Rattling Spears

“Mclean’s radical hut commonsense approach is to show how indigenous artists responded to and engaged with modernity, beginning with Captain Cook anchoring off the coast in 1770. Mclean treats contemporary indigenous artists not as ‘pure,’ to be kept safe from Western culture, but as actively engaged with modernism, and in fact quite successful at making a place for their art in today’s world, while operating in both modern and traditional temporal frames. He deploys current critical terminology fluidly, insisting on a transcultural context for the art, while also explaining the ‘Dreaming,’ the still-evolving mythopoeic sagas about ancestral beings and spirits that animate indigenous thought. He is clear-eyed about the roles that marketing, ambitious anthropologists, and cannily entrepreneurial indigenous artists played in the late-twentieth-century marketing of this work. The text is illustrated by a spare but well-chosen selection of nicely printed reproductions.”

"The best, most comprehensive, accessible, and detailed survey of a complex and beguiling field of study that I have yet come across. It is an outstanding achievement."

"A book so elegantly produced it seems to belong in a white-cube exhibition space. . . . Rattling Spears is McLean's attempt to tell the story of the movement from its beginnings through to the variegated indigenous art world of today."

"This beautifully illustrated book explores the ways in which Indigenous Australians have responded to invasion through art. Where colonists saw a gulf, writes art historian McLean, Aborigines saw bridges. They didn't hesitate to be modern, but on their terms. . . . The tension between old and new, tradition and modernity, is evoked in the image of the rattling spears in the title. . . . The art that appears in the pages of Rattling Spears is similarly potent: it keeps the past alive and makes claims upon the present. . . . The book never ceases to be engaging, and it gathers momentum over the course of the narrative."

"Provides what instructors of indigenous Australian art have long been waiting for: a textbook on the genre. Though one can find a multitude of museum and exhibition catalogues and books on the art of specific regions of Australia, this is the first book to provide comprehensive coverage of the unfolding of indigenous art across time and place, across styles and borders, and across cultures. . . . Clearly organized and well written, the content is theoretical and factual, and McLean supports the discussion with excellent illustrations. One of the most important publications on the topic to date. Highly recommended."

“Rattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian Art is the first comprehensive art historical account of this fascinating topic. It tells a clear and compelling story of the complex development of indigenous art in Australia, from the first encounters between indigenous and European explorers in the later eighteenth century right up to the present, as this ‘contact art’ manifests itself as one of the major movements within contemporary world art.”

"McLean’s highly readable and absorbing book [is] a fine example of a postcolonial analysis at work, and a compelling rereading of the power, impact, and enduring appeal of a vast, fascinating, and complex realm of Australian visual and cultural expression."