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

Abstract

This article is an arts-based, autoethnographic account of the deep learning experience of launching an innovative art therapy text, Art Therapy in Australia: Taking a Postcolonial, Aesthetic Turn, for two different Australian contexts and audiences: Indigenous colleagues on Wathaurong country at the Institute of Koorie Education (IKE), Deakin University, and the art therapy community on Darug country at Western Sydney University. This article extends the (post)colonial and aesthetic concerns of the book as we reflect on and respond with artmaking and writing to an immersive ten-day retreat with Indigenous colleagues at IKE and seek to respectfully engage with First Nation ways and knowledges. The accounts offered here become a microcosm of the problematics of ethically encountering difference, in a landscape still shadowed by colonial violence.