Double take: reappraising the colonial archive

Abstract

Conventional use of the colonial visual archive as evidence and historical illustration is undergoing a significant shift, giving way to creative interventions by Indigenous Australians. The ferment surrounding the “history wars” has led artists and scholars to rethink the colonial archive as a contested site productive of dynamic and archaic revisions. Departing from the memory ruts that have become entrenched in the national imaginary, these disruptions, reappraisals and refigurings importantly foreground Indigenous Australia's relationship with the colonial archive.