Circuit breaking? Indigenous Australian art and critical discourse

A crisis has been reached within contemporary Australian art highlighting the inadequate critical engagement with contemporary Indigenous art in Australia—from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers. What passes and is published within the realm of mainstream arts is mostly description rather than analysis, interpretation or contextualisation. Analysis and interpretation do present, however, in anthropology texts about specific people,places and communities of which art is seen as a part. These texts recognise Indigenous art is about complex patterns of inheritance,engagement and responsibility between people\ud and Country. These authors/anthropologists have usually maintained relationships with communities over many years before writing about them