Reframe

Since the seventeenth century, European records have chronicled many 'first' and 'early' encounters with Aboriginal Australians. These words and illustrations have shaped lasting judgements about Indigenous peoples that continue to influence how Aboriginality is seen today.

Reframe re-examines the history of colonial prints of Aboriginal Australians, showing how engravings, etchings and lithographs helped produce and circulate settler ideas of Aboriginality, sovereignty and racial difference. Historian Liz Conor brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and artists who trace print circuits from early voyages to nineteenth-century illustrated magazines, revealing how images could erase or distort Indigenous presence and resistance - and sometimes bear unexpected witness to it.

Featuring interventions from Ngardarb Francine Riches, Julie Gough, Jonathan Jones and Danie Mellor, this generously illustrated collection reframes the colonial print archive as both a record of epistemic violence and a site for truth-telling and restitution.