Undergraduate - UnitATS3019 - Perspectives on Indigenous Art: Production, meaning and symbolism

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2013 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

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Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Monash Indigenous Centre
Offered	Clayton First semester 2013 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Liam Brady

Synopsis

Indigenous 'art' is a highly visible and recognizable symbol of peoples' engagement with their cultural identity, history and traditions. In this unit, students examine early and recent forms of Indigenous visual traditions (e.g. rock-art, bark paintings, sculpture) to learn about their role and significance in Indigenous societies. Topics to be discussed include art's relationship to landscapes and seascapes, issues of interpretation, and how art reflects interaction with the 'other'. The unit combines anthropological, archaeological, and Indigenous approaches to understanding the production, meaning and symbolism associated with various images and objects created through time.

Outcomes

The aim of this unit is to explore the ways early and recent Indigenous art relates to peoples' cultural identity, history and traditions. The unit also seeks to learn how art communicates or encodes information about various aspects of Indigenous cultures. Subject matter to be discussed will be drawn primarily from Australia and supplemented with comparative material from other regions including Aotearoa (New Zealand), North America, and southern Africa. On successful completion of the unit students will be able to:

develop an appreciation and understanding of the cultural heritage value of Indigenous art in a global sense;
demonstrate sound knowledge of the major forms of Indigenous art, their antiquity and their social function;
demonstrate an awareness for how different forms of art act(ed) to construct and/or reinforce Indigenous identity;
compare, contrast, and critically analyse key interpretive frameworks and techniques through which Indigenous art is (and has been) perceived;
discuss and comprehend the changes to Indigenous artistic traditions that occurred through contact with the 'other' (e.g. Europeans, Macassans);
demonstrate an understanding of the historical development and social context of major Indigenous artistic traditions.