Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

Urban Indigenous artists face a number of stereotypes and public expectations when producing artworks. This book shows that these expectations, creating a range of tensions for artists, stem from the past policies of the Queensland government. In particular, this book demonstrates that the actions of the government body established in the 1950s to create a market for Aboriginal art, Queensland Aboriginal Creations (QAC), has left a mixed legacy for Queensland Indigenous artists. Their art styles have been misinterpreted as derivative copies of `true' Indigenous works and any positive outcomes that have come from QAC's engagement with communities and artist has been overlooked. This book unveils new histories and new understandings about Indigenous art production in Queensland.

Stolte uses rich ethnographic detail to illuminate how both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists begin to understand and express their Indigeneity through artwork at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art studio in the Tropical North Queensland College of Technical and Further Education (TNQT TAFE), Cairns.

This is the first book to truly explore the effects of government policy on the development of indigenous arts, Gretchen Stolte's ethnography further develops methodologies in art history and anthropology by identifying additional methods for understanding how art is produced and meaning is created.