Exhibitions
A History of the Campfire Group
George Petelin
The history of Campfire from 1990 to 2005 can be described as having three phases roughly aligned with the shifting locations of their studio and gallery premises. First there was the spontaneous, 'amateur' Torrington St phase, when artists simply worked together and discovered the need to organise, then the 'commercial' Fortitude Valley phase, when they started to realise the need for marketing their artwork, and now, recently, the 'professional' Stratton St, phase, when they begin to become an integral part of the institutional and commercial framework.
However, in all of these phases Campfire has retained a unique style. There have been other organisations, art dealers, agents, consultants, and advisors who have acted as mediators between Australian Indigenous culture and the non-Indigenous art world and there have been community cooperatives and individual Indigenous artists who have attempted to undertake this role also. Campfire has been different from all of these. Its difference has given it a privileged role in the development of a market for contemporary Indigenous art and indeed for effecting a kind of cultural reconciliation—not just between European settler culture and Indigenous culture but also within Indigenous culture itself. From the beginning, it was conceived as a collaborative affair.
Michael Eather, fresh from his odyssey into the central desert and Arnhemland and with his eldest Aboriginal daughter Noni, then still a toddler, in tow, dreamed of a vast – many would say foolhardy – project. As a young artist producing polychrome assemblages from a studio in the vacated Woolstores at Teneriffe he envisaged an exhibition of art such as there had never been before: showing together remote-region 'traditional' Indigenous art, non-Indigenous contemporary art that attempted a dialogue with this culture, and, most outrageously, 'urban' Indigenous art. This last category was the most risky because it was predominantly not 'polished' in the sense both of the other categories were. Museum trustees and many curators considered it to be 'amateur', untrained, 'kitsch', or tourist art. And indeed that is what much of it was. But where they were wrong was in underestimating its real 'authenticity' – its ability to serve genuine spiritual and social needs of the Indigenous community, and, by extension, of all communities.
To emphasise this, Eather called this projected show Balance. It would restore a balance, he hoped, to everyone's sense of values. It would give credit to whom credit is due; and not elevate one form of culture over another. In adopting this stance he drew inspiration from Indigenous artists themselves. He knew that what generally passed for authenticity in museums was, as Eric Michaels has argued, a conformity to Eurocentric expectations of the exotic. Urban Aboriginal people Eather had met including Lin Onus, Marshall Bell and Richard Bell, asserted fiercely that they too had a culture – that it was not cultural loss but cultural creation that characterised them.
It took longer than Eather had hoped – the show took place not in 1988, which as the Bicentennial year would have been more nationally symbolic, but in 1990. But the fact that it took place at all was a miracle. Several conditions made it possible. In Doug Hall, then recently appointed director of the Queensland Art Gallery, Eather found a sympathetic ear. Hall agreed to show Balance in 1990 despite the fact that his trustees in the previous year rejected the purchase of key urban Indigenous work Dreamtime/Machinetime by Trevor Nickolls on the grounds that, in their view, it was 'badly painted'. (I remember writing a scathing review regarding this decision in the newspaper The Australian at the time. The work was subsequently donated by an anonymous benefactor and now forms a pivotal position in the gallery's collection). Trevor Nickolls's wife Marlene Hall agreed to collaborate in the curation of Balance. White artist Christopher Hodges and Indigenous artists with whom he had worked in Utopia agreed to participate. Gordon Bennett, recently graduated from the Queensland College of Art but already taking the Australian art world by storm, offered his amazing graduation piece The Coming of the Light as well as submitting collaborative works with Eugene Carchesio. Brothers Marshall and Richard Bell and partner Liz Duncan who had established an Aboriginal gallery called Wiumulli in Boundary St South Brisbane for Expo '88 became enthusiastically involved. However, Boomali gallery in Sydney, a groundbreaking Indigenous artists' cooperative which included Fiona Foley, Tracey Moffatt, Brenda Croft, Judy Watson and Hetti Perkins, then exceedingly cautious regarding possible outside exploitation or misrepresentation, declined to take part. Despite this, the network necessary to acquire works for the show slowly fell into place.
More than any major survey show, perhaps anywhere in the world previously, Balance selected works through negotiation with communities and artists. (This culturally negotiated process was an essential learning experience that arguably made possible the Queensland Art Gallery's subsequent triumphs in curating: the Asia-Pacific Triennials). To cope with the huge task, a 'rotating' curatorium always involving black voices as well as white voices was formed. Prominent Aboriginal people such as Lance O'Chin, Hope Neill, Phyllis Harrison-Ugle, Selwyn Johnson and Vanessa Fisher generously gave their time to this task.
The exhibition was an unqualified success in terms of bringing people together and exposing the real concerns of a culture. Works by artists collected by museums hung next to works previously only hung in the living rooms of their creators. Marshall Bell and Lance O'Chin proved to be particularly articulate museum guides who relished revealing both the injustice and creativity of Indigenous life. The richness and sheer magnitude of a hidden culture was revealed. For the first time, Indigenous people could feel at home in a museum. The opening, unlike the champagne and black tie functions normal to museums, involved children and whole extended families in an unpretentious celebration. The participation of Indigenous audiences and their critical feedback – their 'grass roots' involvement – is I believe the crucial component regardless of all other changes that keeps a form of Indigenous art 'honest', i.e. authentic in the terms I outlined earlier.
