Maria Nugent

Shellwork on show: Colonial history, Australian Aboriginal women and the display of decorative objects

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Date: 24-11-2014

DOI: 10.1177/1359183513509535

Abstract: This article explores the exhibition history of decorative shell-art objects made by Aboriginal women in southeast Australia since the late Victorian era. Although produced for over a century, Aboriginal women’s ‘shellwork’ (as it is known) has only recently received sustained curatorial attention. During the last few decades it has been acquired by private and public collectors and exhibited in both small independent and major public art galleries and museums. The article uses the contemporary curatorial interest in Aboriginal women’s shellwork as an occasion to trace a longer history of its exhibition and display. A historical view reveals the ‘cultural’, ‘aesthetic’ and ‘political’ work that these objects performed as they were displayed in ways designed to communicate messages about their makers and to mediate social relations under colonial conditions. Earlier histories of display and its rhetorical functions are often lost, ignored or downplayed when Aboriginal women’s shellwork is exhibited within contemporary exhibition spaces but the author suggests that there is more continuity between old and new display cultures and practices than is generally acknowledged. In light of this, the article argues for greater recognition of earlier histories of display practices and visual rhetorics to inform the contemporary interpretation and exhibition of these objects. The article concludes with a recent installation of Aboriginal women’s shellwork that is suggestive of this approach.

A shield loaded with history: Encounters, objects and exhibitions

Publisher: Informa UK Limited

Date: 02-01-2018

DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2017.1408663

Newcomers, c. 1600–1800

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Date: 05-11-2011

DOI: 10.1017/CHO9781107445758.006

'You really only made it because you needed the money': Aboriginal women and shellwork production, 1870s to 1970s

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Date: 2011

DOI: 10.5263/LABOURHISTORY.101.0071

Tracing lineages: The work of remembering, mourning and honouring in romaine moreton’s the farm

Publisher: Informa UK Limited

Date: 2013

DOI: 10.1386/SAC.7.2-3.179_1

Baz luhrmann’s Australia reviewed

Publisher: Informa UK Limited

Date: 2010

DOI: 10.1386/SAC.4.2.93_2

‘The queen gave us the land’: Aboriginal people, Queen Victoria and historical remembrance

Publisher: Informa UK Limited

Date: 2012

DOI: 10.1080/14490854.2012.11668423

An echo of that other cry: Re-enacting Captain Cook's first landing as conciliation event

Publisher: Routledge

Date: 11-02-2015

DOI: 10.4324/9781315812946

Sites of segregation/sites of memory: Remembrance and 'race' in Australia

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Date: 28-06-2013

DOI: 10.1177/1750698013482863

Abstract: This article considers the interplay between Aboriginal people’s remembrances about race relations in rural mid-twentieth-century Australia and the frames of remembrance provided by the American Civil rights movement. It takes as its focus two key Australian sites of racial segregation – country town cinemas and public swimming pools – to explore the ways in which since, and in no small part due to, the desegregationist politics of the 1960s they have become prominent sites of public memory. Drawing on three ex les from a range of media – art, film and published memoirs – the article traces the ways in which different ways of narrating and remembering these ‘twisted spaces’ contributes to and makes possible alternative and at times unsettling interpretations of experiences and histories of relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people during what is commonly referred to as the ‘assimilation era’.

Australian National University

Location: Australia

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Linkage Projects - Grant ID: LP110100623

Start Date: 05-2011

End Date: 05-2015

Amount: $525,000.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

ARC Future Fellowships - Grant ID: FT100100073

Start Date: 05-2011

End Date: 12-2017

Amount: $579,500.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Linkage Projects - Grant ID: LP160100415

Start Date: 09-2016

End Date: 12-2022

Amount: $360,000.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Discovery Projects - Grant ID: DP110100230

Start Date: 2011

End Date: 12-2015

Amount: $120,000.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Discovery Projects - Grant ID: DP0451114

Start Date: 02-2004

End Date: 07-2008

Amount: $215,367.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Discovery Projects - Grant ID: DP110100931

Start Date: 10-2011

End Date: 04-2017

Amount: $150,000.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Linkage Projects - Grant ID: LP150100423

Start Date: 01-2016

End Date: 12-2021

Amount: $699,310.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Discovery Indigenous - Grant ID: IN240100030

Start Date: 2024

End Date: 12-2027

Amount: $823,621.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Discovery Projects - Grant ID: DP200102212

Start Date: 12-2020

End Date: 12-2024

Amount: $485,000.00

Funder: Australian Research Council