I’ve sort of spoken in the essay in the catalogue about how this is a great thing about indigenous art because it can actually get inside the museum and then it can sort of blow the museum open. “I think this is just great contemporary art. “Well I know it exists but I want to try and ignore it,” he says. The division between art (the stuff you hang in galleries) and craft (something more homespun that can often have a practical purpose) is something Barkley is only too conscious of.

Much of the work is from a craft-based tradition.

All of the objects have been created by Aboriginal artists from across Australia and all display different approaches to working with fibre and textiles. It encompasses handmade dolls, prints, paintings, photographs, woven baskets, short films and shell necklaces – to name just a few of the works on display. String theory is an exhibition that provokes questions about what belongs in a contemporary art space. So I can ask him upfront: why is this art? Barkley’s response is quick and to the point, “Oh, it’s so beautiful, what else is it?” Standing beside me is Glenn Barkley, the curator of string theory: Focus on Contemporary Australian Art. I am wondering how this collection of string on a wall, not placed there strategically by an artist but pinned up by a curator, constitutes ‘art’. Some of the string is still wrapped tightly around reels, other bundles have been partially unravelled, a few have been completely unstrung and drape above me. I am standing in a gallery space in Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) staring at a wall scattered with handmade string from Yirrkala in the Northern Territory. (*Free exhibition at MCA until 26th October 2013) It is a curatorial decision that works to highlight an often overlooked aspect of art - the act of creation, writes Rachel Robinson. In the Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibition, String Theory*, objects referencing craft traditions from Aboriginal communities around Australia are exhibited in the sparse manner long associated with contemporary art. Rachel Robinson, ABC, posted 20 September 2013 String Theory: contemporary art with a twist

The Museum of Words by Georgia Blain