Why Artist Tony Albert Wants Your Tourist Trappings

Tony Albert is conducting an amnesty, of sorts. The Girramay, Kuku Yalanji and Yidindji artist wants your “Aboriginalia” – those household objects with inauthentic, derogatory and outdated depictions of Aboriginal people and culture – for his current exhibition, Not a Souvenir at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and potential future works. 

Some of these objects are downright offensive. Ashtrays with Aboriginal faces inside them, for example, were central to his mixed-media work Ash on Me. Other objects are problematic in more subtle ways, with “very homogenised ideas of Aboriginality”, Albert explains. 

“You would have a North Queensland shield with a Western Desert kind of pattern with very little understanding of the sophisticated ways in which Indigenous cultures worked. You can go to Cairns, where I’m from, and the main tourist shops will still have an abundance of Aboriginal dot paintings from the Central Desert, but nothing that really represents who we are in North Queensland.”

In his two decades as an artist, Albert has channelled an “undercurrent of either the souvenir culture or the engagement of Indigenous representation” through different media. But he also understands the personal conflict attached to souvenirs, especially if they have sentimental value, as he has a complicated relationship with them too. As a child, Albert would collect Aboriginalia from op shops, taking “solace” in the objects’ depictions of Indigenous life.

“ Of course, what it does show is the lack of visual representation we had as people,” he says. “I never remember seeing our imagery on TV or in papers or anything in this positive light, so in one way it was an opportunity to surround myself with the people that were reflected in my daily life. It’s a very double-edged sword kind of approach.”

There was also the two-faced ideological aspect of appearance versus reality, he notes. “You often get these very cute, vulnerable, innocent-looking children emblazoned upon these objects when you had policy of being able to take children away from their families. It all manifests in this idea that these children needed saving or rescuing.”

The number of objects in his collection is now in the thousands, and many have been reappropriated for artworks. In the past, he’s been hesitant about accepting donations (“part of my practice was always in me finding the object”) but when the MCA pitched the idea of an Aboriginalia Appeal as part of Not a Souvenir, he came on board.

“ I was like, ‘That’s a really amazing idea,’ because I do get a lot of messages from people who have seen things, found things or uncovered something in a family home or a grandparent’s house. Or people saying, ‘We’re too embarrassed to give it away, but we don’t wanna throw it away.’ One lady said it’s like the gun buyback scheme.”

It’s also significant that this exhibition is being held at the MCA, in Sydney’s The Rocks, a historic site of early colonialism and a hotbed of tourism today. 

“It does open up discussions about colonial monuments and these things that are globally being destroyed … Where does this history sit? Under what premise? And, to me, this is all so important,” Albert says. 

But his favourite part so far has been the stories. The ambivalent nature of his own childhood attachment to his collection is echoed in some of the personal histories that have come from objects already donated, particularly by people whose families migrated here in the 1990s or earlier. 

“ I love some of the stories about how precious these objects were to families. I’ve heard a lot of stories about these objects and people moving to this country and not feeling accepted or understood [but understanding that] Aboriginal people sit on the lowest possible rank of society. When people had these objects there was a sense of solidarity, and I guess within that an understanding that culture sits much deeper than a meat pie and a footy match.”

Broadsheet is a proud media partner of Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Not a Souvenir is now showing at the MCA until October 19. You can still donate your Aboriginalia.