‘I didn’t know what Aboriginalia was,’ says Carolyn Ienna, who last week donated a painted picture of an Aboriginal man with a spear to Tony Albert’s Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition, Not a Souvenir. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian View image in fullscreen ‘I didn’t know what Aboriginalia was,’ says Carolyn Ienna, who last week donated a painted picture of an Aboriginal man with a spear to Tony Albert’s Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition, Not a Souvenir. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian Indigenous art ‘Incredibly healing’: artist Tony Albert receives more than 2,000 public donations of racist Aboriginalia Tea towels, ashtrays, crockery and clothing depicting Aboriginal people and designs have been hand-delivered or posted daily during the artist’s MCA exhibition after he made a call-out
Warning: this article contains depictions of racist and offensive artefacts and images of Indigenous Australians who have died
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Emma Joyce Fri 16 Oct 2026 16.00 CEST Last modified on Fri 16 Oct 2026 16.01 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google F ive months ago Indigenous artist Tony Albert made a public request for donations of Aboriginalia – souvenirs, homewares and other objects depicting Aboriginal people and designs, often as caricatures, that were created and sold by non-Indigenous people.
It was a request that accompanied his career-spanning Not a Souvenir exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney, which featured 4,400 objects from the artist’s own collection – one he started in the 1980s as a child.
Now, in the exhibition’s closing days, the MCA is packaging and shipping 2,000 more items donated by the public to Albert’s studio in Brisbane.
View image in fullscreen Artist Tony Albert says he has been ‘genuinely overwhelmed by the generosity and response’. Photograph: Bec Lorrimer/The Guardian “I have been genuinely overwhelmed by the generosity and response,” says Albert via email from Paris, where he is on a month-long artist residency. The 45-year-old, who has family connections to the Girramay, Kuku Yalanji and Yidindji peoples, has been personally in touch with the people who brought stuff in.
“What has moved me most is not simply the number of objects donated, but the personal stories and conversations that have accompanied them,” he says. “There is something incredibly powerful and healing about people wanting to confront this history and entrusting me with these objects, so that together we can give them new meaning.”
Read more Carolyn Ienna, a 63-year-old Wiradjuri artist and activist from Sydney, dropped off a painted image of an Aboriginal man with a spear last week. They found it in a council pickup collection over a decade ago.
“I’d look at it and feel sad, but I didn’t have a name for it,” says Ienna. “I didn’t know what Aboriginalia was.” When they discovered it, it felt like the previous owners were “throwing away an Aboriginal person”.
“I don’t think [people] understand the complexities of not only the trauma of colonisation, and how different Aboriginal people may see this Aboriginalia, but also the propaganda of it,” says Ienna.
One of the aims of Albert’s Aboriginalia call-out is to take items like this out of circulation; another is to reappropriate them through his practice.
View image in fullscreen The plates donated by Lesley Pepper, who travelled from New Zealand to attend the exhibition. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardia…