ABSTRACT
The ‘colonial corridor’ referred to by Engberg (1996), in the exhibition Colonial Post Colonial, sought to reveal how history, or more specically our colonial past and the organisational practices of museums, constructed our modes of representation and ways of knowing about Australia. e exhibition, which Engberg curated, reframed recognisable visual culture from the colonial archives. While artists and museums from other nations have also engaged in this process of questioning the imperial histories that had framed them, Australia’s engagement with the post-colonial has assumed a particular visual form and relationship with the institutions of the empire, such as museums. e process of direct quotation or use of objects from the colonial period, as this chapter illustrates, was a direct form of engagement with this history, and museums as keepers of this period became a rich resource for artists.
