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Art of Arnhem Land: 1940s–1970s This exhibition charts the emergence of Aboriginal bark paintings from the sphere of anthropological interest into the public domain as a powerful form of contemporary art. Drawn entirely from the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection, the exhibition includes paintings and sculptures by senior artists who later became celebrated precursors of the Aboriginal Land Rights movement. I would like to thank Banduk Marika for her assistance with this project and the curator of the exhibition, Tracey Lock-Weir. Collection History Departing from Adelaide on 18 March 1948, members of Australia’s largest international scientific expedition headed north to Darwin to prepare for their impending fieldwork in Arnhem Land. This historic American–Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land (AASEAL) was led by the South Australian Museum’s honorary associate ethnologist, Charles P. Mountford. Among the twenty-five tons of material collected during this nine-month expedition were nearly 500 bark paintings, many of which were later distributed (in 1956) by the Commonwealth Government to all major Australian state art galleries and museums. This gift of Aboriginal bark paintings illustrates a post-war shift in attitudes of state art galleries in relation to the collection of Aboriginal art, and the growth of interest in the area outside the paradigm of anthropology. These were the first Aboriginal works collected in the field and accepted by public art galleries, not only for their ethnographic significance, but also for their aesthetic qualities. These paintings from Arnhem Land now form the foundation of most state gallery Aboriginal art collections. Although the subjects of the bark paintings have their genesis in pre-colonial Australia, the study of Aboriginal art history is a relatively recent phenomenon. In May 1955 the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Director, Robert Campbell, considered it important for the Gallery to establish a collection of Aboriginal art: "The Director strongly recommends the establishment of a collection of Aboriginal work, as it will unquestionably be of the greatest interest in future years and many overseas visitors to the Gallery have asked whether we have any specimens. Although the [South Australian] Museum possesses a collection, they are regarded as anthropological objects and not as works of art" .1 The Art Gallery of South Australia was the first Australian state art gallery to purchase the work of an Aboriginal artist in 1939,2 and the first actively to collect Aboriginal art. This began with the acceptance of two important gifts from Charles P. Mountford in February 1955, 3 and marked a prevailing change in consciousness. The acceptance of Arnhem Land bark paintings as art helped prepare the ground for the emergence of the Central and Western Desert dot painting movement in the early 1970s, and its subsequent meteoric rise on the international contemporary art market. In 1956 the Art Gallery of South Australia was privileged to receive thirty-four Commonwealth gifts from (AASEAL) ¾ more than any other art institution. As well, between 1955 and 1962 the Gallery purchased two works and received twenty-three generous gifts from Charles Mountford’s private collection, some of which came from Gunbalanya (Oenpelli) in 1949 and Yirrkala in 1952. This collection of fifty-nine works from these three early expeditions to Arnhem Land is one of the largest art gallery collections of this early material in existence. The Gallery also continued to collect Aboriginal bark paintings and sculpture through the 1960s and 1970s and later, including exceptional examples by the celebrated and innovative artists Billy Yirawala, Bardayal Nadjamerrek, George Milpurrurru and Mick Kubarkku. These later paintings are larger, more elaborate and individual in style, the result of a renewed determination to promote Aboriginal culture supported by the establishment of government art communities. Origins and Belief Systems Originating from rock art, wet-weather bark shelter, hollow-log coffin and body painting design elements, the complex iconography of these works reflects the artists’ physical and religious world. These intricate, crosshatched images tell of a world of ancestral transformations. Symbolically imbued with shimmering intensity, many of these tapestry-like paintings document epic ancestral journeys, illustrating creative acts that formed the land. At the end of their journey, having taught skills for survival and social laws, the ancestral beings were reabsorbed into the earth, releasing a continual spiritual presence in the landscape. These religious subjects together with secular hunting scenes, sea life and planetary configurations form microcosms of land, sea, space and time. Regional Themes Arnhem Land is customarily divided into four main regions: Groote Eylandt, north-east, central and west and encompasses approximately thirty language groups. The influence of the cultural exchange during the centuries long relationship between visiting Macassan fishermen and the people of Arnhem Land can be detected across the region, and is visually most evident in the paintings of Groote Eylandt. Beautiful drawings of Malay praus (boats) characteristically set against a black background abound in the detailed art of this region. Other sea-faring themes are common, for example Minimini Mamarika’s navigational Orion and the Pleiades, 1948. These secular subjects along with food and hunting scenes retain local relevance, while some religious subjects traverse regions, connecting moiety 4 and clan groups. Two such epic creation stories are the generically titled Djang’kawu Sisters 5 and Wawalik Sisters - both Dhuwa moiety stories and based on the universal theme of the great fertility mother. The Djang’kawu travelled from a mythical island above the Gulf of Carpentaria in a canoe reaching the coast of Arnhem Land as it was lit by the golden rays of the sun. They walked across the land from east to west using their digging sticks to create the waterholes, wells, trees and other natural features. As these ancestral beings traversed the land they created the place names, rituals and songs and eventually lay down and gave birth to numerous children and sacred objects. This story is mostly shared by Dhuwa people living near the saltwater. The Wawalik Sisters creation story, on the other hand, relates to Dhuwa people living near fresh water, with their journey beginning near Roper River (Ngukurr) in the southeast of Arnhem Land and travelling north. In most accounts their creation and transformational activities were focussed around the Mirarrmina waterhole on the Upper Woolen River, in central Arnhem Land, where a giant serpent swallowed them and flooded the land. Other creation stories link closely associated clan groups. For example the Fire story about the crocodile ancestor, Baru, connects a series of Yirritja clan groups along the coast of north-east Arnhem Land from Blue Mud Bay north to Caledon Bay. Subjects in western Arnhem Land are less restricted to clan groups and paintings of religious themes relate to ritual initiation Wubarr (no longer performed) and Marrayin ceremonies. Marks of Distinction The style of Arnhem Land bark paintings can be as fluid as the subject matter, particularly the paintings produced in the settlements of Ramingining and Maningrida in central Arnhem Land. As a reflection not only of the abundant flora and fauna of this area but also the multiple language groups of this region, the art tends to be a bold and dynamic mix of western and north-eastern Arnhem Land influences. Robin Guningbal’s, Ritual mortuary washing ceremony, c1971, is an excellent example of this central regional style with its continuous graphic white outline pattern and dense composition. The use of rarrk (crosshatching) within the figures is also to be found in western Arnhem Land art, and the way the decorative patterning encompasses the entire picture plane, similar to north-east Arnhem Land painting. Western Arnhem Land paintings are distinguished by their resemblance to rock art found on the walls of the escarpment surrounding the settlement of Gunbalanya (Oenpelli). Commonly composed of singular or multi-figure motifs illustrating hunting scenes or mimi spirits, and set against a plain monochrome background, like Bob Balirrbalirr Dirdi’s, Mimi spirit and Namorrordo devil, c1969, they are among the most identifiable works of Aboriginal art. Imbued with several layers of meaning - from secular to religious - these beautifully proportioned, free-floating anatomical studies of identifiable animals in ‘x-ray’ are among the most arresting images in western Arnhem Land art. By contrast, the more restricted geometric art of north-east Arnhem Land is characterised by a fixed repertoire of repeated diamond or rectilinear patterns which originate from ceremonial body painting designs. The ability to paint particular stories and use certain designs is determined by the artists’ moiety - Yirritja or Dhuwa and then further determined by his clan and social status. Mawalan Marika’s The Wawalik Sisters, 1948 or 1952, is a vibrant, beautiful example of the use of a Dhuwa moiety Rirratjingu clan design, showing interlocking rectangular blocks forming a rhythmic herringbone background for the figurative motifs which portray an episode of the epic Wawalik Sisters story. Art and Politics This exhibition spans an important period of political change for Aboriginal people. Aboriginal human rights and rights to land ownership rose as salient issues by the 1960s and 1970s. Raw and intimate, the rare early paintings by senior north-eastern Arnhem Land artists such as Mawalan Marika, Narritjin Maymuru and Munggurrawuy Yunupingu illustrate important narratives only available to artists of authority, relating to title ownership of particular tracts of land. It is these early elaborate ‘land maps’ which gave momentum to the land rights movement thirty years later. These senior artists, along with Mathaman Marika (Mawalan’s brother) whose work is also included in this collection, collaborated in the painting of the historic 1963 Bark Petition which ultimately led to the enactment in 1976 of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. Comprising over eighty paintings and sculptures, Art of Arnhem Land: 1940s–1970s highlights the regional diversity of art produced throughout Arnhem Land and the intrinsic link between religion and land. The exhibition also shows the evolution of a post-colonial bark painting tradition from its gradual emergence during the 1940s, through to its acceptance in the 1970s as a dynamic form of contemporary art. The South Australian Museum is showing a parallel exhibition, Art of Arnhem Land: 1948–1952, 20 October 2002 – 23 February 2003. Tracey Lock-Weir Notes
