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Lecture 3: Abstraction, representation and expression in Yol?u art
Professor Howard Morphy

Abstraction, representation and expression are key terms in art history. In categorising works of art they are often separated as categories ¡ª ¡®abstract¡¯, ¡®representational¡¯ ¡ª or combined together as in ¡®abstract expressionism¡¯. Non-Western art works often find themselves placed in one or other category on the basis of form alone in order to be positioned in a global space. In this lecture I will be reflecting on fifty years of watching Yol?u artists at work and occasionally interrupting their work with questions. The lecture will focus on how these concepts can be useful in elucidating Yol?u art practice, image making, and aesthetic sensibilities; not by positioning their images in categories but by recognising synergies in art practice that may well characterise art-making as a mode of action across place and time.

However rather than surveying the vast corpus of Yol?u art as a whole I will focus on artists of a single clan, the Ma?galili. The lecture is also a journey from Melville Hall Annex at the Australian National University where Narritjin Maymuru and his son Banapana Maymuru had their studio in 1978 as Creative Arts Fellows, to the 2024 Venice Biennale where Narritjin¡¯s classificatory daughter Naminapu Maymuru White, an ºÚÁÏÌìÌÃCreative Arts Fellow in 2000, was one of the selected artists.

Howard Morphy has conducted extensive fieldwork with the Yol?u people of Northern Australia since 1974 and published widely in anthropology and museum studies with a primary focus on art, material culture and land rights. His pioneering analysis of Yol?u art and aesthetics has been foundational in the study and understanding of Aboriginal art and non-Aboriginal art in academia. He was an expert witness in the Blue Mud Bay case, in which Yol?u art as law (rom) was integral to the case. Morphy has advocated the inclusion of Yol?u voices, inviting leaders to visit and contribute to ºÚÁÏÌìÌÃresearch, acknowledging and incorporating their work as integral to Australia¡¯s cultural and intellectual life.