Torrington Street
Campfire Consultancy was the natural outcome of Balance. The economic 'Indian summer' of Expo '88 on Brisbane's Southbank had by now faded for Richard Bell's gallery as it did for numerous other establishments in the location – even for ones as previously thriving as the Terminus Hotel. Richard, in any case, was more driven to be an artist than a gallerist. Marshall, on the other hand, although continuing to paint, when Balance ended, teamed up with Michael Eather to form a 'consultancy' for promoting collaborative art. This way they could all paint and still spare some time by appointment to further the acceptance of every type of practice authentically addressing Indigenous issues—whether through provocation or diplomacy.
The process was, to be sure, a mix of both these seemingly contradictory ingredients. Marshall and Michael, for example, painted Balance of Trade Figures, a satirical expose of Australia's obscene exploitation by world powers depicting the Australian kangaroo being subjected to unspeakable acts by the USA and Great Britain. Richard began his plans for Prospectus .22, a satire on colonisation involving a huge letter to 'The Chairman of China' offering him 'an equity partnership in the development of the island-continent Australia'. For a time they shared a studio space with David Paulson in an old Queensland colonial house in Torrington Street Spring Hill. Paulson had a wealth of knowledge about painting and sculptural technique that he passed on unstintingly. Richard Bell reminisces that 'Uncle Dave' Paulson was like a 'footie coach' who trained the 'team' in valuable skills and barracked for them when they used these skills to 'take the piss out of the white art system'. The atmosphere at the ramshackle house was casual: they frequently took time off to throw a real football around right in the living room ignoring bottles of turps sent flying by an errant pass or drop kick. And parts of the scheduled-for-demolition house frequently showed up as components of Eather's and Paulson's paintings or sculptures.
The next initiative of Campfire was to convene the first Queensland Indigenous Artists' Conference. Artists here were conscious that the flourishing of a Central Desert art market was assisted by the presence of Art and Craft Centres, workshops, advisors, and government grants. Queensland Indigenous artists had to organise. Among those who became active in Campfire were Indigenous artist Laurie Nilsen and Indigenous photographer-anthropologist Michael Aird. The first conference took place in 1992 at Yarrabah community near Cairns and resulted in the formation of QICVA the Queensland Indigenous Committee for Visual Arts. The following year the second conference took place at Woorabinda Community near Rockhampton. QICVA underwent a transformation to become QIAAC, the Queensland Indigenous Artists' Aboriginal Corporation. QIAAC sought a comprehensive country and city state wide representation that proved difficult to maintain, and thus it was Campfire that remained the most stable catalyst for developing a voice for Queensland Indigenous artists. The conferences were masterpieces of brinkmanship and improvisation that has remained a hallmark of Campfire strategies. Grants were somehow obtained, people were somehow notified and buses of artists converged from all over Queensland – even though the grant money had not arrived on time. The host communities welcomed everyone with generosity and goodwill, and fierce daytime debates were followed by unforgettable evening celebrations.
One offshoot of these conferences was the identification of a need for tertiary education in Indigenous art for Indigenous artists taught by Indigenous artists. Thus began a long process of community consultation which in 1995 produced Australia's first Bachelor's degree in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art (BoVACAIA) at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, in Brisbane. Among those who championed this course were Robin O'Chin, and Campfire artists Wesley (Bat) Conlon and Mark Garlett (both of whom also enrolled among the course's first students). I was fortunate to be able to help by gaining course approval and seed funding from my University (the Queensland College of Art at Griffith University) and, with Jennifer Herd, who was appointed the Indigenous coordinator, designed a course structure that synthesised the suggestions gained through consultation.
The first exhibitions organised by Campfire from 1991 to 1993 were at the Spring Hill Baths – a heritage-listed swimming pool managed by Catherine Mactaggart, who in later years finished an art history degree and went to work for Sotheby's, just across the road from the studio. Here, a dressing shed became a gallery, and openings spilled out late into the night in the courtyard. Again, work by urban community artists relatively unknown to the mainstream, such as Lucy Coolwell's painted rum bottles, was exhibited alongside work by central desert artists of legendary status such as Emily Kngwarreye.
Anyone involved in Aboriginal culture visiting or passing through Brisbane, such as prominent Aboriginal author Herb Wharton, would inevitably drop in for a chat at the Campfire studio (as they also did later at Fire-Works gallery). Some would leave behind works to exhibit. Some would send canvases rolled up like rugs in the post. When curator Anthony Bond came by to scout talent for his upcoming Sydney Biennale, Eather unrolled Richard's Crisis: What To Do About This Black And White Thing for him straight onto the dusty floor. The success of this kind of display evidently spurred Campfire to visit subsequent author of the highly-regarded book Aboriginal Art Wally Caruana in Canberra – this time unrolling Richard's work Crisis in the carpark. Caruana purchased it for the National Gallery of Australia. Thus began Campfire's commercial activities.
