Shanysa McConville looks back over 65000 years of art

For much of the last century, in museums, the works of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists were treated as something outside the main story — consigned to a footnote of history or a side room in major galleries.

A new exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art wants to put the record straight.

Titled 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art, it puts — front and centre — the remarkable work of Indigenous artists and places them in conversation with the colonial art that often treated them as subjects, rather than as equals.

Co-curator Shanysa McConville explores the exhibition and the history that lies behind it.