MCA Sydney · Guardian Art
Tony Albert interrogates colonial representations
Tony Albert's exhibition at MCA Sydney examines mass-produced caricatures of Aboriginal people collected over decades. The artist now invites the public to contribute their own problematic objects to confront complicity.
Albert's collection of over 3,000 items—tea towels, playing cards, ashtrays, figurines—represents the commodification and exoticization of First Nations cultures by non-Indigenous producers. Beginning with a plate purchased in 1980s Brisbane, Albert methodically assembled these objects as documentation of systemic misrepresentation. The exhibition Not a Souvenir, opening May 21, uses this archive to implicate viewers in the perpetuation of these harmful images and invites critical reckoning with colonial visual culture.
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