Not A Souvenir: Tony Albert Exhibit Turns Racist Aboriginalia Into A Powerful Act Of Truth-Telling

(MENAFN- The Conversation) Aboriginal people of my vintage grew up surrounded by Aboriginalia in the form of kitsch everyday objects, often depicting racist stereotypes that showed what Australia thought about us.

From wall hangings to tea-towels, to drink coasters and ashtrays, they were ever present. Later, when they began to be regarded as cringe-worthy, they were relegated to the op-shops frequented by a young Tony Albert.

The Girrimay, Kuku Yilanji, Yidinji artist describes his early fascination with these objects: complex, tangible reminders of racism. By incorporating them into his work, he reframes them within an immutable Blak presence - one that has informed his decades-long practice.

Care and considered

When you first enter Albert's exhibition, Not a Souvenir, showing at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, you are met with a wall of Aboriginalia reminiscent of the domestic display for which many were originally created.

Accompanying this wall is a glass display, resembling a colonial museum exhibit, that features a further assemblage of items. The sheer volume, variety, and span of time this vast assemblage represents is intentionally arresting. It's a reminder of how diverse the public's fascination with Aboriginalia once was.

In an earlier age, these objects reduced Aboriginal people to curios of utility and stereotype. But Albert presents them with care and consideration, treating them like an ancestor entrusting their meaning-making to Aboriginal hands.

The late Wiradjuri writer Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert (1956–2019) recalled how many Aboriginal people had a hand in making these objects. They were often held in our own collections, as memory pieces to be cherished, as a part of our long story.

However, Albert's love letter to Aboriginal Kitch is interrupted in the next gallery, where the visitor encounters specific-use Aboriginalia in his 2008 work, Ash on Me, and the more recent, ASHamed (2025).

These works shows ashtrays featuring the bodies and faces of Aboriginal people made to have cigarettes stubbed out on their visages. It's a confronting shift from kitch as pristine object of souvenir, to calling out the casual violence and disregard for Aboriginal bodies.

As Aboriginal people we are often asked to explain what truth-telling looks like. Here, we see it in Albert's use of devastating whimsy: the history of these items, their use, and Australian complicity creates an opportunity for new truths to be told.

A nuanced dialogue with the past

The exhibition, like Albert's larger body of work, is no single note. His truth-telling creates a complex dialogue between artist and visitor, often responding to events and existing works popular among the public.

Around the halfway point we see this in Conversations with Preston. This series recalls and responds to early 20th century artist Margaret Preston's unauthorised appropriation of Aboriginal motifs across her practice.

Rather than dismissing Preston's work, Albert recognises the beauty and tribute, while also insisting on its devastating impact. He asserts an Aboriginal hand in the re-telling.

From this gentle cadence, guests are thrust into a visceral challenge to coloniality with Albert's series, You Wreck Me. Many encountered this work on the cover of Bronwyn Carlson and Terri Farrelly's 2023 book, Monumental Disruptions – with both artwork and book calling for the long overdue toppling of colonial statues.

You Wreck Me shows the artist atop a wrecking ball, bound for a statue of Captain Cook. No subtle metaphor here. This is truth-telling through resistance, insistence and action.

Chance for reflection

This exhibition, curated by Albert's long-time collaborator Bruce Johnson McLean (Wierdi), juxtaposes an astounding breadth of the artist's works. Many of the works are seemingly disparate.

In the centre of the souvenir-laden coloniality of The Rocks, McLean reminds the visitor this is not neutral territory. Instead, Tallawoladah is a place where Aboriginal people have thrived for eons, with colonial violence being a more recent incursion.

The incongruence is reinforced through the Brothers series, which depicts Aboriginal boys with targets painted on their torsos, as direct recall of police brutality leading to the deaths of Aboriginal children.

Behind these stark representations are the windows of the gallery that face Circular Quay, replete with an enormous docked cruise ship and tourists milling around.

Visitors who are invested in truth-telling may be confronted. Tourists may second-guess their purchase of a souvenir boomerang: is it authentic? – should they own it? Non-Indigenous Australian visitors may recall a part of their own colonial past. And First Nations visitors may bear witness to the way Albert's work can hold truths while presenting a complex reality.

The exhibition concludes with an opportunity for visitors who own uncomfortable Aboriginalia to donate it to Albert to be repurposed.

As Albert explains:

In refusing to allow these items to be absent in his retelling of how we continue to thrive, Albert engages in a resistance that brings visitors along, making us co-conspirators in his anti-colonial vision.

Tony Albert: Not a Souvenir is showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia from May 21 to October 19.

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