Trepang: China and the story of Macassan- Aboriginal Trade – Examining historical accounts as research tools for cultural materials conservation

Abstract

The incorporation of the formal study of artists’ materials and techniques into conservation practice has formed the basis of a range of projects, programs and publications at least since the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Director of the Fogg Art Museum, Edward Forbes began to collect artists’ pigments for investigation and analysis. Of increasing interest to conservators is the way that trade and innovation impact on artistic production, including dates at which materials became available, centres of use, and the patterns of take up by artists. For conservators working in the Asia-Pacific region questions about Western artists’ materials are interesting and useful in informing decision-making. There is the danger, however, of embedding a discourse that privileges trade from the West as the most significant indicator of innovation in artistic practice.In Australia, across the continent and across the millennium trade goods from northern Australia were exchanged for material from the south. This trade supported the continued development of innovation in philosophy and practice in the performing and visual arts in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. By the seventeenth century, cultural innovation was supported by the important Asian north-south international trade in cultural material and commodities to China, through the Indonesian archipelago to the northern coastline of Australia. In return highly valued trepang (sea cucumber) and other items were traded from Australia through north Indonesia to China. In the late nineteenth century, Western artists’ materials from Europe were introduced into Australian Aboriginal art practice, and in the twentieth century an explosion of trade activity saw art materials produced in Europe and China purchased for use by Aboriginal artist and Aboriginal art traded across Europe, the Americas and Asia. This paper examines how the important trade routes, developed prior to European settlement, inform contemporary art making in Aboriginal communities today.