The first commercial gallery established by Campfire was in George Street Brisbane in the space of the then recently relocated Milburn Gallery. It started out in 1993 as a temporary exhibit – a satellite event of the first Asia Pacific Triennial called Political Bedrooms. Campfire artists invited APT artists to collaborate in setting up installations based on a political theme. Before the opening they found that the electricity was cut off and had to be paid in advance. It seemed a waste not to continue operating as a gallery after this investment and thus Fire-Works gallery was born. Fire-Works new status did not prevent it from continuing to show challenging art – for example, in 1994, IPCHAC Prison Art and Political Boats.
From the start, Campfire also sought a national and international presence. In 1992 Campfire artists produced an installation at the 9th Sydney Biennale: The Boundary Rider called Island which offered Australia as 'an island for sale' to any more responsible coloniser. Richard Bell and Michael Eather in the following year were also individually invited to the Adelaide Biennale. In 1993 Campfire gained a grant to send Stories: Contemporary Aboriginal Art and artists Laurie Nilsen and Marshall Bell to Finland and Norway. Commitments, curated also in 1993 at the Institute of Modern Art, travelled to Canberra and to Artspace in Sydney. In 1994 Campfire artists also participated in 600,000 Hours (Mortality) at the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide and in 1995 sent 80 works to Singapore (featuring Vincent Serico). An invitation to Fotofeis found them in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1997. Since then, in 2001, they have also sent a major exhibition of Aboriginal art – Dreamtime: The Dark And The Light and Spirit And Vision — to Klosteneuberg in Austria.
The Fortitude Valley Fire-Works
When in 1995 an opportunity arose to acquire a space at Ann St, Fortitude Valley, Fire-Works moved. Here was the sound of traffic and the smell of coffee houses; late night bands at sleazy nightclubs, and hung over breakfasts in the mall in homage to a smoggy sunrise. But also there were tourists. The gallery opened into the busy street. Passers-by wandered in. Tourist artefacts and printed t-shirts drew the punters in, but political art made them stay. The raw sardonic works of Cherburg artist Vincent Serico could be sold to customers who initially only came in looking only for decorated didgeridoos. Now the economics of maintaining their project became more evident to the Campfire group. When Marshall Bell increasingly gave up art for land rights politics the administration of Fire-Works Gallery was formalised with Michael Eather taking the role of Gallery Director and Laurie Nilsen becoming Cultural Director. This acceptance that art also has to be a business is ironically registered in their installation at the 1996 Asia Pacific Triennial: All Stock Must Go!.
All Stock Must Go! was a controversial event. It was curated by a Thai scholar, Dr Apinan Poshyananda, who, in the spirit of fair exchange, was accorded the task of curating the Australian segment of that Triennial. Poshyananda took a cynical view of the Australian art market equating it to tourist exploitation and suggested a format whereby the 'ugly truth' of commerce was displayed alongside that pristine temple of culture, the Queensland Art Gallery. Thus the Campfire group were asked to display Indigenous art – by now held sacrosanct by guilt-ridden white society's museums – as being 'humiliatingly' sold off the back of a truck parked just outside the gallery. With the encouragement of recently appointed curator of Indigenous art Margo Neal, the Campfire team pitched into this with typically reckless gusto. Here was a perilous strategy. Poshyananda had quite arrogantly elected to use Aboriginal art to make his own cynical statement: Aboriginal art was reduced to a souvenir. Or was it? Campfire's sense of humour won the day. Reversing the power balance of curators to artists they produced ironic 'promotional' material for the event: photographs of themselves as barefoot 'directors' in the boardroom of the Gallery with the good-natured cooperation of the actual Director of the QAG, Doug Hall, posing as a waiter serving them drinks. Everything off the truck (including its wheels) was sold before the conclusion of the APT. What this demonstrated was that 'commercialisation' of indigenous art did not need to mean commercial trivialisation of its ideals if artists remained vigilant and devised strategies to subvert this tendency. And somehow the ability of Indigenous art to rise again from the ashes was symbolised by the fact that the truck was painted and reassembled and eventually purchased by National Museum of Australia.
The strength of Campfire, and indeed of much of contemporary Indigenous art, clearly lay in the use of humour to cope with any vicissitude. Marshall and Michael's Balance of Trade Figures and Richard Bell's Prospectus .22 were models for a cultural guerrilla warfare that stood them in good stead from the start. This point was consolidated with the exhibition Black Humour in 1997, in which Campfire artists Laurie Nilsen, Rick Roser, Lamicky Pitt, Simon Turner, and Robert Mercer satirised the ultra-conservative Australian politician ex-fish-and-chip-shopkeeper Pauline Hansen.
Facing the very commercial imperatives they lampooned, Campfire exhibited at the Melbourne Art Fair in 1998, and again in 2000. However, parallel cultural projects always ensured an integrity and relevance to their own community. Thus they also organised collaborative art events at the Woodford Folk Festival (from 1995), the DAR Brisbane/Papunya exchange projects with the Brisbane City Council (since 1998), and sundry seminars, exchanges, residencies and educational workshops for artists.
