Yet, there’s another side, of tremendous work that’s been done when white and black artists collaborate, or work side by side.

Black White & Restive, the explosive exhibit curated by Newcastle freelance curator Una Rey that opened on Friday night at Newcastle Art Gallery,  shows many shades of the dynamic relationship between Aboriginal artists and the rest of the Australian art community.

The exhibit showcases the work of Aboriginal artists, non-Indigenous artists and many works that have resulted from cross-cultural collaboration between the two. 

Rey, a lecturer in art at the University of Newcastle and a practising visual artist, was perfectly poised to pull together this show. She grew up on a property on the Ellensborough River near Comboyne west of Port Macquarie.  Her parents, Rick Reynolds and Jenny Hooper, were always keen advocates of art (“It was always a case of when, not if, I would go to art school,” she says.)

After high school, she travelled around northern Australia, working a season on a pearl lugger out of Cairns and then doing a stint working in adventure tourism in the Kimberleys.

“I was taking people rock climbing and abseiling, living in Kununurra,” she recalls. “It was very beautiful. And that’s where I first saw the amazing Aboriginal painting that was going on at that time. People like Rover Thomas made an incredible impact on the Australian art world.

“Because I was excited by that, I thought ‘there’s no point coming back down to Sydney or Melbourne to study art, I’ll do it up in Darwin where all this influence is.’ ”

Rey proceeded to follow her plan, obtaining an undergraduate degree in fine art at The Northern Territory University (now Charles Darwin University). She also picked up a valuable part-time job at Framed Gallery in Darwin.

“I almost learned more there than at university because I had access to so much work,” she says. “I was so lucky. It was a wonderful apprenticeship.”

Rey went on to work at art community centre positions based in remote Aboriginal settlements, including Haasts Bluff (west of the famous Hermannsburg settlement where Albert Namatjiri came from), Jilamara Arts in Snake Bay in the Tiwi Islands, and Balgo, Western Australia.

It was difficult work, supporting the production and marketing of aboriginal art for the commercial market, with a shoestring budget.

But it was an exhilarating experience in Haasts Bluff, she says. “When  I went there I was most excited by the painting. It was very hybrid. Landscape. Abstraction. Iconographic. Classical desert painting.”

“It was tough stuff,” she says. “A lot of funerals, a lot of social dysfunction that makes it challenging to live and work in those communities.”

The first-hand experience was invaluable, selling Aboriginal artists’ works, getting it placed in exhibits and public collections, developing career paths for the best artists, and dealing with the basics of material, travel and documentation.

After a year in the remote setting, she began painting for herself again.

“I was a bit anxious about whether I could even paint with what was going on around me. Was it another act of colonialism, or could I paint landscape,” she recalls. “Could I paint what was going on? It sounds silly to me now. But it was very real.”

Rey landed in Newcastle in 2006 with her husband Piers Hammick and sons Harlan and Tui, obtaining her doctorate at the University of Newcastle in 2009.

In recent years Rey worked as a research assistant for Professor Ian McLean at the University Wollongong on a project about how Australian artists, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have engaged with Aboriginal art forms. That work, combined with her own experiences, provided excellent grounding for Black White & Restive.

​In recent years Rey worked as a research assistant for Professor Ian McLean at the University Wollongong on a project about how Australian artists, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have engaged with Aboriginal art forms. That work, combined with her own experiences, provided excellent grounding for Black White & Restive.

“It’s taken a long time for Aboriginal art to find its place in the contemporary art space, as art – not as ethnographic material,” Rey says. “There is a very dark shadow on our conscience.”

Yet, as the play on the words in the show’s title indicates, it is not an easy black or white issue for artists themselves.

“What’s happened with this exhibition, and the thing I’m most proud of,” Rey says. “I’ve got all these different people, different artists, with quite different philosophies and intellectual positions and they are all in the exhibition.

“As I said, you don’t come to like each other, and you don’t have to endorse what this person or that person is doing. In fact, you might take some serious issue with it. You might think it’s a real problem. But I’m asking you nevertheless to come together in one space and let people see how many different approaches, how many different ideas, how many different positions there are. And they are diverse, they are extreme.

“And I say, all of that, racist, reconciliation, I think it’s  all of those things. You agree to respect the difference, you respect the different approaches.”

From Newcastle Art Gallery’s point of view, the show continues a revitalisation of the cultural space under Newcastle City Council cultural director Liz Burcham’s guidance. 

The Mambo blockbuster show last summer drew 25,000 people to the gallery.

“Our visitors numbers at the gallery are constantly growing and we are also achieving our goal to diversify audiences,” Burcham says.

Black White & Restive offers an extensive program besides the gallery exhibit, which features more than 70 works over two floors, including 34 works from the gallery's own holdings. Already more than 500 children have participated in a community art project as part of Black White & Restive.

On Saturday there is an all-day symposium on the project featuring several artists who have work in the show (Peter Adsett, Michael Eather, Lucas Grogan, Kim Mahood), actor Trevor Jamieson and Aboriginal culture leaders Djon Mundine, Margo Neale (curatorial adviser for the show), Curtis Taylor, Taryne Laffar and academics.

“Black White & Restive is part of national conversation and we expect people to travel to Newcastle to view the exhibition,” Burcham says. “This is a visually stunning show and we’re confident that it will have broad appeal with strong word-of-mouth and attract multiple visitation.”

Burcham calls the show “knowingly dangerous” in the exhibit catalogue. “It was conceptualised with an appreciation of the tensions surrounding the theme of cross-cultural arts practice.”

Burcham further states: “Fears of misappropriation, a lack of clarity surrounding cultural boundaries and concern for degrading Aboriginal stories and culture are all present, unsurprisingly given Australia’s history.” 

There are certainly enough major names among the artists to draw attention. 

Works by Albert Namatjiri and Rex Battarbee lead the way, as they should. The two were famous collaborators in the Hermannsburg settlement.

Other major collaborations include a work by Tony Coleing and Robert Campbell jnr, an indigenous artist from Kempsey; a large piece by Michael Eather and 13 Indigenous artists; a series by Peter Adsett and Rusty Peters; and a controversial project by Imants Tillers and Michael Nelson Jagamara. There is an immersive multimedia offering, Always Walking Country, by Lynette Wallworth and Martumili artists and singer American singer Antony.

There are also notable works from Gordon Bennett, Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, Tim Johnson, Margaret Preston, Tony Tuckson and Neridah Stockley.

There are some great stories behind locating some of the pieces, like Bennett’s Ricochets, Manifest Destiny piece, which his wife found at their Queensland home all packaged with instructions, which had been stored since 1993.

“There are so many layers. You can go in there knowing nothing and you will be thrilled by the visual impact of the show,” Rey says. “It’s a beautiful show. If you don’t have a learning experience, you can have a sensual experience.

“But if you want to learn a whole lot of other stuff, it’s all there. You can do the hard work, or take the easy route. That’s what I would hope, people go back and see the exhibition more than once.”

(Una Rey is a reviewer for Weekender.)