Robert Campbell Jr: History Painter, at Artbank

By Benjamen Judd

Artbank – the brilliant art exchange initiative funded by the Australian Government – is hosting a retrospective collection of works by acclaimed Indigenous artist Robert Campbell Jr: History Painter until May 2015.

Robert Campbell Jr represents a crossroads in culture, time and artistic practices. One of the first generation of urban Aboriginal artists, Campbell Jr was a predominantly self-taught artist who embraced both the ancient culture he was born into and its contemporary struggles.

During the 1980s and 90s his work focused on the capturing the social discrimination he witnessed growing up in south eastern New South Wales, as well the continuing impact of Australia’s colonial past.

The selection of Campbell’s paintings brought together for this first retrospective exhibition cover issues that are still relevant within the Indigenous community today – dispossession, disempowerment and cultural and historical dematerialisation and disappearance.

The retrospective includes twenty-six works from major public and private collections from across the country, as well as ten significant paintings acquired by Artbank during his lifetime (1944 – 1993).

Robert Campbell Jr: History Painter is now showing at Artbank on Dank Street until May 2015.