SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis explores what, precisely, constitutes the criterion of quality applied by the individual and collective Directors at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery (RHG) and the October Gallery (OG) in London in the assessment of a work of art. The purpose is to uncover the specific components of each individual agent’s criteria of aesthetic judgement and taste through a modified Bourdieusian analytical framework. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the internalised aesthetic choices responsible for representations of contemporary Indigenous Australian art in a private gallery context from 1988 to 2020. Previous studies generally accept that “Modernism” is the filtering lens through and by which “the market” ascribes value to Indigenous Australian art. However, this obscures the ways in which specific and deeply internalised strands of Modernism inform each agent’s aesthetic choices. The meanings attributed to contemporary Indigenous art can be better understood by investigating how individual taste is constructed and deployed at the site of consumption by those who exert considerable power in the formation of acceptable canons of judgement in its reception outside Australia. This thesis fills this gap in the literature by investigating available private gallery archives, published exhibition catalogues and press coverage, alongside the corporate structure of individual galleries and interviews of individual curators. The study reveals that the RHG has represented contemporary Indigenous Australian art in ways that consistently intersect with those chosen by mid-twentieth century European collectors of “Primitive” art, certain strands of British Primitivism and pervasive British conceptions of nomadism as expressed by Bruce Chatwin in his novel Songlines. The OG reveals a set of aesthetic drivers more responsive to changes in the field of visual art in Australia but nevertheless framed within US counter-cultural terms including that of “shamanism,” experimental theatre and a particular understanding of the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk.