This unique study tracks the way the Aboriginal art phenomenon has mediated Indigenous/non-indigenous relations in Australia. It illuminates the utopian and dystopian currents of thought that have arisen in relation to the art, and the contradictory social and political aspirations to which it has been anchored in public culture.

Introduction; Part I: Governance, Nationhood and Civil Society; Chapter 1: New Intercultural Relationships in the Post-Assimilation Era; Chapter 2: Aboriginal People Mobilising Aboriginal Art; Chapter 3: Understanding Aboriginal Art Subsidy; Chapter 4: The State Mobilising Aboriginal Art; Chapter 5: 'Aboriginal culture' at the Nexus of Justice, Recognition and Redemption; Part II: Contemporary Aboriginal Art in the 1980s; Chapter 6: The Emergence of Aboriginal Art in the 1980s; Part III: Negotiating Difference; Chapter 7: Negotiation Aboriginal Difference; Chapter 8: The Art/Anthropology Binary; Part IV: Aboriginal Art, Money and the Market; Chapter 9: Ethics and Exploitation in the Aboriginal Art Market; Chapter 10: 'Aboriginal Mass Culture' and the Cultural Industries; Conclusion.

Laura Fisher is a sociologist and art historian based in Sydney, Australia. She is pursuing a range of research interests around art in the public domain, visionary outdoor environments, the cultural economy and Aboriginal art. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.