MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Public Programs: MUMA Boiler Room Series
richard bell
A Prelude to Imagining Victory
the significance of the aboriginal tent embassy
Public Forum with Richard Bell, Gary Foley and Daniel Browning (convenor)
Public forum | wheeler centre
friday 15 March | 5.30-7.30 pm
On 26 January 1972 Redfernbased Aboriginal activists
Michael Anderson, Billy Craigie,
Tony Coorie and Bert Williams
set up a protest camp under a
beach umbrella on the lawns of
Parliament House in Canberra
that they named the ‘Aboriginal
Embassy’. The Aboriginal
Embassy’s direct protest at
Australian Government policy is
a cornerstone of the Indigenous
Land Rights Movement and
placed issues of Indigenous
Land Rights, health and housing
at the forefront of Australian
politics and onto the world
stage.
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East, VIC 3145 Australia
For Richard Bell: Lessons
on Etiquette and Manners,
the artist has contributed a
significant new installation
which recreates the original
Aboriginal Embassy. At MUMA
Bell’s installation, A prelude to
imagining victory 2012-13 will
be the site for a program of
talks by Aboriginal activists and
radical political leaders.
Forty years on from the original
Aboriginal Tent Embassy
Richard Bell, Gary Foley and
Daniel Browning will discuss
the continuing significance of
the Tent Embassy together with
the achievements of the early
Indigenous activists in raising
awareness of the debts and
obligations towards Australia’s
Indigenous people.
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
FREE Entry
Wheeler Centre
176 Little Lonsdale Street
Melbourne VIC 300
Doors open at 5.00pm
for a 5.30pm start.
Bookings not required
Richard Bell: Lessons on Etiquette
and Manners
5 February - 13 April 2013
Monash University Museum of Art
For further details and additional
public programs see:
www.monash.edu.au/muma/
events
Richard Bell at the 20th Telstra Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Art Award,
Darwin 2003
photo: Peter Bennett / Newspix
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Public Programs: MUMA Boiler Room Series
Richard Bell was born in 1953 in Charleville, Queensland, and is
a member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman, and Gurang Gurang
communities. Based in Brisbane, he was a founding member of art
collectives the Campfire Group in 1990 and proppaNOW in 2003. Bell’s
works protest, confront and unsettle common ideas about Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal Australians’ relationships to each other, to their
country’s history and to art itself. Since 1990 he has participated in
numerous significant solo and group exhibitions within Australia and
overseas. Richard Bell Lessons on Etiquette and Manners is the first
major presentation of the artist’s work in Melbourne. In 2013 Bell will
exhibit in the Fifth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Bell’s work
is represented in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales;
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia;
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery
of Modern Art, Brisbane; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Richard Bell is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
Gary Foley is an Indigenous activist and historian. He became involved
in the Black Power movement in Redfern, Sydney in 1967, agitating
against Australia's racist laws and for Aboriginal land rights. He has
used sport as a galvanizing tool for Aboriginal issues, participating in the
1971 protests against the Springbok rugby tour of Australia; the 1981
Springbok tour of New Zealand; the Brisbane Commonwealth Games
in 1982 and the Australian Bicentenary in 1988. In 1972, Foley cofounded the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra and helped form the
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East, VIC 3145 Australia
Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern, and the Aboriginal Medical Service
in Melbourne and Sydney. Foley served as a consultant to the Royal
Commission in to Black Deaths in Custody and on the executive of
the National Coalition of Aboriginal Organisations. Foley designed and
maintains the Kooriweb site on Aboriginal history at www.kooriweb.org
and is the co-editor of the forthcoming publication Sovereignty, Black
Power, Land Rights and the State [Routledge, July 2013].
Daniel Browning is an Aboriginal journalist and radio broadcaster. He
has worked at the ABC since 1994 and has produced and presented
Awaye! on Radio National since 2005. His prolonged university career
included a short stint at the Australian National University in Canberra.
He later studied English and art history at the University of Queensland
before completing a degree in visual arts at the Queensland University
of Technology, where he majored in painting. Daniel is a descendant of
the Bundjalung people whose traditional land is on the far north coast
of New South Wales. His paternal family has lived at Fingal on a sand
peninsula between the Tweed River and the Pacific Ocean for 120
years. Through his mother, he is a descendant of the Kullilli people of
south-western Queensland and the traditional owners of the Gold Coast
hinterland.
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
Mike Anderson, Vice Chairman of the
Aboriginal Lands Board with Billie Cragie
of Moree and Bert Williams of Nowra,
protesting the goverment’s decision not
to grant full land rights to Aborigines
at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the
lawns of Parliament House, Canberra
1972. SMH picture by ERRINGTON