Arts is more than a business in communities
24 September 2008
Over the past 30 years, Indigenous arts have achieved extraordinary success in terms of the multi-million dollar industry it has become.
But it is the role it has, and will continue to play, in building social cohesion in Indigenous Australia which is of most value, according to a prominent Professor of Anthropology.
The Director of the Research School of Humanities at the Australian National University, Professor Howard Morphy, said art was essentially a form of knowledge and action.
“As a form of action, art can influence the world in innumerable ways. It both requires a community and helps to build a community,” he said.
Professor Morphy said the establishment of Yolngu art was just one example that demonstrated the social cohesion concept.
“The famed Yirrkala Church panels grew out of the early threats to Yolngu sovereignty in the Yirrkala area and were the first significant land rights statement documenting Aboriginal custodianship of their country,” he said.
“The panels represent kinship and its importance and place in Yolngu law.”
Professor Morphy said his presentation at the Symposium would illustrate Indigenous art, as a contemporary practice, as an undercurrent to the creation of communities and a means of achieving wider community objectives.
The Symposium, titled Art works: Communities thrive, is designed to generate discussion and debate.
The one-day event is free to the public and will run from 8.30am to 4.30pm on Wednesday, 1 October at the Centralian Senior Secondary College Building, Charles Darwin University, Alice Springs.
