The name of Tony Albert’s first institutional survey is a play on the artist’s recurrent statement: “Invisible is my favorite color.” Titled “Visible,” it aptly conveyed Albert’s core artistic concern, namely a critical interrogation on the visibility of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australian society. Curated by Bruce Johnson-McLean and presented at Brisbane’s Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, the thematically organized exhibition included examples of the artist’s distinctive object-based assemblages, paintings, photography and video works from 2007 to the present.

An iconic element of Albert’s practice is “Aboriginalia”—a term he uses to describe vintage homewares and bric-a-brac decorated with caricatures of Australia’s First Peoples, which he has been amassing since 1988. When displayed individually, these kitschy objects evoke different feelings dependent on the viewer, from nostalgia to sadness, curiosity, or anger. When grouped together, as in “Visible,” their effects were compounded and overwhelming. One of the exhibition spaces was dominated by a salon-style hang of Aboriginalia, drawn from Albert’s personal collection, while another group of these objects was spread on a nearby plinth around a mid-20th-century coffee table—a nod to the time period when these items were at the height of their popularity. Through such a display, Albert makes a powerful statement about how the First Peoples of Australia are seen—or not seen. Drawing out a common trope running throughout these artifacts were the installation of photographs from the “Mid Century Modern” series (2016), featuring ashtrays printed with caricatures of Indigenous peoples; and the text-based whiteWASH (2018), which comprises vinyl lettering spelling out the work’s title, studded with similar ashtrays. Through his process of collecting and examination, Albert had found that ashtrays were prevalent within the paraphernalia, noting: “There is something very metaphorical and symbolic about butting out a cigarette on someone’s face or culture.”

Further works combining Aboriginalia and text were spread throughout the exhibition. A significant example, the installation Sorry (2008), of vinyl words overlaid with an assortment of Aboriginalia, was created in response to the Australian prime minister’s formal apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008. This was a major moment in Australian history, whereby the government officially acknowledged and apologized for the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families. In contrast to the work’s early configurations, however, in “Visible,” the letters were installed backwards, thereby spelling “Yrros.” As Albert explains: “Flipping or turning things on their side is an act of rebellion. It is simple, it is intentional and it is clear.” The same gesture of reversal could be seen in Pay Attention (2009–10)—an arresting collaborative piece made by 26 Indigenous artists and Albert that demands both in legible order and as a mirrored-image: “Pay attention motherfuckers,” a blunt statement drawn from American conceptual artist Bruce Nauman’s 1973 lithograph, held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Nauman is a fitting reference for Albert, in the sense that he too is interested in language, specifically word play and the meaning and associations of readymade objects.