WELCOME TO ISSUE 335
As I was about to hit ‘send’ for this Autumn 2023 quarterly edition of Art Monthly Australasia (AMA), our national Board and small team were also busy refining a ‘vision’ for the magazine’s expression of interest for future funding with the Australia Council. Front and centre of this vision is a collective desire to bring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists into the heart of the magazine, and to do this in a culturally safe space. To help get us there, late last year the AMA Board adopted an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Engagement Policy and Action Plan prepared by Board member Erin Vink (Ngiyampaa), who is Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. With that now in place, what will see this vision come to fruition is our publishing passion for ‘Indigenous Voices’.
Supported by project funding from the Australia Council, this mentoring pilot program was announced two years ago with the recognition that ‘the number of writers who can offer a culturally specific perspective on Indigenous arts and culture in Australia, with a view to critiquing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural output through an insider lens, is limited’. So wrote Clothilde Bullen (Wardandi [Nyoongar]/Badimaya [Yamatji]), the program’s Co-Chair, when ‘Indigenous Voices’ was still finding its feet.
Two years on, we are happy to witness that number of writers slowly but surely expanding. Last year saw the successful pairing of emerging Kalkadoon/Wakka Wakka writer Amanda Hayman with mentor Tina Baum (Gulumirrgin [Larrakia]/Wardaman/Karajarri)
Now we are delighted to announce the pilot program’s final two mentorships that will unfold this year: one pairing will see emerging writer Dominique Chen (Gamilaroi) from Jinibara Country in Queensland matched with Barkandji writer, researcher, curator and storyteller Zena Cumpston; the other pairing will bring together Migunburri mentor Jenny Fraser, whose ancestors hail from Far Northern Bundjalung Country, with Wiradjuri/Yuin emerging writer Tyson Frigo, who says that: ‘Knowledge/information is like a river … I want to create space for that.’
So does AMA. As part of the magazine’s longer-term vision, we see ‘Indigenous Voices’ growing bigger and bolder, and culturally enmeshed in everything we do as part of our ongoing publishing program. Says the ‘Indigenous Voices’ Co-Chair Stephen Gilchrist (Inggarda [Yamatji]): ‘This model has produced and will continue to produce important critical writing on contemporary Indigenous art that is attentive to the political, cultural and social realities of Indigenous peoples.’ Welcome to our vision.
Michael Fitzgerald
Editor
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