Although initially male-dominated, Campfire also accommodated women's issues. In 1994 they had organised That's Women All Over, an exhibition of women's art from diverse locations curated by Joyce Watson and Anne Gela. And, as well as established women artists from the desert Campfire supported young and unrepresented women artists such as Sue Elliott who wandered into the Torrington Street studio with bizarre canvases signed 'Stranger 29'. Also they took in work by Bianca Beetson and Ruby Abbott Napangardi. Exuberant Bianca outrageously combined 'earthy' 'women's business' with pink and fluffy humour while Ruby spent periodic stints in Fortitude Valley away from her home in Alice Springs painting her own exquisite starburst patterned dreamings. Also shown were Barbara Weir from Utopia, Samantha Meeks from Cairns and Joanne Currie from Mitchell. And, when her onerous teaching load allowed her, Jennifer Herd, originally a theatre costume designer, took part in installation work.
The broad mix of Northern, South-Eastern, and Western Queensland, and Central Australian participants in Campfire was best illustrated by the show Saltwater Freshwater Borewater in 1996. Indigenous artists from coastal, riparian and inland locations demonstrated the breadth of their culture.
Stratton Street Fire-Works
The third phase of Campfire history begins with the untimely passing of Lin Onus in 1996. It is characterised by Campfire's promotion of 'avant garde' works by veteran central desert artist Michael Nelson Jagamara and culminates in the shift of Fire-Works Gallery in April 2002 to new premises on the previous site of Savode Gallery at Stratton Street, Newstead.
Lin Onus, along with Trevor Nickolls, had acted as an early inspiration for 'urban' Indigenous art. He was a competent spokesman on Indigenous cultural issues, and a highly respected artist. Michael Eather first met him in 1987 in remote Maningrida where they discovered a shared view about the need to dismantle barriers. 'Here was an urban Aboriginal artist and a young white artist both out of our country', reminisces Eather, 'this dislocation spawned the idea of Balance'. Eather continued the dialogue even after Onus's passing. The Ongoing Adventures of X and Ray (1999) was a tribute that maintained the legend and saw a continuation of Eather's engagement with the themes raised by Onus. As that of a white artist, Eather's 'story' was always essentially a personal adventure. Onus, on the other hand, could never escape the imperatives of his culture. The nostalgic struggle between these points of view in The Ongoing Adventures of X and Ray rehearses Campfire's struggle to maintain its foundational principles in the face of economic demands and marks its transition to the next phase of its history.
Michael Nelson Jagamara (then spelled Tjakamarra) had been included in the 1990 Balance show when he still produced immensely complex and fastidious dot paintings in the tradition of his native Papunya Tula region. A decade later, with streamlined name and streamlined art, now a core member of Campfire, he began to simplify his key symbols and apply the paint in rapid 'action painting' style onto plain unworked fields of colour. In this, he had followed the trend begun by Emily Kngwarreye who towards the end of her career produced increasingly simplified impasted oils at a furious rate. But it is a mistake to identify Jagamara's work with 'hot' abstract expressionism. There is no 'passion of the moment' or release of an 'unconscious' here: the paint splatters are as calculated and as bound to the storylines as Papunya dots were. As if to prove this, Jagamara continues to retrace the last gasps of modernism by also telling his story through 'minimalist' sculptural pieces. This 'cool' sophisticated phase of Indigenous art falls in complete accord with the new sophisticated space of Fire-Works on Stratton. Here, in one of Brisbane's most spacious galleries, polished floors have replaced bare concrete and tourist artefacts have given way to a more financially ambitious mix of contemporary art including, in the new Fire-Works' opening show, artists that have no direct connection with Indigenous issues.
Prior to the move, white nationally-collected sculptor and installation artist JM John Armstrong joined the Campfire team as Gallery and Project Manager and injected a sympathetic but strong element of efficiency to Campfire operations. These evolutionary processes were indicative of contemporary Indigenous art's absorption into the institutionalised mainstream. But also they signalled the success of Campfire's original project to make that institution more tolerant and inclusive. Nonetheless there always looms the question as to whether success threatens the 'authenticity' of their art in terms of its remaining relevant to its own Indigenous community in the manner I have argued was its greatest strength.
Over the years Campfire had weathered many challenges to emerge relatively unscathed. The two most challenging to my mind, however, are now 'mainstream' success and maturity. By 2005, many of the original protagonists of this valiant enterprise are in their 40s and 50s. While still active producers, they deserve time for a personal career distinct from the collective enterprise and its struggles. However, also they need to create ongoing roles for a new generation.
Although Fire-Works as a gallery necessarily becomes increasingly autonomous and administratively demanding, with seemingly entirely commercial ventures such as the upmarket Fireplace annexe at Fortitude Valley, there has yet still been time for Campfire initiatives. Overseas shows such as Spirit And Vision which went to Sammlung, Essl and Vienna, continuing curatorial installation projects such as 'Discomfort', and public art projects such as Secret Country, Dogwood Crossing at Miles, Bus Shelters at Thuringowa and Smoke at the Coloola Institute of TAFE. Such initiatives managed through Campfire promise to keep Fire-Works in touch with 'grass roots' concerns. But the most significant strategy has been the establishment of a studio space downstairs from the new gallery to take on young Indigenous artists-in-residence in company with older mentors.
