The Art of Culture War: Collective Interests in the APY Affair
The APY Art Centre Collective scandal, ignited by Murdoch’s The Australian, exposed more than allegations of interference—it revealed power struggles in the Aboriginal art industry and became a flashpoint for culture wars. As institutions, dealers, and politicians jockeyed for position, the artists were caught in a battle over authenticity, control, and the future of Aboriginal contemporary art.
By Paris Lettau and Lévi McLean
Issue 1, Summer 2023/24
In April this year, The Australian published the first of an incendiary series of articles by journalist Greg Bearup under the headline “White Hands on Black Art: ‘Can I Juice This One Up a Little Bit?’” This media coverage sparked a spate of allegations about interference in paintings produced by the APY Art Centre Collective (APYACC), culminating in an independent review of a major National Gallery of Australia exhibition and a government probe, and reigniting the long-standing debate about authenticity and commercialism in Aboriginal art.
Related
Before pop, before Warhol, before Hamilton—there was Donald Duck. In a wartime outpost in Papua, Charles Bush painted an eerily prescient vision of mass media’s encroachment. A symptom, not an agent, of pop’s first age, Bush’s work sits uneasily in art history’s timeline.
Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) is a film without images—just a luminous ultramarine field and an evocative soundtrack. Made as he was dying of AIDS-related illness, Blue resists spectacle, embracing abstraction, memory, and loss. Thirty years on, it continues to evolve, expanding across artists, mediums, and generations.
