Blog 4: ProppaNOW

The displacement of a people creates many hardships; loss of identity, a loss of community, a loss culture, a loss of resources and a frustration and confusion of what to do and how to retain some of that original cultural identity. The Aboriginal people have been feeling this dislocation for over 200 years. In 2003 ProppaNOW was created a group of Brisbane based Aboriginal artists. By creating the artistic collective the indigenous artists were given a collective voice. The central premise of ProppaNOW is to advocate and produce artists and exhibitions that question established notions of Aboriginal art and identity. The name Proppa is inspired by the Aboriginal people’s indoctrination by the white colonisers some 200 years ago of what is proper social behaviour and decided to reshape word with a more Indigenous slang with regard to their own opinion of what constitutes proper etiquette and manners.

Richard Bell is a member of the collective and calls himself an activist who is parading as an artist. He held an exhibition at the Monash University Museum of Art in 2013 to point the proverbial finger back at the colonial hierarchy by showcasing his works in an exhibition called, “A Lesson in Etiquette and Manners”. The cover featured Bell in old colonial clothes surrounded by what he describes as, “Blonde bronzed Aryan looking stereotypical Australians in gold bikinis and budgie smugglers.” One of the points of the works from Bell and the rest of the ProppaNOW collective were to create thought provoking pieces that shine a light on Australia’s darker side of history, with the overtaking of Aboriginals and their land by the gentrification of early settlements. Another reason was to give the artists a stronger standing in the Brisbane art community.

ProppaNOW was first conceived in 1997 but the trigger to formalise the collective came in 2004, soon after Peter Beattie, Queensland’s premier established QIAMEA (Queensland’s Indigenous Artists Marketing Export Agency).The problem the artists had with this was the areas that the agency focused on; Mornington Island, Arukun, and Lockhart River which meant that it was reinforcing a stereotype of the tribal Aboriginal artworks, ignoring the urban Koories. It was that the assumption was made that urban, educated Aboriginals had better access to galleries, agents, studios and other sources of funding.
Jennifer Herdy considered the matriarch of the ProppaNOW said, “I think urban artists are always put on the back burner so to speak. I’ve always felt that there are a number of urban artists, some of them from within our group, that have been overlooked, and deserve much more attention than they have received. You see some of these remote area artists … get good representation, and a lot of attention…”
References
Blak on Blak
http://www.artlink.com.au/issues/3010/blak-on-blak/
Learning to be Proppa- Journal article
http://www.artlink.com.au/articles/3359/

Bell’s Exhibition- MUMA site
http://www.monash.edu.au/muma/exhibitions/past/2013/richard-bell.html

Links for images
Richard Bell’s- Aboriginal Art it’s a White Thing
http://www.artlink.com.au/articles/3359/

Promotional Picture for Exhibition
http://www.troublemag.com/richard-bell-social-work/
Links for Video