The presence of absence: Tommy McRae and Judy Watson in Australia, the imaginary grandstand at the Royal Academy in London

Abstract

Detail of Tommy McRae, Corroboree or William Buckley and Dancers from the Wathaurong People, c. 1890, ink on paper. University of Melbourne Archives.Nineteenth-century Indigenous art is remarkably absent from Australian contributions to World Art history. This close reading of Tommy McRae's drawings of a Victorian ‘Corroboree after Seeing Ships for the First Time’ argues that the presences and absences in Australian art history are epitomized in these nineteenth-century Indigenous works. The influence of photography and popular press imagery on McRae's representations of ceremony is analysed. How renderings of figure and ground bring colour and race into the very material support of his drawings is explored. The reverse assimilation of the ‘wild white man’ William Buckley is assessed in regard to the proto-national apparel in the colonial space that McRae illustrates. The reassessment of this early Aboriginal artist is framed by the exhibition of his work in London at the Royal Academy in 2013. Comparisons with Eugene von Guérard and William Barak are made in the visual analysis. The significance of the reception of the Australia exhibition as imaginary grandstand for the nation is further highlighted through Judy Watson's fire and water sculpture.