Outsider Art in Australia: Artists’ Voices Versus Art-world Mythologies

With the rise of outsider art institutions, exhibitions and markets internationally in recent decades, it has become apparent that the romanticisation of artistic difference that is endemic to discussions of the field is misplaced. While so-called ‘outsider artists’ are conventionally typecast as pristine cultural isolates, in fact they are not only deeply engaged with the social, political and artistic worlds around them, but are often also aware of the terms being used to describe their work. This article reconfigures contemporary understandings of the category of outsider art by presenting the voices of several Australian artists who have traditionally been defined as ‘outsiders.’ Through analysis of these artists’ perspectives, we demonstrate that the common view of outsider art as the spontaneous outpouring of individuals who are separate from, that is to say, outside the norms of art and society—as has so often been argued—is unsustainable. At the same time, to erase what is unique about these artists, their position and experience of difference from the mainstream, is potentially counterproductive. With the assistance of the voices of artists who have historically been understood as ‘outsiders’, we propose to open the history of Australian art to the startling and sophisticated worlds that they produce. To quote Anthony Mannix, who compares his entire body of work to a cosmology which he inhabits, ‘I’m inside the thing I built … So maybe you lot are the outsiders.’