‘A Tale of Two Launches’: an arts-based, autoethnographic inquiry into decolonising art therapy in the context of (post)colonial Australia

摘要

This article is an arts-based, autoethnographic account of the deep learning experienceof launching an innovative art therapy text, Art Therapy in Australia: Taking aPostcolonial, Aesthetic Turn, for two different Australian contexts andaudiences: Indigenous colleagues on Wathaurong country at the Institute of KoorieEducation (IKE), Deakin University, and the art therapy community on Darug country atWestern Sydney University. This article extends the (post)colonial and aestheticconcerns of the book as we reflect on and respond with artmaking and writing to animmersive ten-day retreat with Indigenous colleagues at IKE and seek to respectfullyengage with First Nation ways and knowledges. The accounts offered here become amicrocosm of the problematics of ethically encountering difference, in a landscape stillshadowed by colonial violence.