Visiting artists such as Richard Bell, Joanne Currie, Jenny Fraser, Djon Mundine, Janice Peacock, and Alan Warrie have set a pattern where the downstairs space at Fire-Works is used for exhibition during the hot summer months and becomes a workshop in the rest of the year. This became formalised as the NEWflames artist in residency program and, in 2004, became an Incorporated Foundation. As a Foundation that can attract donations eligible for tax benefits NEWflames now promises, whether Campfire manages to survive in perpetuity in any formal sense or not, an independent financial support for young artists to work with experienced ones and thus promote cultural transmission across generations within a framework that allows artists to earn a living. However, a gallery space that is flexible enough to avoid alienating not only Indigenous artists but also their Indigenous audiences is still crucial for this. Grass roots involvement, together with the energy and imagination of people such as Michael Eather and the continuing commitment of Indigenous artists such as Laurie Nilsen, with his exceptional understanding of, and respect for, all three types of culture, 'white', 'remote' and 'urban' Aboriginal, remains the essential ingredient that can ensure the balance, and hence the continuity, of the spirit of Campfire.
Open Handed, Open Minded, Open Hearted
Linda Carroli
'Since that critical moment, when our leaders decided that we would survive and that we would endure, we have learnt new ways of holding knowledge and communicating our stories to others. We have also learnt much about the world beyond our own tribal lands and we have learnt that there is much power out there – a power that is greater than the blood-lust of the white men who still want to hunt us. That is why we write, that is why we dance, that is why we make films and act on stages – and that is why we paint.'
– Sam Watson1
'Each will know his own. We have been helped, inspired, multiplied.'
– Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari2
When Richard Bell and Michael Eather talk about the development of the Campfire Group, they recount it as a journey, a strange and powerful journey into rugged lands. Those forays, involving collaborative and cross-cultural practice, impinge on an art world not known for its inclusiveness. It's a particularly hostile territory whose borders can sometimes seem closed. Since the initial spark of Balance 19903, followed by more than a decade of crossings, comings and goings, Campfire has established its cross-cultural and collaborative imperative as a collective identity. At the core of this imperative is the creation and maintenance of a meeting place which is comprised of both an ethos (or a mental space) and a physical space, the studio where practice and process take shape. Campfire's name poses the intention of a meeting place where connections and dialogue are assumed and formed. It is around the metaphorical (and sometimes, real) campfire that artists meet, sit and talk, where stories unfold. Within this meeting place – a kind of thirdspace4 – everything and everyone comes together.
The landmark Balance 1990 set the scene for the emergence of Campfire, and then Fire-Works Gallery, in the 1990s. It emerged from a 20-year epoch of political dispute and turbulence in Australian race relations. From the 1968 referendum which conferred Australian citizenship on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples until the 10,000 strong march on the 1988 Bicentenary of Invasion (otherwise known as Australia Day), there was a persistent and resounding call for sovereignty, justice and land rights. Balance was connected to this movement, adding its voice to those many others who sought to provide points of connection and exchange across cultures. This event was both timely and of its time.
Equally, Campfire's development is contingent on and informed by the political situation, as well as on shifts in artistic and cultural practice. Those practices couched in theoretical languages of conceptualism and postmodernism proliferated. While an age-old practice in Indigenous culture, collaboration has only recently entered the fray of contemporary artistic practice in the last 40 years or so: collective rather than individual artistic identity and authorship. In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists were gaining recognition and marketability. Campfire artists are all wise to and savvy about the economic and political context in which they work. Such awareness was one of the driving forces of the group. In his statement in the 1992 Sydney Biennale catalogue, Anthony Bond vividly presents the difficulties faced by Aboriginal artists a decade ago: 'It is hard for those who take for granted access to available resources to understand what it is like to feel so alienated that you cannot event formulate the question… the feeling of powerlessness is a serious factor hindering the artistic development of Aboriginal people.'5 Several years on, Eather proposed that 'artists operate in borderless worlds, guided by their artistic integrity. To perceive divisions within contemporary art based simply on race and geographical positioning is immature. Likewise, to think that all Indigenous artists are somehow operating in some form of mythical isolation is naive and patronising.'6 In a recent interview, when asked about the situation of Aboriginal art in a 'world aesthetic', Richard Bell (nominated in 2002 as one of the Australia's most collectable artists) commented that 'there's two ways to look at it – one is that it's certainly the most exciting movement in the late 20th century. Another view that I take is that Aboriginal Art is a white thing. White people buy it, white people say what's good, what's bad. They sit in judgement.'7
The curators of Balance – Michael Eather and Marlene Hall - searched for and identified shared influences among Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous artists in the 1980s.8 While 'sharing' provided the basis of Balance, it did not mean that common ground or equilibrium was necessarily sought or found. Sharing did not mean sameness and sharing did not erase difference. Sharing did mean creating a meeting place. The members of Campfire continue to live and work by this ethos, as a connected yet diverse group. For many artists, Balance impacted on the perception and reception of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. Artist and core member of Campfire, Laurie Nilsen, described the exhibition as a turning point for urban artists.
