Possessions

'One of the most interesting and articulate books written about art made in a non-Western, colonial site … This is not the view of an outsider, but of an insider … marvellous' - Svetlana Alpers 'A pioneering text in postcolonial art history' - Rosalind Polly Blakesley, University of Cambridge 'Possessions intelligently and sensitively navigates the relationship between indigenous and settler cultures in Australia and New Zealand' - Geoffrey Batchen, University of Oxford 'In this re-issue of his ground-breaking book Possessions, Thomas provides what many of us in settler colonies are currently grappling with: the need to assess where we have been in the project of decolonising art and art history, and the need to re-think where we are now' - Peter Brunt, Victoria University, Wellington '[Thomas's] writing is spare, elegant and persuasive' - Marina Vaizey, The Art Newspaper 'This book has implications that extend far beyond the anthropology of art... unusual and innovative' - American Anthropologist 'Thomas operates at the mental border-post where art criticism, sociology, anthropology and history fade into each other … Civilised, judicious, at ease with uneasy perspectives, Thomas marks in 'Possessions' the apotheosis of modern anthropology' - The Australian 'Possessions has ensured that settler-colonial and Indigenous histories from the eighteenth century onward can never again be separated but are perceived as entangled narratives... a major statement' - Tim Barringer, Yale University 'A prescient, foundational study' - Ruth Phillips, Carleton University, Ottawa 'An astute and dynamic analysis of colonialism [Thomas provides] a powerful, transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological model for understanding the varied practices—from appropriation to appreciation, from resistance to resilience—by which art mediates the colonial encounter for both settlers and Indigenous peoples' - Aaron Glass, Bard Graduate Centre, New York 'Significantly reframes the old issue of the relationship between primitivism and modernism' - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism '[Thomas is] a writer of the rarest quality' - Simon Winchester