Ian McLean

Ian McLean is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia and is on the Advisory Council of Third Text.

He has published extensively on Australian art in Australian art journals and internationally. His books include The Art of Gordon Bennett (with a chapter by Gordon Bennett) and White Aborigines Identity Politics in Australian Art. An anthology of writing on Aboriginal art since 1980, with the working title How the Aborigines Stole the Idea of Contemporary Art, is due to be published in May 2008 (jointly published by Power Publications and the Institute of Modern Art).

He is currently writing a book on the history of post-contact Aboriginal art and undertaking research for an exhibition that traces the impact of Western Desert Aboriginal painting on contemporary Australian artists.