- First Edition 2000, 144 pages including index
- Published by Queensland Art Gallery (in association with exhibition)
- Limp cover, fold in flaps, large format - 26.1 x 28.5 cm
- Condition: Very good, minor edge scuffs
This is the first publication to explore the art and life of this remarkable contemporary Australian artist whose career has spanned the last three decades of the struggle for Indigenous rights in Australia. Lin Onus was a powerfully positive man, who was ahead of his time and who showed us through his art what it means to be Australian today.
Lin Onus drew on his Aboriginal and Scottish ancestry to reconcile cultural difference both in terms of his own personal identity and in the broader cross-cultural and political landscape. This he did by engaging in an often deceptively light-hearted dialogue punctuated with wit and humour, creating a truly unique visual language that unsettles many of the conventional categories of western art discourse.
As an artist and activist, Onus addressed the political and social concerns of his people and inserted Indigenous perspectives into the telling of Australian history. Described by curator Margie Neale as 'a cultural terrorist of gentle irreverence', his engaging use of irony draws the viewer into a unique world of fact, fantasy and fiction, relying on inclusion rather than alienation for impact.
Lin Onus forged a distinctive style, which combined imagery from traditional and contemporary Aboriginal sources and from western art. This richly illustrated monograph is published to coincide with a retrospective exhibition which brings together, for the first time, a significant body of his work, comprising fifty-eight paintings, prints and sculptures drawn from thirty-one private, public and corporate collections. It also includes previously unpublished photographs from the Onus family albums that reveal the interdependence of a Koori artist's personal, political and artistic lives.
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