Remote Avant-Garde (Paperback)

Jennifer Loureide Biddle

ISBN 10: 0822360713 / ISBN 13: 9780822360711

Published by Duke University Press, North Carolina, 2016

About this Item

Paperback. In Remote Avant-Garde Jennifer Loureide Biddle models new and emergent desert Aboriginal aesthetics as an art of survival. Since 2007, Australian government policy has targeted "remote" Australian Aboriginal communities as at crisis level of delinquency and dysfunction. Biddle asks how emergent art responds to national emergency, from the creation of locally hunted grass sculptures to biliterary acrylic witness paintings to stop-motion animation. Following directly from the unprecedented success of the Western Desert art movement, contemporary Aboriginal artists harness traditions of experimentation to revivify at-risk vernacular languages, maintain cultural heritage, and ensure place-based practice of community initiative. Biddle shows how these new art forms demand serious and sustained attention to the dense complexities of sentient perception and the radical inseparability of art from life. Taking shape on frontier boundaries and in zones of intercultural imperative, Remote Avant-Garde presents Aboriginal art "under occupation" in Australia today. In Remote Avant-Garde Jennifer Loureide Biddle interrogates the avant-garde art of Aboriginal communities in the Australian desert, showing how it is an act of survival in the face of state occupation and a means to revive at-risk vernacular languages and cultural heritages. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780822360711

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Remote Avant-Garde (Paperback)
• Publisher: Duke University Press, North Carolina
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822360713
• ISBN 13: 9780822360711
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

In Remote Avant-Garde Jennifer Loureide Biddle models new and emergent desert Aboriginal aesthetics as an art of survival. Since 2007, Australian government policy has targeted "remote" Australian Aboriginal communities as at crisis level of delinquency and dysfunction. Biddle asks how emergent art responds to national emergency, from the creation of locally hunted grass sculptures to biliterary acrylic witness paintings to stop-motion animation. Following directly from the unprecedented success of the Western Desert art movement, contemporary Aboriginal artists harness traditions of experimentation to revivify at-risk vernacular languages, maintain cultural heritage, and ensure place-based practice of community initiative. Biddle shows how these new art forms demand serious and sustained attention to the dense complexities of sentient perception and the radical inseparability of art from life. Taking shape on frontier boundaries and in zones of intercultural imperative, Remote Avant-Garde presents Aboriginal art "under occupation" in Australia today.

 

About the Author

Jennifer Loureide Biddle is Director of Visual Anthropology & Visual Culture and Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Experimental Arts at the University of New South Wales. She is the author of Breasts, Bodies, Canvas: Central Desert Art as Experience.