Critics

On the iconophilia website, full text of Ian McLean's paper : Anxious identities: reinventing Australia in a changing world presented at the symposium at the Royal Academy 1 November 2013


Ron Radford  (Director of the National Gallery of Australia and a co-curator of the exhibition)

writes in the Brisbane Times on 18 December 2013 ' Shedding light on the art of our continent'

The British have not been as exposed to contemporary Aboriginal art compared with, say, the French, Germans, Canadians or Americans. Indigenous painting was too baffling for some of the older British critics.

Royal visit, Rothwell commentary and menu

Australian Channel 9 News reports on Prince Charles' visit to Australia at the Royal Academy
link
And reported in Royal Central here


Nicolas Rothwell 'Hanging in a post-colonial disconnect ' in The Australian 6 December 2013
'The indigenous way of seeing the country is being woven more and more into the nation's understanding of its landscape - but that art's resonance is Australian, not global.
...
On its own, bereft of background, seen by eyes without sympathy, it remains hieratic, jumbled; it is patterns, emblems, decoration, nothing more. For us, it may reveal a degree of meaning; for outsiders, it is the exotic, resistant unknown. This is the divide Australia at the Royal Academy has brought out. And if indigenous art makes its strongest appeal only to those implicated in its stories, if it remains mute without interpretation, is it somehow diminished? Are we?'

Royal Academy restaurant review of Australian themed menu