ISSN 2981-894X (Online), ISSN 2203-5362 (Print)
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ARTICLES
KARIN SPEEDY, Crossing Empires, Colonies and Cultures: Exchange, Connections and Continuing Creolisation among Migrants from Reunion via New Caledonia to New South Wales
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This article explores the stories of a small number of Reunionese and Indian families who settled in New South Wales, having previously migrated from Reunion to New Caledonia. Their migration to Australia was effected through networks established by French traders and Marist missionaries. They settled in Sydney and on the Clarence River. For these families, the dynamics of intercultural exchange were, and are still, complex, linked to power inequalities and differing perceptions of race and nationality across empires, and shaped by trauma, rupture, deculturation, fragmentation, prejudice and the process of creolisation. The author draws extensively on New Caledonian archival records and other historical documentation, as well as on interviews with descendants of two of these families.
Keywords: Reunion, New Caledonia, Malabars, indentured workers, sugar industry, Numa Joubert, Hunters Hill, creole languages and cultures, ‘frenchness’
ALEC BOLWELL, Letters from the Left Bank: Grace Crowley’s Influence on Australian Modernism
Grace Crowley (1890–1979) was a pivotal figure in Australian modernist art, particularly in abstraction, which was shaped by her time in France (1926– 1929). During this period, she studied cubist techniques at institutions such as Académie Lhote and actively engaged with Paris’s avant-garde art scene by exhibiting her art. Upon her return, Crowley became a conduit for French Abstraction, through her teaching which transformed Sydney’s art scene from the 1930s–1950s. While previous exhibitions and texts explain the importance of her Parisian period, they often do so to foreground her post- 1940s influence. This article, however, aims to shift focus from Crowley’s well-studied 1940s abstract works to her formative years in France (1926– 1929), exploring how her experiences there influenced the development of Australian art in the 1930s.
This article draws on both primary and secondary sources to explore this question. Her letters, notebooks and contemporary publications offer first-hand insight into her training, networks and artistic practice, while scholarly literature and exhibition catalogues help to situate her work within wider art historical contexts. By comparing the French and Australian art scenes, the study highlights the transnational influences on Crowley and the ways in which her Parisian experiences contributed to the development of modernist practices in Australia.
Keywords: Grace Crowley, France, Australian art, modernism, transnational exchange, gender, Paris
FRANÇOISE GRAUBY, Writing First Nations Narratives for a French Audience: a Literary Analysis of Two French Young Adult Novels
This article examines two recent French novels (Stolen by Pascale Perrier (2018) and Red Man by Jean-François Chabas (2021)) intended for Young Adults (romans-jeunesse) and featuring First Nations Australian characters. Within a context of current cultural debates about the danger of cultural appropriation and the use of ‘sensitivity readers’ and taking into account the different perspectives in France and in Australia, it discusses the auctorial paratext (title, cover, foreword), the young characters’ point of view and the interpretation of Aboriginal themes. What perspectives and strategies do these authors try to adopt in order to convey a more respectful and political representation of Australian Indigenous characters? This article will also discuss the negotiations between diverse and sometimes divergent cultural injunctions.
Keywords: French Young Adult novels, First Nations people, Indigenous characters, sensitivity readers, auctorial paratext
ANGELA GIOVANANGELI, A Dangerously Red War-Atah: Rethinking the Work of Lucien Henry, French Communard, Australian Artist
Lucien Henry was a French revolutionary and artist who served time as a political prisoner on a penal colony in New Caledonia for the role he played during the Paris Commune. Once pardoned by the French State, Henry settled in Australia and played a key role as an artist and art educator advocating for an Australian style. This article examines the intersection between Henry’s designs and his ideology expressed through his little-known fictional publication titled The War-Atah: Australian Legend (1891). It argues that this publication, structured in the style of a legendary tale, offers glimpses into an alternate reading of Henry’s designs based on his socialist ideologies. It intertwines Indigenous and ecological narratives drawing on symbols and values associated with the Paris Commune such as oral storytelling, the symbolic weight of the colour red and French Republican imagery.
Keywords: Lucien Henry, waratah, red, Indigenous, legend, Paris Commune
DOCUMENTS, NOTES AND REVIEWS
EDWARD DUYKER, Joseph Jean France Slaweski (1887–1965) Soldier and Pioneer Physiotherapist
MAURICE BLACKMAN, The French-Australian Research Centre 1983–1992
Book Reviews
Joseph-Paul Gaimard, edited by Sylvie Brassard and John Milson, A Scientific Voyage to the Southern Hemisphere and Around the World Executed Successively on Board the King’s Corvette Uranie and His Majesty’s Corvette La Physicienne during the Years 1817, 1818, 1819 and 1920: Narrative Journal of Joseph Paul Gaimard Commissioned Surgeon of the Marine Royale, Margaret Sankey
Diane Delaurens, Australiens: lignes de vie d’un people, Jane Gilmour
ELAINE LEWIS, Book Notes
ELAINE LEWIS, Bibliographical Notes