WfaAR has been visiting the Republic of Singapore, full of vibrant energy compared with stodgy old Australia creaking at its wobbly Anglo-Celtic knees. We particularly noted the “Artist and Empire – (En)countering Colonial Legacies” exhibition at the new National Gallery, full of surprises and irony. One of them was how many works were loaned from our own National Gallery and that the headline work was part of a photomedia series by Australian artist of Bidjara heritage, Michael Cook, showing a man with a boomerang trudging through the sea shallows carrying a Union Jack on a flagpole over his shoulder and accompanied by a crocodile – wonderful stuff. It also features a saucy portrait of the Queen commissioned by the Chinese community of Singapore, painted in 1953 around the time of the coronation. Bursting out of her strapless bodice, the look on her face can only be described as ‘come hither’. Nothing like the very serious, shrinking Queen depicted in our 1954 Wattle Portrait. The theme of the exhibition, however, is both obvious and thought-provoking in equal parts. One can only ask why it – or another version of the exhibition originally put together by Tate Britain and shown in London late last year – did not come further south. Very frustrating. Australians need to be confronted by their British colonial past in order to create a future and their Republic. Art is a good medium to do that. It looks like the closest we will get in in the short-term is the “Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial”, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, at the NGA in Canberra, 26 May to 10 September 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n