In post-Second World War Australia, the production and touring of assemblages of bark paintings became a diplomatic tool in embassies, galleries and museums around the world.At a time when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were rarely if ever travelling independently within Australia, these bark paintings acted as intermediaries and interlocutors for global audiences to see and read the stories and histories of Aboriginal Australia.In this article, we trace a series of interconnected events that brought collections of bark paintings to public notice and we seek to understand the changing possibilities for Aboriginal artists to self-represent the broader cultural context of the paintings.We then show how, in the self-determination era, Aboriginal curators and artist collectives sought to create a dialogue with the international market for bark painting in order to communicate the modern relevance of Aboriginal art.Finally, we show how historical bark paintings retain contemporary salience for Yolngu communities, and can be brought back into continuing relationships with people and culture.In the immediate decades after the First World War, when Aboriginal people's freedom of movement was restricted by Australia's state and territory native administrations, bark paintings from across Arnhem Land became ambassadors for global audiences to see the cultures and histories of Aboriginal Australia.These assemblages of Aboriginal bark paintings played a diplomatic role in embassies, galleries and museums around the world while Aboriginal artists and their embodied representations of cultural knowledge and practice were unable to travel. 1Nina Berrell has demonstrated how the better-known exhibitions of the late 1980s had their origins in the activities of the Aboriginal Arts Board in the 1970s both in touring exhibitions and selling artworks to overseas collections to create a long-term international audience for Aboriginal art.Berrell, 'Inroads Offshore', 13-30; Foley, 'Black Power and Aboriginal Arts'. 2 'Defining Moments: Yirrkala Bark Petitions', National Museum of Australia, accessed 2 November 2021, www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/yirrkala-bark-petitions. 3
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