Linework: Lines, Lineages and Networks in Indigenous Art

Over the past 40 years, Indigenous art has found itself at the centre of debates about contemporary art. In response to the ongoing movement towards decolonization, institutions like the Power Institute have sought to rethink the lines that delimit our understandings of art making, thinking, and curating.

Indigenous people have, of course, long been drawing their own lines, in practices that preceded and survived colonial settlement. This lecture series seeks to explore the richness of Indigenous linework.

‘Linework’ evokes several meanings. For the many Indigenous peoples across Australia, the line has long been a technique for materialising and transmitting complex philosophies of law, ecology, identity, and community. Just like the dot, the line links a diversity of Indigenous art practices, from the minty’tji of Yolŋu artists in Australia’s Top End, to the murruwaygu used by Aboriginal male artists in Australia’s south-east (as researched by Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist and writer Jonathan Jones).

Linework is also present in Indigenous methods of history telling, and community building. Yorta Yorta writer and curator Kimberley Moulton, among many others, has described the way ‘storyline’ provides a way to re-claim her heritage and objects from the museums that appropriate them. Indeed, Indigenous artists, critics and curators are constantly recovering and inventing new lines of connection to their past, and to other Indigenous peoples across Australia and the world. Such a project is at the heart of the work of Indigenous scholars and curators Gerald McMaster and Julie Nagam.

This series brings together Indigenous voices from across Australia, and the world.