The aesthetics of counter-memory: contemporary art and Australian refugee histories after Tampa

Abstract

This thesis provides the first in-depth examination of experimental methods for memorialising Australian refugee experiences in works by the contemporary artists Rosemary Laing, Dierk Schmidt, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green. As this thesis argues, each of these artists’ methods for memorialising refugee experiences is distinguished by the use of montage (the conjoining of disparate materials and references). By bringing together—or montaging—cultural documents from a variety of sources at both a historical and geographic level, these artists create deeply fragmented images of refugee histories. Representations of refugee experiences such as those involving the Tampa, the “children overboard..