Luke Taylor

Luke Taylor is an anthropologist who specialises in writing about Aboriginal artists and their art. He obtained his PhD at ANU in 1987. He has worked with Kuninjku people near Maningrida since 1981 and written an ethnography of their art entitled Seeing the Inside with Clarendon Press, 1996. More recent work is included in the Crossing Country catalogue edited by Hetti Perkins for the major exhibition of the same name held at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2004 and the rarrk John Mawurndjul Journey Through Time in Northern Australia catalogue edited by C. Kaufmann for a retrospective of John Mawurndjul's work at Museum Tinguely in Basel in 2005. Luke also prepared the first edition of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Visual Artists Biographical Database published by Discovery Media.
Luke was Senior Curator at the National Museum of Australia in the period 1991-2000. He was then Director of Research and later Deputy Principal at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra between 2000-2013. During this period he also taught about Aboriginal arts at ANU. Luke now maintains an Adjunct Fellowship with the Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit of Griffith University where he supervises postgraduate students researching Aboriginal arts.