SPIRIT & VISION
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always from the beginning
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Aboriginal Art Today and Tomorrow
Art can be very provocative. It touches on the intuitive, the divine, on social and environmental issues. Contemporary Aboriginal Art embraces all this and more.
Thousands of visitors to Sammlung Essl in 2001 will remember Dreamtime: The Dark and The Light. For Austrian audiences this show created a wellspring of interest in and enthusiasm for Contemporary Aboriginal Art. For this new exhibition Spirit & Vision: Aboriginal Art we are proud to showcase over 120 artworks and objects by 94 artists, a survey of what is being produced today by an abundance of artists in Australian cities, towns and numerous remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland.
So what defines Spirit & Vision? Continuity of stories and the inspiration that artists have provided for new generations to carry on is our entry point. Aboriginal people remain the oldest living culture in the world; however, for many observers over the last 30 years, perceptions of Aboriginal Art have been in a constant state of flux. Some analysts were even predicting its demise only ten years ago. Yet, it stubbornly persists. For many Aboriginal artists adaptability and change are vital for survival - changing colours, scale and materials, but not changing mind and spirit. Traditions never stand still, and culture is never frozen. Worlds of creation stories inherit the latest vernacular and shape-shift their way into the future.
Travelling through notions of the past, present and future we are reminded that for Indigenous people all over the world time is perhaps cyclical. The same accepted wisdom keeps reappearing. Spirit & Vision leads us through this territory with many key examples of important Aboriginal artists, several of whom have passed away. These inspirational artists, who all made vital contributions to the growth and awareness of Aboriginal Art, stand proudly alongside living artists who are working today.
In the first galleries titled Visions, generations and stories collude. From Utopia in Central Australia Emily Kame Kngwarreye, perhaps the most astonishing Australian painter to emerge in recent times, is represented by Anooralya 1 (Atnwelarre) and Kame Awelye, (both later works from 1995) alongside senior female painter Minnie Pwerle (Awelye Atnwengerrp, 2003). Minnie, still active and producing dynamic artworks at the age of 84, is presented alongside her daughter Barbara Weir (Grass Seeds, 2003). Both these artists were guided and inspired by Emily, who died in 1996 at the age of 86. Rover Thomas (Wingiginy — On Ruby Plains Station, 1992) and Queenie McKenzie (Untitled, 1993) represent the Kimberley region. Whilst both passed away in the late 1990s, for over a decade they were crucial mentors for so many artists painting in the Warmun style using natural ochres. Their work is placed alongside a recent painting by Billy Duncan (Looma – The Blue Tongue Lizard, 2003). Mick Kabarkku from Maningrida in North Central Arnhem Land exhibits the formidable image of Namarrkon, The Lightning Spirit, 1980 – a fierce creation depicted with stone-axes on elbows and knees. This legendary bark painter is shown alongside his son Paul Nabulumo Namarinjmak (Djirdbim – Moon Dreaming, 2003). As is the tradition, all these creation stories are directly handed down from father to son.
It is well documented that in 1971, at Papunya in Central Australia, a handful of curious artists made history when the first acrylic paintings on modest boards – revealing sacred and coded designs – were produced and shown to the world. Rare works from 1972 by first generation Papunya Tula artists Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri (Untitled) and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (Two Snakes at Alinttiti) sit adjacent to elegant linear compositions more recently produced by Ronnie Tjampitjinpa (Bushfire, 1997) and George Tjungurrayi (Tingari Design, 2003). The tradition extends now to freestanding sculptural works depicting Tingari forms by Walala Tjapaltjarri (assisted by Campfire Group artists) with Tingari Field, 2004. Only fully initiated Pintupi men can reference such Tingari stories. They essentially contain ceremonial designs and song cycles relating to the mythical law-makers who once travelled across the Tanami Desert laying the foundations for a powerful cultural spirit, now their artistic vision. Meanwhile, several hundreds of kilometers north-west across the Tanami in Balgo Hills, it was not until the mid 1980s that artists would begin painting with acrylics. Master cartographer Wimmitji Tjapangarti’s (Kutakutal – Artists Birthplace near Well 33, 1989) provides the visual template that allows the lurid colours of emerging artist Christine Yukenbarri (Karntawarra, 2003) to flourish and blossom. To help contextualise this, Adrian Newstead has written “Balgo Hills – Then and Now”, a short anecdotal essay on the developments of this community Arts Centre over the last 15 years.
