This Amnesty banner has disappeared, but you can still click on the blue wording to go to Amnesty International; in the meantime Artspeak will endeavour to find, or create, a new banner for this all important organization.
Click the banner
Most of
us do not have the time to know all that is going on in the Australian
socio-political arena, but there are people out there who have made it their
business to gain as much information as possible and pass it on to the rest of
us.
Preserving our way of life in Australia and mending any problems is what all Australians can do and GetUp is one such organization designed to help us to do just that.
While one may not be interested in all of GetUp`s campaigns, what is important to all is the information that this organization brings to the fore.
You may ask, what has GetUp, Amnesty and Greenpeace have to do with Art; the answer is simple, Art and Humanity are as one. Plato once said something like: "If a ruler wants to rule with total control he needs to fill artists` pockets up with silver and run them out of town."
Nicolas Rothwell’s
thought provoking
view of current issues relating to Aboriginal Art presented at
a symposium at the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair 2009.
Finally a voice of reason is heard from within Aboriginal Art's inner circle, but will Mr Rothwell be heard by those who chiefly monopolize the Aboriginal Art arena? Just as important, will the federal Arts Minister Mr Peter Garrett take note before signing off on the `Indigenous Art Commercial Code of Conduct`?
This code has been called for and designed by the `inner circle`, who believe that they have licence to control the lives and the art of Aboriginal artists and sadly to date they have been gaining it, but at what cost to the Native Born and their art? Nicolas Rothwell addresses the answer to this question to some degree in the link above.
Beyond the Aboriginal Art arena is another voice of reason that addresses other Aboriginal issues that need to be dealt with. That voice is the voice of an indigenous intellect by the name of Noel Pearson, but who is listening to him?
Bess Nungarrayi Price | August 27, 2009
Article from: The Australian
I WAS born under a tree at a place called Yuendumu. My father was 10 when he first saw a white man. I speak Warlpiri and some of four other languages plus English.
We have had so many self-appointed people, black and white, who have decided to be our spokespeople, who know nothing about us and our issues.
They are the people who have been running the show all these years without ever asking us whether it's OK for them to do so. They are the people who want to keep us in the dark as if we are some sort of Stone Age people.
It took urgent measures by the federal government in 2007 to help our people, for them to recognise what was happening to them and do something for themselves before it was too late.
I am one of those people who embraced the government's move. To me it meant at last somebody was acknowledging there was a crisis that needed to be addressed. For a long time our people's lives have been in a state of crisis, spiralling downwards, rapidly, uncontrollably.
The protesters against this intervention seem to care only when whitefellas kill blackfellas. They don't care when our kids are killed by their own people or they commit suicide.
Three of my brothers drank themselves to death in the Alice Springs town camps. Two nieces, one 21, one 26, did the same.
My granddaughter was murdered in a town camp, stabbed by her ex-husband. The ambulance wouldn't go in there without a police escort because the drunks attack them when they go there to save a life. So she died waiting for them.
I could go on all day about the violence I have seen. Yet these protesters treat me like an enemy. They have told the world that I am a drunk and that I support the government only because it pays me to do work for them.
They have never given me a chance to talk at their rallies.
They bring white students and cranky Kooris and Murris up from down south who know nothing about us and who hate whitefellas. They look for local people who think like they do and try to keep the rest quiet and away from the media.
I know plenty of Aboriginal women here who want the intervention because they can feed their kids now.
The protesters treat them like enemies as well. They never support the old women who come in from the bush to protest against the grog.
They attacked the women at the women's centre at Yuendumu when they set up their own shop. They took the side of the violent men and the corrupt ones in our communities and refused to support the women worried about their kids or sick of being beaten up by drunks. They have never even tried to talk to us.
White people told us that they wanted to preserve our language, so now my people can't express themselves to the rest of the world and rely on white people to do it for them. I went to school before the bilingual program started, yet I speak Warlpiri and English better than our kids and our grandkids.
Our people need to be challenged. There needs to be an open and honest debate among ourselves. These protesters have done their best to stop that from happening, calling it "solidarity". With all the money the government has poured into our self-managed organisations and communities, everything has gotten worse.
Our organisations can put energy into campaigning against government policies and getting the UN to take notice of their views, but they don't stop our men from murdering our women, our kids from killing themselves. They don't keep our languages alive. All they can do is bleat for more money. We have the strength ourselves if we can only be honest for once. The intervention started this debate. That is the best thing about it. It has made us think for the first time about what's happened to us, where we are and where we want to go.
The Racial Discrimination Act has not protected our people from ourselves. Now we know that and can do something about it. Let's roll forward instead of backwards.
I was disgusted by the two meetings with you (the Rollback the Intervention group) that I attended in Alice Springs. All the talking was done by English speakers.
Almost all of the ones talking do not speak our languages. They had no interpreters so my people could tell you what they think. The announcements relating to the meetings were last minute, in English and hidden away in the classified ads that my people don't, and many can't, read.
I asked people to come and talk but they said: "Kurntangka" - shameful. Those people at the meetings do not make them feel welcome or confident; in fact they intimidate them.
My people, the ones with the problems that the intervention is designed to address, were deliberately excluded. They were lining up and down at the pub and the bottle shops as they do every day or sitting in filth in the camps worrying about their kids and waiting for the next round of grog-fuelled violence.
You were given a fairytale version of our culture by people who don't live by our law. That mob wants you to think that it is the government that causes all our problems. That is an outrageous lie.
The government gets it wrong because it consults with the wrong people. It gets it wrong because it cannot help people who won't, or don't know how to, help themselves. We want to be able to help ourselves.
We want leaders who will lead us out of our misery, not sit around whingeing about how hard their lives are when they have the jobs and the power. We want leaders who tell us that we are not victims who can't do a thing for ourselves but sit around dying while we wait for the government to get it right.
We want leaders who will convince our own mob to stop drinking, fighting and feuding, who will get our kids into school so we can produce our own professors of indigenous rights who can go to your country to listen to your people's stories.
Bess Nungarrayi Price is the chairwoman of the Northern Territory's Indigenous Affairs Advisory Council. This is a speech she prepared for a meeting of the Rollback the Intervention group.
PAPUNYA PAINTING: out of the desert
Click here: http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/papunya_painting/
Art fraud continues to dirty the Aboriginal Art market in Australia.
Couple
accused of selling forged paintings (In relation
to alleged Rover Thomas forgeries.)
THE AGE NEWS PAPER :
Reporter: Kate Hagan
October 24, 2007
To view articles 1.2.3.4.5 6. that follow the daily events of this
trial click on:
1.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/10/23/1192941066146.html
2.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/word-of-accused-art-forgers-good-enough-for- expert/2007/10/24/1192941153105.html
4. http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/accused-forger-befuddled/2007/11/01/1193619061318.html
`And this is
the Libertos, who thought they'd get away with it`
Kate Hagan
November 3, 2007
(Couple accused of selling forged paintings found
GUILTY)
Art -Fraud couple go straight to jail. ( 3 year jail sentence)
Herald-Sun June 2000
These photographs are not proof of authenticity. These and many others like them showing different known artists with paintings are in abundance. DO NOT BE FOOLED, seek REAL proof of authenticity before investing in works of art.
All material on this
site is protected by Australian and international copyright and other
intellectual property laws. Users may not do anything which interferes with or
breaches those laws or the intellectual property rights in the material. Where
there is a wish to use expression: permission is granted on the basis that the
source is acknowledged, this permission extends to the non-reproduction use of
the art of Milanka J Sullivan, but does not include imagery belonging to
Aboriginal Artists, which remains the sole property of the artist or artist`s
estate. If unclear seek clarity.