Abstract
Since the 1980s, multidisciplinary artist Fiona Foley has created compelling art referencing her history, Aboriginal art, and her Badtjala heritage. In this brief essay, the author discusses an early series of Foley’s work in relation to ethnographic photography. This series connects to the wider trend of Indigenous artists creating art out of 19th century photographs intended for distribution to non-Indigenous audiences. By considering this earlier series of her work, this text considers Foley’s growth as a truly contemporary artist who uses the past as inspiration, invoking complicated moments of encounter between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians and their afterimages.
Highlights
Since the 1980s, multidisciplinary artist Fiona Foley has created compelling art referencing her history, Aboriginal art, and her Badtjala heritage
As a practicing artist for more than 30 years, Foley’s work has shifted and evolved. In her approach to art, she chooses her mediums—which have ranged from installation, public sculpture, photographic series, and multimedia work—based on the particular ideas she wants to convey in each project
By the mid 1980s, she began to explore her own Badtjala history and imagery from the coast of southern Queensland. Her wide-ranging artistic practice is enriched by her extensive education, both in the Western context through her degrees, and at home, where she learned about her culture and connection to K’Gari/Fraser Island
Summary
Since the 1980s, multidisciplinary artist Fiona Foley has created compelling art referencing her history, Aboriginal art, and her Badtjala heritage. Starting in the 1980s, many artists globally looked to the archives and other sources of imagery and photographs, engaging in practices of reuse, borrowing, and appropriation. Tracing a genealogy of Foley’s photography practices demonstrates a move from using archival works as subject material to reinterpreting history and the archive through more elaborate staged photographic series (Helmrich 2009; Allas 2010).
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