Compared with the prehistoric parietal art of Europe, Australian Aboriginal rock art is little known in art historical contexts, despite that fact that many of these works are older, more dynamic, and more sophisticated. More than the laneways of inner-city streets, much of the Australian landscape is literally layered with art. There are thousands of rock art sites recorded in Australia and perhaps an equal number that have been forgotten or destroyed. New galleries and cathedrals of colour are regularly reported in the popular press. Yet the status of rock art in Australian art history, like much of the rest of Indigenous art production, is under-researched and poorly conceptualised within the discipline. To address this, we devised a panel session for the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s 2017 annual conference, at the University of Western Australia, upon which this special issue is based. The responses we received were curated into two parallel interdisciplinary sessions, each of which had an artist, an art historian and an archaeologist.

中文翻译：

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扩展领域中的澳大利亚岩画：历史、意义和当代语境

与欧洲的史前壁饰艺术相比，澳大利亚原住民岩石艺术在艺术史背景下鲜为人知，尽管这些作品中的许多作品更古老、更有活力、更复杂。不仅仅是市中心街道的巷道，澳大利亚的大部分景观实际上都充满了艺术气息。澳大利亚记录了数以千计的岩画遗址，也许还有同样数量的被遗忘或毁坏。大众媒体定期报道新的彩色画廊和大教堂。然而，岩石艺术在澳大利亚艺术史上的地位，就像其他大部分土著艺术作品一样，在该学科中研究不足，概念化也很差。为了解决这个问题，我们为澳大利亚和新西兰艺术协会 2017 年年会设计了一个小组会议，在西澳大利亚大学，本期特刊的基础。我们收到的回复被分为两个平行的跨学科会议，每个会议都有一位艺术家、一位艺术史学家和一位考古学家。