As a personal testimony to the idea of artists as cultural heroes, Adelaide based photographer Darren Siwes (Church 1; One Night At Mt Lofty; I am Expecting; all 2000) presents fashionable self-portraits with ancient pride and dignity. Siwes is poetically captured in strategic white zones of the city. These images from his “mis/perceptions” series provide a concurrence of place and identity, symbolic of the visions that are transporting Aboriginal Art boldly into the future.
So what does the future hold for Aboriginal people? How do the artists see changes affecting their culture and traditions?
As we ponder this, I managed to discuss these broad questions with particular artists during 2003. Some simply smiled and shrugged in response; others seemed shy or unsure what ‘the future’ actually means in a cultural sense. Whilst the younger artists were varied in their opinions, there were certain common denominators expressed by many of the older artists. There is no fear of the future as long as essential wisdom is understood and elementary precautions are followed. Time is a circle not a line. People must carry on. Carry on as they have been instructed by their grandfathers and grandmothers, fathers and mothers. Culture is less about the imagination, and more about obedience. No surprises in the acknowledgement that the responses all relate to their land (country) and their faith (ceremony). In other words, a very conservative outlook on the future emerges – not dissimilar to that of European people – where if one is born with privileges, one is obligated to firmly hold onto them. Hence, for those artists whose families have retained ownership of their ancestral land and maintained continuity of ceremonies, these understandably provided the most traditionalist responses.
Jimmy An.gunguna from Maningrida encapsulates this:
“Same, all the way. Copy from the beginning. I got to do the same or big trouble. Same rarrk*, same dreaming. All the way…one rarrk.”
In Aboriginal communities all over Australia there exist similar responses. However, many younger people are being consistently attracted into country towns such as Alice Springs, Cairns or Kununurra, for fun or opportunities, out of necessity or boredom. Consequently, breakdowns in cultural responsibilities and continuity are occurring. A more measured response to notions of the future is held by Michael Nelson Jagamara from Papunya, 240 km west of Alice Springs.
“Some kids they just worry for cars, TV and grog, makes old people bit sad, but we only worried for country and ceremony. That’s all”
Accordingly, for those who have been denied these rites of passage, doubt and cynicism prevails. Many Aboriginal people now argue that the urbanisation of Australia has already affected Aboriginal people in cities and towns as well as remote communities like Papunya, Balgo or Maningrida. Therefore all Aboriginal Art is in fact urban art – for any number of reasons, whether it be our shifting motivations as consumers, the revised content of dreaming stories or simply the new technology and materials available. Aboriginal curator and writer Djon Mundine discusses this critical issue in the first of the keynote essays ‘This Must be A Sacred Place’. Mundine also examines the rationale behind Djirrididi – a colossal mural featuring ceremonial designs painted by Arnhem Land artist Mickey Durrng - floor to ceiling – wrapping around the central rotunda at Sammlung Essl.
Today, many artists are taking advantage of an experimental manner towards painting the dreaming. Indeed, if we are to consider Aboriginal Art as modern art, must we then critique this with the same rigorous standards as that of American and European art etc. ? Amidst the critical acclaim of implied European aesthetics in much of the work being produced, are we then in fact experiencing the postmodernism of contemporary Aboriginal art? In the second keynote essay ‘Aboriginal Art Out of Context’, art critic Rex Butler further explores and questions these ideas with particular attention to Emily Kame Kngwarreye, a visionary amongst Aboriginal artists. Moreover, Butler queries whether there is a loss of context within these experiments? And whether this loss of context might indeed be a positive thing?
The second theme of the exhibition
Secret Countries, showcases the diversity of Aboriginal Art being produced
today utilising various types of media. For the catalogue this has been
presented as a series of texts featuring ‘Artist and Community
Case Studies’, co-edited by Michael Eather and Jenny Fraser, alongside
numerous contributing writers including Marcia Langton, Avril Quaill,
Rex Butler, Katrina Chapman, Linda Carroli, Christine Nicholls, Linda
Cooper, Michael Snelling, Hannah Fink, Anna Haebich, Christian Thompson,
Morgan Thomas and Adrian Newstead
, as well as the voices of many artists, offering audiences current
opinions on art practices and related issues.
Within Secret Countries we consider both the role of ceremony inside a tradition, as well as the questioning of the role of shared stories for outsiders. Painting a ceremonial story has conceptual and practical limitations when presented as modern art. Accordingly, artists are choosing to work on the borderlines of tradition as depicted by Ian Waldron (Bloodwood Totem Series I – IV, 2004) and Rosella Namok (Kaapay and Kuyan…Young People, 2003). These artists working from Far North Queensland, use personalised visual codes implying references to Aboriginal cultural material, or are they perhaps simply showing us how Aboriginal people see?
