Our Metro Mob

Adelaide-based Contemporary
Australian Indigenous artists

Tandanya is proud to be celebrating the work of our Adelaide-based Australian Indigenous artists in Our Metro Mob as part of the 2008 South Australian Living Artists Festival and in conjunction with the Adelaide Festival Centre's Our Mob exhibition of regional and remote South Australian Aboriginal artists.

Our Metro Mob brings together 18 artists who represent a broad and diverse demographic of Aboriginal people whose works encompass a dominant theme of cultural identity.

These artists have backgrounds from all different corners of Australia and the world. They are not necessarily city born-and-bred; some have only recently taken up residency in Adelaide and many have been forced into metropolitan living after leaving their communities in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, the Northern Territory and Western Australia as a result of the recent intervention strategies put in place. Others have been displaced from their community, are seeking better quality health care services or are looking for employment, training and housing in the city. Some on the other hand have been urban dwellers all of their lives.

All however, share a common passion for their Aboriginal ancestry and maintain connections to their Indigenous roots through the identification of such heritage though their art.

The artworks in this exhibition convey strong connections to tradition, history, cultural heritage, totemic symbols and rules of kinship. Some reflect stories which have been passed on through the generations; others reference ongoing struggles for land, identity and cultural survival and some incorporate the recent long-awaited apology to the Aboriginal people from The Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd in February this year for the past grief, suffering and loss which had been inflicted on generations of Indigenous men and women.

As a collective these works are a tremendous representation of the diversity of mediums and themes which our Indigenous South Australian metropolitan artists are practicing and addressing today.

Regardless of how long each of these artists have lived in Adelaide or what their cultural heritage is, they are all very proud people who embrace their culture through art, and therefore contribute to the survival of Aboriginal history and culture today.