Tony Albert: The work actually came out of the COVID lockdown. I was at home, with her collection of works and utilised that time to go through it, to look at things, things that I hadn't seen for a long time. There's a huge collection of fabrics, tea towels, cushion covers by Preston that weren’t necessarily artwork driven. So, in uncovering all of those tangible objects, I could feel the potential of how I could utilise them within my own work. At the same time, I had been looking a lot closer at the ideas within her work and the framework of unravelling a lot of these things came into play. I was thinking about questions and ideas of national visual identity coming from Australia through Indigenous art. And I've always maintained that I loved her thinking, and I loved what she was doing. For a female artist, I think with that innate sensibility of space and place she was on the right track. The interesting thing with her practice is that with the appropriated works, she started to bring the outside in. She produced homewares, curtains and cushion covers and when those things happen from an elite level in the art world, it filters through to this appropriated, non-autonomous low brow object.

There’s that great scene in the movie Devil Wears Prada about Cerulean Blue, and how it filters down to the bargain bin following decisions made at a very top tier level. So, whilst Preston was making work, the carry-on effect was this other perception within the mainstream, broader society of how we live with, how we intertwine, how we utilise Indigenous art as an aesthetic within the home. Décor became this epicentre of mass appropriation, the utilising of visual iconography without any consent, or resale royalties, or collaboration. That's where I felt that an entry point was to a wider conversation about appropriation: through Preston who is really recognised, not only for the work she does, but for the use of appropriation. I actually think the conversation we’re having now is more important than the fact that it happened. She was an amazing painter. Her vision and ideas for the time she was working in were way more forward thinking than anyone else. So, my Conversations with Margaret Preston series is not a trashing of another artist or anything like that. I would like to think that through this series, it is a dialogue between her and I. Even though she's not alive and I’m making up her answers and replies. It's a very beautiful dialogue we have with one another about the really important issues.

I give myself more autonomy over her work. [laughing] I’ve come to feel like we're such good friends that I start to alter and change things more liberally. In her very early works, the replication was very sincere, and it was done with a sense of knowing and understanding. I'm utilising someone else's work to unravel these conversations. I've grown in my confidence of changing things around if I need to and playing with the composition. The interesting thing about the works I’m exhibiting at Melbourne Art Fair is that I'm starting to intervene with the backgrounds in ways that represent the wood and playing with them a lot more. There are more elements of myself than just the fabrics and the utilisation of the appropriation within them. I think that that progression is also natural for artists. The older you get, the more confident, the more stability you have–these things always elevate and change the work. For me, these Melbourne Art Fair works in particular are a next step towards that integration.

In Preston’s works there are elements that are literally from Aboriginal stories and histories–she's taken marks, designs, and reused them in her own way with a lack of understanding, a lack of clarity in who we are as Aboriginal people. These designs are taken from one end of Australia to the other and belong to so many different groups of Indigenous people. When you unravel her story and look at her the art historical side of it, you can align it with the history of artists traveling to Europe, traveling overseas, to encounter different ideas of colour, of light, of shape and design. That exchange is so intrinsic to the way other countries work. Preston’s view was that all of that was here in Australia and that it lay with First Nations people. There was thought and conceptual framework behind what she was doing. I think her saving grace was the fact that it was one part of an incredible body of work which included exquisite paintings and wood block prints of native flowers which, again, were looking back at Country. White people should be doing that: looking at the space, the place that you're in. Sydney Ball did it beautifully with his use of light and colour. I always look at the colours of his paintings, and I know they're Australian. It shows that there are really amazing thinkers that connect to Australian visual history in a non-appropriative way. Preston straddled both of them at a time where appropriation wasn’t considered in the same way it is now.

For me, legacy is the rewriting of our truth or telling historical truth. There is an emerging global push that is coming out of Australia of Indigenous art is represented through people who have broken down doors of institutions. It's an ongoing conversation. We're getting closer and closer to this idea of what is historical truth, who is telling the history, and what perspective of history is being told. We know that history, when it's written by the victors, takes on a certain that not is not necessarily based on truth. Through these works I hope to open up all of that. I do like the idea of the progression of change and how where we sit at this present moment might not resonate in another 10 years, and if it doesn't, it means that we've overcome these hurdles, and we've understood things differently. That's my dream, and that's my goal: that these works end up becoming redundant because we’ve made enough progress for them to become so.

An understanding that there's nothing sinister behind them. They're moments in time. It’s about broadening the conversation and the vernacular. It’s about knowing and understanding how huge this issue was. I've always maintained with my work that it isn't about sweeping these things under the rug. It’s about examining how, in a cultural sense, society treated Aboriginal people, framed Aboriginal people, utilised Indigenous imagery. To understand who these people were is so incredibly valuable to us to this day in unpacking why we think the way we do about Aboriginal people in this country. It has so much to do with how these objects stood in the cultural conscience and represented us as people. I like to break that in a way. It's kind of mischievous. I'm not okay with people just refusing to think that these errors were part of our existence. They are important symbols of an era of time, but maybe the labelling of them should reflect the historical truth attached to them. It's uncovering truth and making sure people are aware moving forward, because if we don't have the opportunity to learn from our mistakes, we will be fated to make them again.