Tony Albert: From Collector to Worldwide Artist

Drawing on his collection of kitsch trinkets, this artist uses familiar objects to create new narratives around Aboriginal representation.

“I’ve been collecting since I was a child,” says Townsville-born Tony Albert of his “Aboriginalia” collection — kitschy objects found in antique stores and tourist shops that depict Aboriginal scenes and culture, manufactured by non-Aboriginal people. “It came from an innocent perspective of love but later I realised it had sinister undertones of appropriation.” The dolls and souvenirs often take centrestage in the Girramay, Yidinji and Kuku Yalanji artist’s mixed-media work, recontextualising the commodification of Aboriginal people into powerful narrative tools.

Albert studied Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art at the Queensland College of Art, which was the only recognised art degree of its kind at the time. He found a mentor in Richard Bell, with whom he co-founded Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW. Albert has exhibited around the world and been commissioned for large-scale public works including the interior of the new Sydney Football Stadium and Yininmadyemi Thou didst let fall, a sculpture in Sydney’s Hyde Park adjacent to the Anzac Memorial.

Next month, at Sullivan+Strumpf’s new Melbourne gallery (27 October to 12 November), Albert will delve deeper into his 2021 sellout show Conversations with Margaret Preston with an exhibition called Remark. Though the new works are more abstract, both collections are a creative tête-à-tête with printmaker and painter Margaret Preston (1875-1963), whose use of Aboriginal motifs helped influence the Aboriginalia trend in mid-century Australia. “The intention was not to bastardise her,” says Albert, noting his admiration for Preston as an artist who faced her own adversity. “If she was alive, I wonder what the dialogue would be like?”

Though his collection is dwindling, working with the pieces energises Albert’s focus and creativity. “It becomes a very interesting metaphor,” he says. “It gives us a voice as people but it also gives these objects an opportunity to have a voice outside of the framework that was originally set for them. I love that.”

Exhibited at:

ACC Galerie Weimar, Germany; Art Gallery of NSW and Carriageworks, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel.

Awards and prizes:

Finalist, Dobell Drawing Prize (2019), National Art School, Sydney; Finalist, Ramsay Art Prize (2017), Art Gallery of South Australia; Fleurieu Art Prize (2016); Basil Sellers Art Prize (2014); Official war artist, NORFORCE, Australian War Memorial (2012), Canberra.

Breakthrough moment:

“When I started to actually use my collection [of Aboriginalia] in my work.”

What the critics say:

“Albert is driven to shed light on the glaring and ongoing oppression of Indigenous people, and their inequality with non-Indigenous Australians, but his work is often so colourfully put together it has the effect of being hit by an iron fist in a velvet glove.” Jane Albert (no relation), The Australian.

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