw and reco

In a time when hashtags, triggers, phobias and offended parties are popping up like peanut allergies in every corner, when backlash whips back and forth like a cut snake across the continent faster than the news cycle can handle, an exhibition showcasing Australia’s colonisation seems rash and inadvisable. The last time this was attempted was in 1988 at Australia’s Bicentenary, when Indigenous protests launched a Treaty movement that is now controversially coming to fruition in Victoria 30 years later. Against this turbulent political backdrop where veteran history warriors compete for space on every platform, the National Gallery of Victoria’s new two-part exhibition in Melbourne, Colony: Australia 1770-1861 and Colony: Frontier Wars seems at first glance like an act of PR suicide. But somehow this outrageously ambitious exhibit manages to create a magical space, an unimaginable sweet spot at the interface of competing histories, challenging everybody but offending no-one. This may be the first time this has occurred in the two and a half centuries since Captain Cook decided, “It’s a nice day for a boat ride.” It is unflinchingly honest and confronting, but is ultimately an act of love. I had the privilege last week of a personally guided tour by two members of the curatorial team, Myles Russell-Cooke, an Aboriginal man, and Rebecca Edwards, a non-Aboriginal woman. I expected to be tag-teamed through segregated exhibits, with Rebecca handling the settler section downstairs

The Yelmo-Garang exhibit at Footscray Community Arts Centre is a site of cosy, family-friendly civic disruption, a gently seditious, liminal space blurring the lines between studio and gallery. It feels like your Nanna’s living room, complete with boiled sweets, cups of tea and Motown on the stereo. And like a trip to Nanna’s house, your visit gives you space to yarn safely, play freely and even write on the walls a little, but then you never know when she might belt you with the jug cord. The sign at the door warmly welcomes people of all cultures, sharply followed by a declaration that “Australia does not exist. These are the stolen lands of sovereign peoples.”   The entrance to the Yelmo-Garang Photograph: Jorge de Araujo, Artificial Studios     I caught up with curators Kate ten Buuren and Kat Clarke at the opening night. Kate is a Taungurung woman who recently curated Sky Country at the Blak Dot Gallery and Kat is a Wotjobaluk woman and a member of Melbourne’s Blak Writers. Both are working on a collective called This Mob with young emerging Indigenous artists, giving rise to this unique, interactive exhibit. Yelmo-Garang is the Kulin word for “nest”, highlighting the centrepiece of the space: an eagle’s nest made from driftwood. Kat is the keeper of this sacred object of Bunjil the creator, which once sat atop a scar tree in the old Koorie Heritage Trust. Like an eagle’s nest, Yelmo-Garang is a site of powerful love and nurturing, but also a place where you might be d

If you visit Christian Thompson’s Ritual Intimacy exhibition at MUMA expecting something camp, frothy, cheeky, kitsch (as I did), prepare to be surprised and humbled faster than you can even think the words, “What’s this then…”   Christian Thompson: Ritual intimacy, installation view at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne 2017 Photograph: Andrew Curtis     Ritual Intimacy is part of a series by Monash University Museum of Art that explores the work of influential artists across their practice, over time. Christian’s contribution as a Bidjara artist from central west Queensland comprises snapshots of his work over fifteen years in sculpture, photography, video, performance and sound in an intellectually rigorous exploration of identity, sexuality, gender, colonisation and memory. Aboriginal land and language are entwined throughout, in a seamless symbiosis that transcends notions of cultural hybridity or the lazy juxtapositions of traditional and modern that seem to characterise so much contemporary Aboriginal arts practice.   Blackgum 1, 2 and 3 from the 'Australian Graffiti' series (installation view, Monash University Museum of Art) Photograph: Andrew Curtis     Be prepared for soothing sounds with a hidden slap, deceptive beauty, Aussie icons seductively disrupted. A lilting lullaby in Aboriginal language that is really about drowning, then Bidjara shockingly sung in operatic European voices, then more language about bees engineered ingeniously on the algorithms