Impossible to ignore: Imants Tillers’ response to Aboriginal art It is possible to write a history of Imants Tillers’ engagement with Aboriginal art that sees it in progressive terms, reflecting at the same time a more general movement in Australia towards reconciliation and mutual understanding. In the beginning Tillers, without intending to, found himself at the heart of a controversy over the difference that was and still is located in some forms of Aboriginal art. Over time he developed a collaborative relationship with Aboriginal artists and at the same time Aboriginal art became incorporated more fully into Australian art discourse. In Tillers’ own terms, Australian art had moved from a pre-Aboriginal art phase to a post-Aboriginal one. It is worthwhile developing this argument before challenging some of the grounds on which it is based. In incorporating Michael Nelson Jagamara’s Five Dreamings (1982) as one of the main images within his The Nine Shots (1985), Tillers opened himself up to accusations of appropriating Aboriginal imagery without permission and impinging on the moral rights of the artist. The offence was compounded by the very “placedness” of Aboriginal art, its apparent inseparability from locality. Aboriginal art was in place, and Tillers’ art apparently challenged identities based on locality, removed images from their cultural contexts, and juxtaposed them with images from other places and times. After all, the very title – ‘Locality Fails’ – of his reflexive critique of contemporary art, almost his manifesto, written in 1982 can be taken as a challenge to Aboriginal art or at least to some people’s hope for Aboriginal art : “The widespread though largely unstated hope (or even belief) in an ‘indigenous’ Australian art ignores”, the logic of the postmodern world 1 . The Nine Shots eventually brought about Gordon Bennett’s powerful riposte The Nine Ricochets (1990), which in turn borrowed images from Tillers. Much has been written about the apparent dialogue between the two works, often directed to explaining why they are different ethically and art- historically 2 . However, I believe that the fundamental significance of Bennett’s work must be understood in its own terms – in the multiple references its makes and 1 Imants Tillers, ‘Locality Fails’, Art & Text, 6, 1982, p. 54. This point is made by Ian McLean in the introduction his forthcoming book How the Aborigines Stole the Idea of Contemporary Art, and I employ his phraseology. 2 A point made by Rex Butler in 'Echo and Narcissus: Gordon Bennett and his Critics', Postwest 16, 2000, pp. 46–51. He writes: “What is interesting is that, for critics who in various ways are so concerned to overcome binary thinking, so much effort is expended trying to distinguish Bennett from Tillers. Of course the fact that so much effort is spent doing so, that the task must be taken up each time, suggests