Professor Ian McLean

Professor Ian McLean, University of Wollongong, is giving the School of Art Sir William Dobell Annual Lecture, hosted by the Centre for Art History and Art Theory on Monday 2nd June from 6 to 7pm.

What’s in a name? traces the history of a particular family of words—indigenous, savage, primitive, native, aboriginal—and its relationship to other words connected to ideas that have shaped Western thinking about art, culture and freedom.

School of Art Lecture Theatre, Childers St, Acton, ACT

All are welcome.

What’s in a name?

‘I really can’t tell you of a time when indigenous became current, but I personally have an objection to it, and so do many other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people … This has just really crept up on us ... like thieves in the night … our people are using it now as well … Call us Aboriginal.’ - Lowitja O’Donoghue, 2008

The Australian artworld began using the term “indigenous” from about 1997. The introduction of the term is the latest round in a long ideological war of words instigated by colonial encounters. The archaeology of the term is as rich and deep as that all pervasive signifier of our age, the “modern.” Thus an investigation of things Indigenous, such as Indigenous contemporary art, should begin with the word itself. This lecture traces the history of a particular family of words—indigenous, savage, primitive, native, aboriginal—and its relationship to other words connected to ideas that have shaped Western thinking about art, culture and freedom.

Ian McLean is Senior Research Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Wollongong. He has published extensively on Australian art and particularly Aboriginal art within a contemporary context. His books include Arte Indigena Contemporaneo en Australien, IVAM Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia, (with Erica Izett), How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art, White Aborigines Identity Politics in Australian Art, and The Art of Gordon Bennett (with a chapter by Gordon Bennett). He is a former advisory board member of Third Text, and currently on the advisory boards of World Art and National Identities.