View of exhibition catalogue Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia – Photo courtesy Harvard Art Museums
Official catalogue accompanying major institutional exhibition Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia at Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, USA) from February 5 to September 18, 2016.
Published by Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, Mass.), 2016.
Edited by Stephen Gilchrist ; With essays by Stephen Gilchrist, Henry F. Skerritt, Hetti Perkins, Fred Myers, Shawn C. Rowlands, Narayan Khandekar, Georgina Rayner, and Daniel P. Kirby.
Edited by the exhibition’s curator Stephen Gilchrist and including 6 essays by distinguished scholars, the catalogue is an inviting showcase of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, exploring the distinct cultural frameworks—particularly the sense of time and place—that inform the creation of the exhibited works.
In his introductory essay, Gilchrist provides an in-depth discussion of the notion of the “everywhen”—an Indigenous conception of time in which the past and present are both part of a cyclical and circular order—and explores the central themes of transformation, performance, seasonality, and remembrance. The book’s design, created by our in-house design department in consultation with Gilchrist and other senior colleagues, subtly references these themes.
Other essays include contributions from Fred Myers, professor of anthropology at New York University, who examines Papunya works; Hetti Perkins, one of Australia’s most respected curators of Aboriginal art, who provides an overview of the artists whose works are presented in the exhibition; and Narayan Khandekar, Georgina Rayner, and Daniel P. Kirby, from the museums’ own Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, who describe their groundbreaking research into binders and pigments in traditional bark paintings.
Vivid images of all the works in the show—some of which have never been exhibited outside Australia—are a highlight of the volume. Among the featured contemporary artists are Rover Thomas, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Judy Watson, Doreen Reid Nakamarra, Vernon Ah Kee, and Christian Thompson.
By presenting new critical perspectives on these and other artists’ work, the Everywhen catalogue offers an important avenue for understanding and appreciating Indigenous Australian art within the global narrative of contemporary art.
Contents:
- Everywhen : the eternal present in indigenous art from Australia / Stephen Gilchrist
- A stitch in time : how aboriginal Australian artists are reweaving our world / Henry F. Skerritt
- Living legacies / Hetti Perkins
- Doublings / Fred Myers
- Aboriginal Australian exchange patters and incised pearl shells at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology / Shawn C. Rowlands
- Pigments and binders in traditional aboriginal bark paintings / Narayan Khandekar, Georgina Rayner, and Daniel P. Kirby
- Catalogue entries
- Map of art-producing communities
- Map of language groups.
Authors:
– Stephen Gilchrist, the curator of Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, is the Australian Studies Visiting Curator at the Harvard Art Museums and Associate Lecturer in Art History at the University of Sydney;
– Narayan Khandekar is director of the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies;
– Daniel P. Kirby is a conservation scientist in private practice in Milton, Massachusetts;
– Fred Myers is professor of anthropology at New York University;
– Hetti Perkins is a freelance curator and writer from Australia;
– Georgina Rayner is the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Conservation Science at the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies;
– Shawn C. Rowlands is a postdoctoral fellow in museum anthropology at the Bard Graduate Center and the American Museum of Natural History, New York;
– Henry F. Skerritt is a doctoral candidate in history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
SOURCE: Harvard Art Museums