Exhibition: Be My Guest

Poster: Be My Guest (AAMU, 2011)

In Be My Guest: 10 Encounters with Aboriginal Art art works by major names in Aboriginal art will enter into a dialogue with art from a wide range of disciplines and regions. Just a few of the fascinating juxtapositions the exhibition will feature: the grande dame Emily Kame Kngwarreye and the American Sol LeWitt, founder of the Minimal Art movement; the painted map by Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri beside Guide psychogéographique de Paris by the French Situationist Guy Debord (1957); or the Songlines app, leading through Utrecht and created by artists Marc Tuters and Ricarda Franzen, based on the concept of the Aboriginal songlines.

10 guests, 10 juxtapositions

Roy Villevoye, Tijs Goldschmidt, Maria Roosen, Edwin Jacobs, Macha Roesink, Wouter Welling, Theo Kuijpers, Bob Negryn, Kitty Zijlmans and Arjon Dunnewind are the 10 guest curators who, at the AAMU’s invitation, have paired up Aboriginal art works with other art works of their choice. They have selected these works on the basis of their different perspectives as artists, academics, museum directors or curators. The Aboriginal art works and their counterparts are very diverse, ranging from paintings, photography, installations and sculpture to sound and video. They confront and complement each other. In Be My Guest it is as though the viewer is looking over the guest curator’s shoulder. Which works did the curator choose and why?

The role of art

Art has always played a fundamental role in the cultural experience of the Aboriginal population of Australia. For Aboriginals art is an excellent way for them to become visible in today’s rapidly globalising world. The international context in which Aboriginal art is placed in Be My Guest will encourage viewers to look at contemporary Aboriginal art in a different way and to determine their own positions.