Balance opened the doors for everyone. Not only for Murri urban artists but I think for whitefellas too, it gave them an opportunity to meet and talk with black artists. Some collaborative stuff came out of that … All of a sudden you could meet other artists and talk about what you are doing and where you are heading. We just mixed in different circles until then. After Balance we never looked back and a lot of that is thanks for Marshall Bell and Michael Eather; they opened a lot of doors and the momentum just kept going.9
In Balance, and consequently Campfire, several selected threads of recent political and cultural history are intertwined.
For some, collaboration has been a problem, sometimes even a scandal, having resulted in questions about authorship and authenticity as well as accusations of fraud and betrayal. In her essay for the 2000 Adelaide Biennale, curator of Beyond The Pale, Brenda L. Croft states that collaboration between family, partners and community in cultural activities is 'long understood, accepted and expected': 'Collaborative [works] are part of an ongoing continuum, an enacting of practices that have taken place forever: caring for culture, encouraging individual style, yet remembering communal ownership… It is not the artists that have a problem with the concept of sharing and collaboration of the hand, eye and mind, but rather aspects of a mainly Eurocentric art market, often media-driven, which demands new stars each season. These same limited perspectives continue to categorise and define contemporary Indigenous artists, and promote uniformed notions of Indigenous expression and connection with country, irrespective of where or how they live. Collaboration is not the crime.'
Addressing his own experience of collaboration, Eather said, 'for many Indigenous artists, collaboration is embedded in the holistic function of art. It is part and parcel of their obligations, a shared currency relevant to their daily life… To honestly and openly collaborate with another individual means that you essentially let go with one hand in order to take on a new grip.'12 Both Eather and Croft point to a type of collaboration that is open handed, open minded and open hearted. Similarly, reflecting on the collaborative process for developing the Fish'n'Chips installations included in the Black Humour exhibition, Nilsen said: 'We just sat down and workshopped. Some people didn't contribute a lot at first because they thought their ideas might be silly. I said, No, if anything comes into your head just thrown it to the table. We just kept workshopping until we came up with the labels. Bob [Mercer] and Simon [Turner] went to Pauline's fish and chip show posing as tourists, and took a heap of photos and brought them back and got them turned into postcards … Some of us did our own pieces as well.'13
Charles Green, in The Third Hand: Collaboration In Art From Conceptualism To Postmodernism, addresses several types of collaboration including those resulting in the construction of bureaucratic identities; those developed through marital and family bonds; and those through which a 'transitional authorial figure' or 'third hand' was developed.14 Obviously, there are areas of overlap between the three categories. While the cultural basis of Campfire's collaborations differs to those in Green's study, the second and third categories seem to apply. Within Campfire there are familial bonds and friendships. The group has also evolved as a 'transitional authorial figure' whereby Campfire is an entity, sometimes corporation and sometimes trademark, which authors artwork. Green states that 'shared authorship was a strategy to convince the audience of new understandings of art and identity'. While the textuality of their work is complicated by a cross-cultural process, for the Campfire Group, this strategy retains its efficacy. Campfire's work urges the audience to look for the seams and evidence of collaboration.
Campfire artists have consistently been using collaboration and art to make pointed statements which may not otherwise be made. As a process, collaboration provides a critique about the ways in which art is generally produced and commodified. According to Bell, art also bears an unavoidable communicative capacity: '[Art] is the only forum left where you can get an alternate point of view. Art gives an independent voice.'16 Campfire's work is politically charged, riddled with symbolic and critical language, appropriations and gestures. In All Stock Must Go!, the ethics of the art market and industry is found wanting. Off the back of a decaying cattle truck, Indigenous artworks and souvenirs were sold. With the prospect of money to made, the drama equals the stock exchange floor. Expanding the collaboration, 'an open invitation was extended to Indigenous artists, from small community producers to art centres and high profile artists around the country to set up shop'.17 While bringing the selectivity and elitism of museum practices into disrepute, All Stock Must Go! foregrounded Indigenous perspectives. Its openness and inclusivity across generations, language, cultures and geographies is integral to Campfire's ethics and ethos.
In a decade pock-marked by 'culture wars' - manifesting vapidly as an attack on the National Museum of Australia's treatment of Indigenous history18 – Bell does indeed have a point. If those few institutional overtures towards more genuinely inclusive historiographies are to be ideologically overwritten through government appointed and politically motivated inquiries, then an independent voice and forum is more pressingly necessary. For Campfire, integral to that voice is an inflection of humour which addresses deadly serious concerns. In major collaborative installations such as All Stock Must Go! and Fish'n'Chips, the utility of humour (irony or satire) to communicate uncomfortable political realities is borne out. It also reflects the dynamic of how Campfire's members meet and talk with each other. With such works, humour becomes a strategy – part of the ethos - through which to multiply meaning, split intention and strengthen bonds within the group. Sharing a laugh can be as enriching and affirming as it is empowering. There's nothing like a joke to help people relax and feel welcome in the face of issues and inquiries that cut to the core of Australian national identity. For Bell, humour is integral to the communicative aspects of art especially work that is confrontational: 'I like to use satire and other tools of humour to soften the blow, so to speak, because ultimately, it's about communication.'19 Likewise, Bianca Beetson, one of the artists involved in Fish'n'Chips and All Stock Must Go!, said humour provides 'the ability to laugh at ourselves and to laugh at the time we find ourselves in, an overall sense of the ridiculous and the absurd … I see it as a necessary tool for survival and self determination… a spoonful of sugar helps the metaphor go down.'
For Campfire, collaborative practice is a connecting practice: assemblage and arrangement. Connections are formed through community, tradition, country and encounter. In John Rajchman's analysis of Deleuzian philosophy, 'to make connections one needs… a trust that something may come out, though one is not yet completely sure what'.21 This is an ethos applicable to Campfire: openness and trust is at the core of Campfire's process. One example is Eather and Lin Onus' collaboration on the X and Ray works which have evolved from paintings to cast sculptures, a cd-interactive, prints and computer generated and manipulated images. In the Saltwater Freshwater Borewater catalogue, Eather describes Campfire's process: 'Campfire Group posits its working philosophy on issues surrounding cultural collaboration and exchange. The opportunity this provides for artists to open cultural boundaries and share knowledge and information with new audiences is a central motivational factor in the Group's process and practice. Along with the production of artworks, Campfire artists have provided the curatorial framework, administration, framing and catalogue in a collaborative effort.'22
Campfire organises and operates in accordance with Indigenous principles. As an entity – a meeting place, node, collective, machine, etc – Campfire engages an ethics which is activated by a practice a cross-cultural collaboration. While there's no communication and no exchange without it, the collaborative undertakings take many forms based on the needs of the participating artists and particular projects. In his shift from dot paintings, Warlpiri elder, Michael Nelson Jagamarra, collaborated with Campfire for his striking 'expressionist' works comprised of iconic symbols such as the yam and lightning strike. Jagamarra works in the Campfire studio, making several visits each year to paint and develop new bodies of work. The studio environment engenders new dynamics for all the artists involved. For Jagamarra, it has meant 'being around other artists painting and drawing and assembling has certainly provided us all with energy and spirit to share and compare.'23 Jagamarra is a storyteller and his stories remain the focus of his work whether he is painting, or producing drawings to be translated into sculptures or collaborating directly with other artists including Imants Tillers. In another collaborative undertaking, Central Desert artist, Walala Tjapaltjarri worked with Campfire in the translation of two-dimensional works depicting the sacred Tingari Cycle to steel sculptures. In June 2000, Eather visited Alice Springs to work with Tjapaltjarri in his Gallery Gondwana studio. Ink-on-paper works were produced and in Brisbane, Campfire artists – Eather, Nilsen and Elton Cole – used computer technologies to map the drawings so that the images could be cut from steel and assembled into the sculptures.
As a self-taught artist, Joanne Nalingu Currie has been a core member of Campfire Group since the mid 1990s. As with other artists, her engagement with Campfire means she develops skills and her professional profile. Campfire provides opportunities that individual artists wouldn't ordinarily have access to: processes, experience, experimentation and projects. Currie's involvements have included All Stock Must Go! and the public art commission, Dogwood Crossing @ Miles in collaboration with Nilsen and JM John Armstrong. Taking on the role of Project Manager with Campfire Group, Armstrong steered the group into new types of collaborations. While the organising principles based on Indigenous culture are retained, Armstrong's involvement diversified Campfire's project base and expanded the collaborative dynamic to involve community groups, government and public sector agencies. The artists comprising Campfire retain their individual artistic practices and occasionally work under the collective umbrella to make and exhibit their own works. Yet, the works and projects remain collaborative. While there are 'core members', the membership of Campfire is not static – artists come and go. Exhibitions such as Six Coats of Black (2002) provide the opportunity for recent additions to Campfire – Archie Moore and Janice Peacock - to present their work alongside longer term members. According to Armstrong, while there are a couple of factors that make Campfire's collaborative process unique and viable, its understanding requires an awareness of Indigenous perspectives and approaches as culturally located. First, the studio space which has always been integral to Campfire transforms each process into a 'physical conversation that's spatially contingent'.24 The second factor stems from how that conversation dovetails with Indigenous principles.
For Armstrong: 'Each artist brings their own thing to these conversations. We're doing more than simply workshopping ideas. The artists are contributing what is uniquely their story or motif - for Joanne [Currie] that's the Maranoa motifs, for Laurie [Nilsen] that's Bungle Creek, for Michael [Eather] it's the stingray. These motifs do not belong to Campfire and no motif will be used in any work without the permission of the artist who brings that with them into the studio. Part of organising on Indigenous principles means that there's respect for each artist's integrity and sovereignty. When we're in the studio working, there's approval for a coming together of stories. It's not necessarily based on consensus but on acknowledgement. The individuals are not subordinate to the collective.'25
This approach is made all the more evident through Currie's positioning of her own work. Born and raised at the Mitchell Yumba in southwest Queensland, Currie recounts her memories of swimming and fishing in the Maranoa River. Her motifs reflect on her cultural ties to the Mitchell region and through her work (and ultimately her involvement with Campfire), she seeks to reinvent traditional designs. She has researched and sourced Maranoa shield designs through discussions with her extended family as well as historical research at the Queensland Museum. For Currie, 'it's important to show these designs. People can look at the art and say, "oh, that's from Mitchell".'26 While there are 'in jokes', the processes are more complex and nuanced than the type of collaboration described by Michael Archer where 'the dialogue between the members of the collaborative unit gets taken up with itself and results in work of exquisite self-referentiality'.27
Campfire's body of work is not possible without either the 'meeting place' or the collaboration. Yet, the artists do not dissolve into the collaborative group, nor do they relinquish their identities and histories to it. It's important and necessary for elements of the collaboration to be identifiably associated with or imprinted by particular artists. Without ethics, there's no connection or affirmation. These ethics aren't abstractions nor are they a kind of postcolonial radical chic. Rather, they are negotiated, lived and practiced. As Simon Wright has said of Jagamarra, 'the key is that this artist is in no way willing to perpetuate anachronistic notions that cross-cultural artistic strategies in Australia are one-way borrowings meant to enhance historical European understandings of self and other'. As a meeting place, Campfire is a nodal point in the trajectories of its members' careers, practices and lives. It is an authorial figure which while constant is also in constant flux. In its various permutations, Campfire provides new understandings of collaboration as an open, affirming and cultural arrangement.
1. 'Voices of the Land Denied' Dreamtime: Zeitgenossische Aboriginal Art/The Dark And The Light Sammlung Essl, Vienna, 2001, p33.
2. On The Line Semiotext(e), New York, 1983, p1. The authors are describing their own collaborative process.
3. Balance 1990: Views, Visions, Influences (Curated by Michael Eather and Marlene Hall) Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1990.
4. According to Edward W. Soja, thirdspace is 'the space where all places are, capable of being seen from every angle, each standing clear; but also a secret and conjectured object, filled with illusions and allusions, a space that is common to all of us yet never able to be completely seens and understood… Everything comes together in Thirdspace.' Edward W. Soja Thirdspace: Journeys To Los Angeles And Other Imagined Spaces Blackwell Books, Malden, 1996, p56.
5. Anthony Bond The Boundary Rider: 9th Biennale Of Sydney 1992, p78.
6. Michael Eather 'On Collaboration: So What Is Collaboration?' Australian Indigenous Art News, p1.
7.� Richard Bell interviewed by Michael Eather [Catalogue for Richard Bell] Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane, 2002
8. Michael Eather and Marlene Hall 'Introduction' Balance 1990: Views, Visions, Influences Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1990, 8ff.
9. Laurie Nilsen cited in Michael Aird Brisbane Blacks Keeira Press, Southport, 2001, p98.
10. Brenda L. Croft 'Beyond the Pale: Empires Built On The Bones Of The Dispossessed' Beyond The Pale: Contemporary Indigenous Art [catalogue for the 2000 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art] Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2000, p14.
11. ibid.
12. Michael Eather 'On Collaboration' op cit, p10.
13. Laurie Nilsen cited in Michael Aird, op cit, p100.
14. Charles Green The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism To Postmodernism University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2001, xff.
15. ibid, pxiii
16. Richard Bell interviewed by Michael Eather, op.cit.
17. Margo Neale 'Campfire Group: All Stock Must Go!' The Second Asia Pacific Triennial Of Contemporary Art. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1996, p110.
18. At the time of writing, in January 2003, there were several reports published in the press about the appointment of a four-member review panel to consider the historical accuracy of displays in the National Museum of Australia. The Museum’s Gallery of First Australians was singled out for attention on the grounds that its depiction of Aboriginal history is 'biased and "politically correct"'. Such claims are adamantly denied by the NMA’s Director Dawn Casey. In a report published in The Australian ( Richard Yallop 'Battle of the Black Armband' 4 January 2003), historians and academics have focused on the reliance on Indigenous oral tradition in the recounting of events such as the Bell’s Falls massacre in the 1820s. For these historians, oral records of frontier conflict passed down from one generation to the next lack authority and are unreliable despite the cultural significance and maintenance of oral tradition in Indigenous culture.
19. Richard Bell cited in Marion Demozay Gatherings: Contemporary Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Art From Queensland, Australia Keeira Press, Southport, 2001, p36.
20. Bianca Beetson, cited in ibid, p34.
21. John Rajchman The Deleuze Connections MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000, p7.
22. Michael Eather 'Saltwater Freshwater Borewater' Saltwater Freshwater Borewater Campfire Group, Brisbane, 1997, p6.
23. Michael Eather 'Working with MNJ' [Catalogue for Michael Nelson Jagamarra and Campfire Group] Fire-Works Gallery/Campfire Group, Brisbane, 2000.
24. JM John Armstrong, notes from interview, 12 January 2003.
25. ibid.
26. Joanne Nalingu Currie in conversation with Michael Eather 'Joanne Currie: Maranoa' [Catalogue] Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane.
27. Michael Archer 'Collaborators' Art Monthly July-August 1994, p3.
28. Simon Wright 'MNJ: Some Other Way' [Catalogue for Michael Nelson Jagamarra and Campfire Group] Fire-Works Gallery/Campfire Group, Brisbane, 2000.