Not a Souvenir at the MCA highlights the commodification and misrepresentation of First Nations people – and invites the public to reckon with their complicity
When Tony Albert was around six years old, he bought a plate with an illustration of an Aboriginal boy’s face on it from his local op shop. It was mid-1980s suburban Brisbane and although he had a large family with connections to the Girramay, Yidinji and Kuku-Yalanji peoples of north Queensland, seeing Aboriginal people or culture on TV was rare – so the plate “felt very special”, the 45-year-old artist recalls.
Over the years he collected more of these kinds of objects – cups, tea towels, trays, playing cards and figurines, all ostensibly depicting Aboriginal people and designs, but created by non-Indigenous people, often caricatured, exoticised or kitsch.