A journey from Dreamtime to Machine Time: Australian history through the eyes of Australian Indigenous artists

Abstract

Di Yerbury, a collector of Australian art for 30 years, started collecting Indigenous art in the mid-1980s as CEO of the Australia Council of which the Aboriginal Arts Board was part. She has since built one of Australia's best-known private collections of Indigenous art. In 1992 she donated 25 Aboriginal artworks to Macquarie University, whose Vice-Chancellor and President she has been since 1987, to celebrate its Silver Jubilee, starting Macquarie's own Indigenous collection. Works from the combined Yerbury/Macquarie collections, displayed annually in the Macquarie University Art Gallery and elsewhere on campus, were the basis of a travelling exhibition to mark the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and the planned (later deferred) Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in 2001. In October 2002, the second international conference of ICOM's UMAC opened at Macquarie with an exhibition from the collections and a floor-talk by Yerbury on which this paper is based. The term 'From Dreamtime to Machine Time', is borrowed from Trevor Nicholls whose series of paintings with that theme represented Australia in the 1990 Venice Biennale. The paper relates aspects of Australian history from the time of Creation, viewed through the eyes of some of the very diverse Indigenous artists represented in the collections.

Di Yerbury colecciona arte Australiana hâ cerca de 30 anos, tendo iniciado a sua colecçào de arte indìgena em meados de década de 80 quando era presidente do Conselho Australiano, do qual a Direcçâo de Artes Aborigènes faz parte. Desde entâo, Yerbury reuniu urna das mais reputadas colecçôes privadas australianas de arte indigena. Em 1992, por ocasiào do Jubileu de Prata da Universidade de Macquarie (Nova Gales do Sul), da qual é Reitera desde 1987, Yerbury doou 25 obras aborigènes à Universidade. Esta doaçâo deu inicio à colecçào de arte aborigene da Universidade de Macquarie. As obras da colecçào Yerbury/Macquarie estâo permanentemente expostas na Galeria de Arte da Universidade, bem corno em outros locais do campus, tendo constituido a base de urna exposiçâo itinerante por ocasiâo dos jogos olimpicos de Sydney em 2000. A conferência anual do Comité Internacional do ICOM para os museus e colecçôes universitârias (UMAC) iniciou-se com urna visita à colecçào, guiada por Di Yerbury, na qual este artigo se baseou. A expressâo 'From Dreamtime to Machine Time' [em traducaci literal 'Do Tempo do Sonho ao Tempo da Maquina'] é de Trevor Nichols, um dos artistas que representou a Australia na Bienal de Veneza de 1990. Este artigo traça os principais aspectos da história australiana desde a època da 'criaçâo', através dos olhos de alguns dos artistas representados na colecçào Yerbury/Macquarie.