Tony Albert’s Native Home continues the artist’s series of large-scale word-images that use text as a provocative device to examine the historical representation of Aboriginal people and culture. Drawing upon personal and collective histories, which tell a story of the legacies of colonialism, Albert questions how we understand, imagine and construct difference.

Certain political themes and visual motifs resurface across his oeuvre, including thematic representations of the ‘outsider’ and ‘Aboriginalia’, a term coined by the artist to describe kitschy objects and images that feature naive portrayals of Aboriginality. The words ‘Native Home’ are decorated with ashtrays, tea towels, cross-stitch, and other domestic and tourist artefacts depicting Aboriginal people. All these politically charged objects come from Albert’s personal collection and when seen together they create poignant displays of individual and collective memory.

Albert’s technique and imagery is distinctly contemporary, displacing traditional Australian Aboriginal aesthetics with a kind of urban conceptuality: Albert states, "As a child I thought Aboriginalia was so beautiful, I couldn't believe there was someone who looked like my family emblazoned upon something. We weren't on TV, in the shows that we were watching, we weren't in the paper, and if we were it was with a negative connotation… maybe I'm just surrounding myself with black people” concludes the artist. 

By drawing attention to the proximity and intimacy of the home, Albert reflects on the tension between the experience of ‘otherness’ and a need for political urgency. The work is ultimately a call for forms of representation that move beyond stereotypes and a demand for sovereign and constitutional recognition.