CASS wins three AIATSIS Research Grants

The ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS) has won three Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) research grants in the 2010 submissions. CASS submitted four applications thus resulting in a 75% success rate. The total grant allocations awarded to CASS is nearly $60,000.

The three successful AIATSIS research grants are:

Intercultural images: Warlpiri Drawings from the 1950s

Principal researcher: Dr Melinda Hinkson (School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Research School of Humanities and the Arts)

In 1953-4 anthropologist Mervyn Meggitt collected 144 drawings by Warlpiri people at Lajamanu. This project will explore the two-fold significance ofthe drawings – produced as part of a process in which Warlpiri people were making sense of their rapidly changing world, and as mediating objects in cross-cultural exchange. The project will bring the drawings to the attention of the descendents of the artists as well as the public, and result in a monograph that explores their significance within the history of the western desert art movement, as well as for the Warlpiri community.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye and her fellow artists from Utopia – a history of the art movement

Principal researcher: Chrischona Schmidt (PhD candidate in inter-disciplinary cross-cultural studies)

At the centre of this research project is the close analysis of the history of the Utopia art movement over the past thirty years. It investigates how this art movement came about, the beginnings of it in batiks and its development to an internationally renowned art movement with the emergence of Emily Kame Kngwarreye as a 'genius artist' as a turning point in this history. It aims at understanding and re-tracing this particular art history in three ways: By examining the artworks, talking with the artists and investigating their negotiations with the art world, as well as observing their interactions with kin whilst creating art.

The String Figures of Yirrikala

Principal researcher: Robyn McKenzie (PhD candidate in inter-disciplinary cross-cultural studies)

Fieldwork research with participants from Yirrkala and Homelands communities exploring intangible cultural heritage related to the McCarthy collection of string figures from Yirrkala, 1948, Australian Museum, Sydney. Divided into three research trips the work involves recording existing traditional knowledge of string figures, documenting historical changes in string figure practices, and through participatory research methods, facilitating and documenting contemporary responses to the collection.

For more information:

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS)
School of Archaeology and Anthropology
School of Cultural Inquiry
Research School of Humanities and the Arts