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| Talks, & Lectures Tuesday 22 October at 12.45 pm Tuesday 22 October at 6.15 pm Tuesday 10 December at 12.45 pm Tuesday 4 February at 12.45 pm Saturday 8 February at 11.30 am Saturday 8 February at 2.30 pm Tuesday 18 February at 12.45 pm Conversation & Preservation Events for families and children Sunday 23 November at 12 noon – 3 pm Sunday 27 October 11 am – 3 pm Friday 1 November at 6.15 pm School group booking information Exhibition entry and tours are free Telephone: 8207 7033 (best contact time 3.30 – 5 pm school days) or fax: 82077070 Art of Arnhem Land Education Pack Thursday 31 October 4.30 - 5.30 pm A selection of videos on Arnhem Land from Film Australia Yirrkala is an Aboriginal township on the Gove Peninsula in north east Arnhem Land. In 1970 a long term film project with the Yolngu of Yirrkala and Film Australia commenced. Eight major filming trips were made between 1970 and 1982 documenting many aspects of Yolngu life. These films also included previously unused and historically important material. In 1996 the last of these films were taken to Yirrkala for Yolngu approval. A selection of these videos will be shown on Saturdays & Sundays in the Gallery’s Function Room on the following dates: November 9&10, 23&24, January 11&12, 18&19, 25&26, February 1&2, 8&9, 15&16, 22&23.
Madarrpa Funeral at Gurka’wuy and In Memory of Mawalan will be shown on the big screen in the Auditorium at 11 am and 2.30 pm respectively on Sunday 24 November and Sunday 23 February 2003. Enquiries: call Cate on 82077035 Information Brochure For more information about the Gallery Bookshop, click here
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ALTERNATIVE TEXT
Art of Arnhem Land
Aboriginal Bark Paintings from the 1940s to the 1970s
18 October 2002 - 23 February 2003
Developed over a period of approximately 50,000 years by generations of Indigenous artists from northern Australia, bark painting has undergone numerous changes in style, technique, scale and iconography—particularly since Baldwin Spencer commissioned the first paintings on bark from Gagudju artists in Arnhem Land in 1912.
Between the 1940s and 1970s there was a change in the appreciation of the tradition within the framework of Australian art history. In the late 1940s the aesthetic significance of the medium was recognised by a broader white audience when many of the works first began to enter public art museums around Australia—shifting its classification from artefact to art. Shadowing the rise of Modernism in Australia, during the 1940s and the 1950s, the tradition inspired and influenced important Australian modernist artists such as Margaret Preston, Ian Fairweather, James Cant and Tony Tuckson. By the 1970s, a strong market for these works had developed, and bark painting was recognised as a dynamic form of contemporary Australian art.
This exhibition will be a culmination of new research undertaken by the Art Gallery of South Australia in partnership with several indigenous people from Arnhem Land, including the leading Rirratjingu artist Banduk Marika. The core of the works in the exhibition come from Yirrkala, Oenpelli and Groote Eylandt and were collected during the historic National Geographic Society’s American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, in Australia’s far north, in 1948. When these works were collected over fifty years ago, many of the artist’s names and accompanying stories were insufficiently recorded. Through the assistance of people from these northern communities this new research will identify many of the unknown artists, and reveal new and accurate information about these powerful paintings. Many of the works have been recently conserved making them suitable for public display.
Originating from rock art, bark shelter, hollow-log coffin and body design elements—the complex iconography of these works simultaneously reflect the artists’ surrounding physical and metaphysical world. These intricate crosshatched images of extraordinary naturalism form a beautiful tapestry effect as they tell of a world of ancestral journeys and transformations. Loaded with energy, the paintings are spiritual journeys through the landscape, revealing the creative events which formed the land and releasing the creative forces that regenerate life. These spiritual images of ancestral beings, hunting scenes, sea life, planetary configurations and ceremonial scenes are microcosms of land, sea, space and time.
Comprising of over 90 works from the 1940s to the 1970s from northern Australia—this will be the first time they have ever been displayed as a group since many of them were collected in 1948. Major artists represented in the exhibition include Mawalan Marika, Wandjuk Marika, England Bangala, George Milpurrurru, Billy Yirawala, Narritjin Maymuru and Mick Kubarkku.
This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the South Australian Museum who will also be presenting a collection of bark paintings and carved figures made in the years 1948-1952.