#07 | Tony Albert

Tony Albert’s multidisciplinary practice investigates contemporary legacies of colonialism, prompting audiences to contemplate the human condition. Drawing on both personal and collective histories, Albert explores the ways in which optimism might be utilised to overcome adversity. His work poses important questions such as; how do we remember, give justice to, and rewrite complex and traumatic histories?

Albert’s technique and imagery are distinctly contemporary, displacing traditional Australian Aboriginal aesthetics with an urban conceptuality. Appropriating textual references from sources as diverse as popular music, film, fiction, and art history, Albert plays with the tension arising from the visibility, and in-turn, the invisibility of Aboriginal People across the news media, literature, and the visual world.

In-conversation with Tony Albert available via Apple Podcasts here or Vimeo below.

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EXHIBITION INFO

TONY ALBERT
Interior Composition Tile
2021
from the ‘Conversations with Margaret Preston’ series
acrylic and appropriated vintage fabric on canvas board
10.2 x 10.2 cm each
110 parts overall, dimensions variable

Tony Albert explores the ways in which optimism can be utilised to overcome adversity. His work poses important questions such as how we can remember, give justice to, and rewrite complex and traumatic histories.

Renowned for his distinctly contemporary imagery, which engages with political, historical and cultural Indigenous Australian history, Tony has long been fascinated by the tension between the visibility and invisibility of Aboriginal people across the news media, literature and the visual world.

This body of work for the LoveArt’s nano project space, Love[f]Art, is an extension of Albert’s Conversations with Margaret Preston series which dissects 20th-century Australian artist Margaret Preston’s iconography with a reverse ethnography.

Born in 1875, Margaret Preston was progressive for her beliefs that the richness and sophistication of Indigenous Australian iconography should be incorporated into a national visual language that would set Australia apart.

In her quest to foster an Australian identity, she was one of the first non-Indigenous Australian artists to use the unique designs, motifs and natural- pigment colour schemes of Aboriginal art in her work. Whilst Albert perceives that her intentions were meaningful, her success unintentionally opened the door to an onslaught of cultural pillaging. This movement was the gateway to increasing numbers of Aboriginal designs and motifs openly appropriated as adornment for domestic homewares and décor over decades to come.

Using vintage fabrics from his own vast collection, Albert turns the tables on history, audaciously reclaiming the designs and motifs from Preston’s Aboriginal woodblock prints, to honour the subjects and voices of the work’s original creators. Albert implores viewers not to forget the histories they embody but instead begin constructive conversations that can heal past wounds and offer hope.

tonyalbert.com.au
@tonyalbert

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Albert lives and works in Queensland, Australia. He has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Conversations with Margaret Preston, Sullivan+Strumpf (Sydney, 2021); Duty of Care, Canberra Glassworks (Canberra, 2020); Wonderland, Sullivan+Strumpf (Sydney, 2019); Native Home, Sullivan+Strumpf, Encounters, Art Basel Hong Kong (2019); Confessions, Contemporary Art Tasmania (Hobart, 2019); Visible, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane, 2018) and Unity, Sullivan+Strumpf (Sydney, 2018). Recent selected group exhibitions include Occurrent Affair, University of Queensland Art Museum (Brisbane, 2021); NIRIN, 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020); The National 2019: New Australian Art, Carriageworks (Sydney, 2019); Dark Mofo, Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart, 2019); I am Visible, commission for Enlighten Festival Canberra, National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, 2019); Just Not Australian, Artspace (Sydney, 2019); Weapons for the Soldier, Hazelhurst Arts Centre (Sydney and touring, 2018); Continental Drift, Cairns Regional Art Gallery (Cairns, 2018); Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, 2017); and When Silence Falls, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, 2016). Albert’s work is well represented in major national collections including the National Gallery of Australia; the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; the Art Gallery of New South Wales; the Art Gallery of Western Australia and Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art—Queensland Art Gallery.

Albert is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.