Boundary Bend where the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers meet in north-western Victoria, Australia. This is Country where Tati Tati, Wiradjuri, Muti Muti, Wamba Wamba and Latje Latje Aboriginal nations meet, a relationality just like this beautiful tree showing connections of what is above, below and around. Photo: Brian Martin, August 2021.
Call for Articles | Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 25.1 | Special Issue: Tarrang
Submissions due: Papers due Monday 1 March, 2024
Editors: Brian Martin and Jessica Neath
Editorial Committee: Dr Diana Baker Smith, Professor Jennifer Biddle, Dr Bianca Hester, Dr Astrid Lorange, José da Silva, Dr Jaye Early
The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art (ANZJA) is calling for submissions for the Special Issue (25.1) Tarrang. The Special Issue builds on the 2023 exhibition More Than A Tarrang (tree): Memory, Material and Cultural Agency, curated by Brian Martin, Jessica Neath, Kimberley Moulton and Brook Andrew for Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum. We invite Indigenous-led submissions worldwide and welcome co-authorship of research articles with non-Indigenous scholars, researchers, curators, designers and artists.
The exhibition More Than A Tarrang (tree): Memory, Material and Cultural Agency considers the significance of trees in First Peoples cultures of southeast Australia and continuing practices of mark-making. As Boon Wurrung Senior Elder N’Arweet Carolyn Briggs AM reminds us, trees are living entities that articulate our relationships to Country, each other, and Ancestors. In southeast Australia and beyond, culturally modified trees and wooden vessels, including canoes and coolamons, articulate a complex knowledge system. Uncle Charles Moran and Uncle Greg Harrington, Elders of the Bundjalung Nation, and Wiradjuri scholar Norm Sheehan describe this system as “living in intelligent environments” where “the agency of all forms of life” is recognised and respected. Colonialism has disrupted this knowledge system through institutions such as the museum, which have actively removed cultural belongings from Country. To restore and regenerate our relational ways of being with trees, in More Than A Tarrang (tree), we produced a series of connections between contemporary artworks and cultural belongings from the collections of the Melbourne Museum, the British Museum and the Museum der Kulturen Basel alongside new research developed with Indigenous Knowledge holders.
Building on our methods, this Special Issue of ANZJA, Tarrang invites creative practitioners and researchers who are reimagining museums, the value of cultural heritage, and our relationships with the environment. We will foreground Indigenous understandings of Country and where knowledge sits. Topics may include:
- What are the synergies between Indigenous ways of knowing and practice-led research?
- How are communities, artists, designers, curators and others engaging with the significance of trees in First Peoples cultures?
- Why is it important for First Peoples artists, curators, Traditional Owners and others to reconnect with cultural materials in museum collections?
- What forms can repatriation or restitution of cultural belongings take, and what are the intersections with contemporary creative practice?
- How are programs of community access to museum collections benefitting First Peoples communities and institutions?
- How are practices of mark marking, including using digital technologies, creating a dialogue with cultural belongings, trees and other subjects?
- What are the protocols around, or methods for, sharing knowledge of particular cultural belongings, trees and other subjects which serve ceremonial purposes?
- How are First Peoples artists, curators, communities and others reimagining the role of museums and the value of cultural heritage?
The guest editors, Martin and Neath, will hold a symposium at Melbourne Museum alongside the exhibition More Than A Tarrang (tree): Memory, Material and Cultural Agency on 2 and 3 November 2023. Authors interested in submitting to the special issue of ANZJA are encouraged to attend. Please get in touch to find out more about the symposium: Jessica.Neath@monash.edu. Any queries regarding the journal should be directed to the ANZJA Managing Editor Anastasia Murney, a.murney@unsw.edu.au
More Than A Tarrang (tree): Memory, Material and Cultural Agency is part of the ARC Special Research Initiative “More Than a Guulany (tree): Indigenous Knowledge Systems” (SR200201054) at Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous research lab, Monash University.
ANZJA publishes research articles of 5,000 to 7,000 words (including endnotes), which will be peer-reviewed*. We encourage both traditional and experimental approaches to peer-reviewed research articles, including essays, dialogues and embodied writing.
We are predominantly a scholarly publisher, but we also publish shorter texts (2000 to 3000 words long) of opinions, reflections, and reviews of books, exhibitions, and conferences (which are not peer-reviewed). We also encourage visual essays.
We are keen to provide a platform for writers historically excluded from scholarly publishing, including those who identify as First Nations and early career scholars, curators, and artists. The ANZJA and guest editors will work with such contributors to offer support during the peer-review process. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us via the email below.
*Peer-reviewed articles: ANZJA adopts the double blind peer-review method where submissions are sent without author name/s to the reviewers, who also maintain anonymity. We strive to ensure that research specialisation, knowledge sharing, collegiality and cultural safety are central to our peer-review process.
Journal Aims and Scope
Please submit all essays and other submissions (including visual essays, dialogues, and reflections) via the ScholarOne System, adhering to the Journal style guide. See the ANZJA submission guidelines for further details on style, peer-review process and so on. Submissions not conforming to the guidelines will not be considered.
ANZJA is published by Taylor & Francis and the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ). The journal is housed by UNSW Art & Design under the editorship of Dr Verónica Tello with the support of Professor Edward Scheer (Head of School) and an editorial committee comprising Professor Jennifer Biddle, Dr Diana Baker Smith, Dr Bianca Hester, Dr Astrid Lorange and José Da Silva. AAANZ is Australia and New Zealand’s professional body for art and design historians, arts writers, artists, students of art history and theory, and museum professionals. ANZJA is Australasia and Pacifica’s principal refereed art-history journal. The Journal is dedicated to the study of art history, art practice, theory and exhibitions.
For all queries regarding the submission process please contact ANZJA’s Managing Editor, Anastasia Murney, a.murney@unsw.edu.au
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