So how does one maintain the dialogue between insiders and outsiders? How is cultural material interpreted and accommodated in other worlds? Black humour can be a powerful medicine, and such sensitive questions remind me of a joke I once heard about the prying non-Indigenous person (white man) soliciting information from the Indigenous messenger (“black fella”) about ceremonial secrets: “Can you tell me what it really means?” comes the eager enquiry. “Yes”, comes the bored reply of the messenger, “we can tell you what it all means, but then we’ll have to kill you!”
In this section of Spirit & Vision ceremonies and stories are celebrated and in some instances lamented. This cultural dialogue takes on board confidential Aboriginal perspectives on history with a powerful new work by Fiona Foley (Stud Gins, 2003) a wall installation consisting of seven state government issue blankets with repetitive screen printed words that reverberate past, and perhaps even present, truths. Here, derogatory perceptions of Aboriginal women in this country are loudly and clearly announced. This theme is countered with a private view, the hushed voice of Julie Dowling (Self Portrait, Black Bird, 2002) but the anxiety remains:
In this self-portrait, I tried to analyse myself as a woman fully grown. I was investigating my spirituality again and was inspired by the black crow, which is sometimes known as a messenger. The text in my body is all the tribal names including Badimia, Yamatji, Nyoongah, as well as Wudjula in a repetitive way. Some of the text is rubbed out or erased – feeling like I am on my own as a purveyor of my culture. I was also expressing what it is like to be fair-skinned and practicing my culture, especially about how culture is ephemeral. I am depicted to be once holding the messenger and it then flies away whenever I do my artwork. The viewer can see my feeling written on my face.
Richard Bell’s candy coloured paintings (Weak In Weak Out; It Wasn’t Me; both 2003) and Vernon Ah kee’s impressive photomontage series (This Man is... This Woman is…, 2003) consisting of 60 image and text panels – especially adapted as a screen work for this exhibition – exploit the power of English text, the language of invasion, in order to reveal the colonisers’ secrets. Amidst a perverse game of word plays, viewers are drawn back into the darker areas of Australian social history and political struggle. Audiences are confronted with stories of massacres and betrayal, racism and, more recently, denial. For many Aboriginal people, these are their Dreamtime stories! These are the trappings of colonisation where the after-effects are still being felt. They remain a stark reminder that discomfort and anguish still etch the psyche of the dispossessed.
Within Aboriginal culture
it has always been, and still is today, the artists’ duty to record
history and recreate stories that provide connections for future generations.
Accordingly, some Aboriginal artists are choosing digital technology,
photography and video to reveal secret countries of their own. A significant
component of Spirit & Vision explores recent works by artists using
new media, including light box displays by Jenny Fraser; a DVD program
in the gallery blackbox, featuring r e a, Michael Riley, Jason Davidson
and Christian Thompson; and photographic work by Brook Andrew and Destiny
Deacon. Informative contextual statements accompany many of these works.
Destiny Deacon, the only Australian artist selected to participate in
Documenta 6, at Kasell 2002, has contributed a major photographic series
(Forced Into Images, 2001) alongside a video work (Matinee, 2000)
The photographs in this show
form a narrative told in vignettes about a girl from birth to adulthood.
It was partly informed by news reports about violence against indigenous
women in Australia. The title borrows from an Alice Walker poem: “…
forced into images, doing hard time for all of us”.
Her staged photographs are ambiguous, acerbic, ironic, naughty, touching
and painterly. They use friends and family, dolls, and other toys and
objects found round her house to confront and up-end stereotypes, and
comment, sometimes savagely, on contemporary Australian life.
Much of the new media work obviously highlights not only contemporary ideas but urban realities as well, providing a form of community voice on the urban situation, a prickly subject that is often overlooked in major survey exhibitions. As previously stated, there looms today a large and ever expanding grey area between traditional art and urban art. Essentially we must agree it is all modern art. Many of these issues and ideas can be further viewed in the exhibition via a website installation www.cybertribe.com.au, curated by Jenny Fraser for Spirit & Vision.
