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‘I can use it, I can abuse it’: Tony Albert spent decades collecting racist ‘Aboriginalia’. Now he wants to turn yours into art

Not a Souvenir at the MCA highlights the commodification and misrepresentation of First Nations people – and invites the public to reckon with their complicity

When Tony Albert was around six years old, he bought a plate with an illustration of an Aboriginal boy’s face on it from his local op shop. It was mid-1980s suburban Brisbane and although he had a large family with connections to the Girramay, Yidinji and Kuku-Yalanji peoples of north Queensland, seeing Aboriginal people or culture on TV was rare – so the plate “felt very special”, the 45-year-old artist recalls.

Over the years he collected more of these kinds of objects – cups, tea towels, trays, playing cards and figurines, all ostensibly depicting Aboriginal people and designs, but created by non-Indigenous people, often caricatured, exoticised or kitsch.

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May 19, 2026 Art Australian art Indigenous Australians

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