Opal Field Gems Mine and Museum

Visited the Opal Field Gems Mine and Museum located at 33 King William Street after noticing the large ‘Aboriginal Art Gallery’ sign featured on the front of the store while on the way to Uni. This was to be my first visit to a gallery specifically to view Aboriginal art for the purpose of keeping this blog- my previous experiences with viewing Aboriginal art very limited- only briefly glancing over some Aboriginal works on my way through galleries and gift shops on the way to other art forms or items.

Having never really known much about Indigenous Australian art besides being able to recognize the dot pattern paintings as Aboriginal, the course lectures and subsequent conversations in tutorials have opened my eyes to the complex issues surrounding Aboriginal art. One Indigenous Australian student had voiced his opinion that ‘there was no such thing as Aboriginal art,’ that white man had called and commercialized the cultural practice of recording the ancestral stories and dreaming’s  into ‘art’ in order to simply make money from the Aboriginal people. He questioned what right white man had to ‘teach’ the students about Aboriginal ‘art.’ These controversial points were raised after the very first lecture in which the long history of the Aboriginal people was concisely summarized, and really sparked my interest in learning more about such a controversial and divisive subject.

The Opal Field Gems Mine and Museum presents a confusing picture when looking at the Aboriginal art works. Incorporating both large hand crafted Indigenous Australian arts works alongside tourist memorabilia such as tea towels and post cards featuring what appears to be Aboriginal arts works the commercialization of Aboriginal art can be easily identified. However, the further introduction of a collection of Aboriginal artifacts such as a Didgeridoo, digging and gathering tools further confuses the conversation between the tribal artifact- or ethnographical art- and the role of Aboriginal art within a modern or ethnographical context. While the divide between ethnographical and contemporary art continues to shrink as traditional artifacts, or artworks, are reexamined in relation to both contemporary and historical life; such as the Art Gallery of South Australia’s move to incorporate Indigenous Australian art with pre-colonial, colonial and twentieth century Australian art- having previously segregated the collections, a distinct division still remains.