Within Secret Countries we also see the ceremony as a continuing tradition. The three Petyarre sisters – Kathleen, Gloria and Violet – paint dynamic yet varied interpretations of their shared dreaming story, the Mountain Devil Lizard. The poignancy of their individual approaches is apparent visually, and is highlighted by lively interviews with the artists in a case study “Mountain Devil Lizard Ceremony” by Christine Nicholls.
During a field trip to selected towns and communities in March 2003,
Karlheinz Essl selected many artworks from Uluru, Alice Springs, Balgo
Hills, Kununurra, Melville Island, Bathurst Island, Darwin and Brisbane.
(Many of these artists and works are discussed in case studies in later
chapters.) However, the concept of Spirit & Vision is lyrically
crystallised within a collection of over forty bark paintings, carvings
and fibre works from Maningrida. These works are installed inside the
curved rotunda (the outer surface painted by Mickey Durrng) in the heart
of the exhibition space.
Artists include John Mowurndjul (Mardayin designs, 2002; Ngalyod the Rainbow Serpent, 2003; Mimih Spirit carvings, 2002), who often paints with his wife Kay Lindjuwanga; James Iyuna (Mimih Spirits, 2003); Ivan Namirrkki (Muludje Trees; Crayfish Dreaming, both 2003); Timothy Wulanjbirr (Cracked Mud, 2003); Jimmy Angunguna (Wangarra spirits, 2003); Jimmy Ngalukurn and Charlie Brians (Hollow Log Coffins 2002); Hamish Karrkarrhba (Sacred Dilly Bag, 2003); Owen Yalandja carvings and Lena Yarinkura fibre work, both depicting Yawk Yawk figures (2003).
This powerful installation is accompanied by a rich sound texture produced by non-Aboriginal collaborating sound artist Leigh Hobba (recorded in December 2003), with the permission and co-operation of Ndjebbana funeral singers from Maningrida. The solemn, meditative interior becomes a super-natural world, a sculptural presence with art and song.
Families coming together
to celebrate the life and commemorate the death of their own remain
at the core of any cultural practice. Indeed, Aboriginal funerals are
all about demonstrating such respect. Amidst the pandemonium of the
singing and wailing by congregations of extended families converging
with the appropriate skin-group relatives, crucial preparations are
made by the immediate family of the deceased. Extended song-cycles are
heard throughout the night with repetitive dance sequences that recognise
the totemic relationships of the deceased. Placement of ceremonial items
occurs at the site of the grave. All this is undertaken for the respectful
return of each living person back to his or her spirit world.
Perhaps one of the most haunting images that embodies Spirit & Vision
is a series of ochre on canvas works by senior Kimberley artist Paddy
Bedford, who now resides in Kununurra. These include (Mentuwurrji –
Medicine Gap; Camel Gap; Downs Massacre; all 2002). Bedford’s
paintings map actual sites of the Eastern Kimberley, known to him either
historically through stock work whilst mustering cattle and/or instinctively
through participation in ceremonies. Bedford’s drawing often locates
his own Dreaming sites for the Emu, Turkey and White Cockatoo. Yet the
artist also recalls the whispered histories of frontier massacres. Buried
within these stark, minimalist works are gentle reminders of the secrets
to country that Australia is still facing up to:
Paddy Bedford Jawalyi (his skin name) – Nyunkuny in his Gija language – was born in the early 1920s at old Bedford Downs Station south west of Warmun in the East Kimberley. A couple of years before his birth, the station was the site of a murder by strychnine poisoning of a group of Gija relatives in retaliation for the killing of a milking cow…These terrible encounters with white people were complex, however brutally simple they might seem to outsiders… It comes as no surprise that this massacre story sometimes features in Paddy’s paintings. The memory of the Bedford Downs massacre, ignored in white-man’s written historical records, was kept alive by the Gija in a Jinba corroboree
Today, Paddy works in various media - sometimes in the raw, earthy Warmun
style of ochre painting and sometimes with elegant gouaches on boards
- yet, like so many Aboriginal artists, regardless of materials, the
song remains the same:
Paddy Bedford paints the truth. The truth is an unacknowledged history and a compelling representation of the present. Paddy loves painting. Pigment, form, line, the beauty of humour, contradiction, and brutality. Paddy Bedford paints his history in the present, for the future, but always from the beginning
Australian Aboriginal Art is thousands of years old, yet as an international art movement it still has so much more to offer. On behalf of all the Aboriginal artists, the authors, art advisors, consultants and contributors that have made Spirit & Vision possible, I sincerely hope you enjoy the exhibition.
Michael Eather
Exhibition Co-ordinator and Co-Curator
January 2004