Within a festival or conference, a visual arts program makes subtle yet clear propositions. It asks that we step out of the programmed and into the practised. It invites slow and deliberate engagement with works inviting interpretation. And in the useful framework of ARTLANDS Dubbo’s opening keynote presenter, Mark McMillan, opened up a negotiation of sovereignty, seeing work by Indigenous artists not only in aesthetic terms but as moments that articulate a sovereignty never ceded.
The most arresting of these works seizes you as soon as you step into ARTLANDS’ key space: the massive sand painting Disambiguation by Wiradjuri artist Aleshia Lonsdale…
IMAGE Installation view: Aleshia Lonsdale, Disambiguation (2016); landscape portraiture, various works by Teena McCarthy. Photograph by Esther Anatolitis.
ESTHER ANATOLITIS 