In Not a Souvenir, Tony Albert Makes Art From Aboriginalia

When the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia engaged Tony Albert for an exhibition, the Girramay, Kuku Yalanji and Yidindji artist swiftly found fertile ground in the overlap between his practice and the site where the museum stands.

Located in The Rocks, the MCA is no stranger to tourists at its doorstep, whether they disembark from the nearby cruise terminal or wander the streets in this historic part of Sydney. It was The Rocks’ connection with Australia’s early colonial history and the museum’s proximity to the tourist industry that led Albert to home in on the commodification of Indigenous imagery as the theme of his new exhibition.

Not a Souvenir is a striking and defiant response to an era when depictions of Aboriginal people and culture were stereotypical, homogenised and outdated – and often printed on a tea towel. While there are still traces of it in less scrupulous souvenir shops today, here Albert reappropriates this “Aboriginalia” and turns problematic, kitschy souvenirs into art, sparking a conversation about representation and objectification.

“The MCA is situated at the epicentre of cultural capital and it offered, in terms of its space, a really great opportunity to respond to the sale and commodification of identity and who we are,” he says. “Indigenous people weren’t involved in the production of these things, nor did they gain financial opportunities from the selling of these objects.”

Albert has long used Aboriginalia in his works, including clippings from books and retro artefacts. His mixed-media pieces often juxtapose outdated depictions of Indigenous people with his own contemporary imagery, including speculative concepts such as spaceship motifs. In many cases, the material literally spells out themes and messages. One early-career piece, 2008’s Ash on Me, is an assemblage of souvenir ashtrays bearing Aboriginal faces, arranged to form the title of the work, underscoring their offensive nature.

The act of reclamation is an ongoing one, says Albert. While his career has spanned 20 years, his Aboriginalia collection comprises “potentially tens of thousands” of objects that he started collecting four decades ago. “The collection came long before I knew I was going to be an artist, or that I would even be using this kind of ephemera in my work.”

As a child, Albert would visit op shops with his family and was attracted to objects with Aboriginal people on them – it was one of the few positive representations he could find. “And from a very innocent childhood perspective, they were something that I really did love and nurture, and found a great sense of solace in.” 

It was not until his teenage years that he began to question the objects. By the time he was an adult he understood they were problematic. “So it’s a kind of love-hate relationship. However, I do always hold onto that childhood perspective of why I started to collect them. The trajectory of the collection has not just shaped my practice, but there’s not a great deal of archiving or academic rigour about these kind of objects either, [so] it has also been a really wonderful opportunity and experience to be involved in.”

Not a Souvenir encourages visitors to engage not just with Aboriginalia’s cultural affront, but also with the historical influence of these objects. “The visibility of who we are and our culture comes across really importantly within the complexity of all of this,” Albert explains. “These objects informed perceptions of the way we live, the way we work – these objects supported policy.”

His role as the artist is to reassert Indigenous self-determination, give voice to the silenced. “What these objects did was continue to perpetuate this rendering of us as to be seen and not heard. And the whole point of my practice is to give a voice to these objects that were rendered silent, or didn’t have the opportunity to speak for themselves. It’s very metaphorical of our condition here in Australia. We, as people, we have been silenced  and [the exhibition] gives us a really strong, articulate voice within the framework of some of the greatest institutions within this country.”

Broadsheet is a proud media partner of Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Not a Souvenir is now showing at the MCA until October 19. The monograph Tony Albert: Not a Souvenir is published by Thames & Hudson, RRP $100.