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‘Pay Attention Mother Fuckers’: Outlining a Strategy of Wordplay in Australian Indigenous Text-based Art

‘Pay Attention Mother Fuckers’: Outlining a Strategy of Wordplay in Australian Indigenous... Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 2017, vol. 17, no. 1, 54–67 https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2017.1330677 ‘Pay Attention Mother Fuckers’: Outlining a Strategy of Wordplay in Australian Indigenous Text-based Art Jacob G. Warren * Text as Critical Device In 2010, two installations, one standard and the other a back-to-front version of the text ‘PAY ATTENTION MOTHER FUCKERS’, were installed on opposite walls at the City Gallery Wellington. The 50 large-scale aluminium letters of Tony Albert’s Pay Attention (2009–2010, Figure 1) were individually finished in different styles and with a mix of media (vinyl, paint), objects (kitsch wood carvings, bumper stickers and book pages), images (textbook illustrations, photographs and video stills), and forms (the Aboriginal flag and expressions of custodial knowledge). This article examines text-based works such as Pay Attention and others by Vernon Ah Kee, Fiona Foley and Archie Moore in a preliminary attempt to address the art-historical silence on Indigenous text-based art and prompt further research into this formally and conceptually diverse field. The shared historical context of what this article argues are defamiliarising uses of language in Pay Attention, and the small group of Indigenous text-based art being explored, begins with Marcel Duchamp’s jovial yet satirical ready-made L.H.O.O.Q. (1919). http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Taylor & Francis

‘Pay Attention Mother Fuckers’: Outlining a Strategy of Wordplay in Australian Indigenous Text-based Art

Warren, Jacob G.
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art , Volume 17 (1): 14 – Jan 2, 2017
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‘Pay Attention Mother Fuckers’: Outlining a Strategy of Wordplay in Australian Indigenous Text-based Art

Abstract

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 2017, vol. 17, no. 1, 54–67 https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2017.1330677 ‘Pay Attention Mother Fuckers’: Outlining a Strategy of Wordplay in Australian Indigenous Text-based Art Jacob G. Warren * Text as Critical Device In 2010, two installations, one standard and the other a back-to-front version of the text ‘PAY ATTENTION MOTHER FUCKERS’, were installed on opposite walls at the City Gallery Wellington. The 50...
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2017 The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Inc
ISSN
2203-1871
eISSN
1443-4318
DOI
10.1080/14434318.2017.1330677
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 2017, vol. 17, no. 1, 54–67 https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2017.1330677 ‘Pay Attention Mother Fuckers’: Outlining a Strategy of Wordplay in Australian Indigenous Text-based Art Jacob G. Warren * Text as Critical Device In 2010, two installations, one standard and the other a back-to-front version of the text ‘PAY ATTENTION MOTHER FUCKERS’, were installed on opposite walls at the City Gallery Wellington. The 50 large-scale aluminium letters of Tony Albert’s Pay Attention (2009–2010, Figure 1) were individually finished in different styles and with a mix of media (vinyl, paint), objects (kitsch wood carvings, bumper stickers and book pages), images (textbook illustrations, photographs and video stills), and forms (the Aboriginal flag and expressions of custodial knowledge). This article examines text-based works such as Pay Attention and others by Vernon Ah Kee, Fiona Foley and Archie Moore in a preliminary attempt to address the art-historical silence on Indigenous text-based art and prompt further research into this formally and conceptually diverse field. The shared historical context of what this article argues are defamiliarising uses of language in Pay Attention, and the small group of Indigenous text-based art being explored, begins with Marcel Duchamp’s jovial yet satirical ready-made L.H.O.O.Q. (1919).

Journal

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jan 2, 2017

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