Urban strategies and artistic performances

When the contemporary art market opened up to Aboriginal art in the 1970s, artists who did not seem to demonstrate an obvious connection to "tradition" or a certain mode of ancestral thought, notably those who worked with new media such as photography and video or those who referred to the history of western art were criticised and not recognised as Aboriginal artists. Frustrated by this discrimination, the artists from cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane looked for compromise solutions to counter it. Since the art industry of the period was dominated by a majority of non-Indigenous actors, young Aboriginal artists developed alternative spaces: cooperatives, galleries, and virtual sites. Thanks to the creation of these refuges of resistance, they put in place actions, scenographies and a vocabulary adapted to exhibiting and increasing the standing of their own work as well as that of other Indigenous artists from Oceania and the Americas