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Circles, Tracks, and Lines: Ancient knowledge Inspires Painters of the Australian Western Desert
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10109 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1993 |
2,071 Words |
| Author
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Jennifer Isaacs
Jennifer Isaacs is a free-lance writer living in Sydney. She
has worked extensively with Aboriginal artists and has curated
national and international exhibitions of their work for the
past twenty years. She is the author of Australian Aboriginal
Paintings (Dutton Studio Books, 1992). |
During the Australian bicentenary in 1988, it became evident that the image of Australian art, and indeed the nation's cultural identity, had been substantially enhanced by the vibrant abstract paintings of Australian desert Aborigines. For example, the forecourt for the new parliament house in Canberra, the nation's capital, is mosaic designed by Michael Nelson Jakamara, one such desert artist. Magnificent canvases by Aborigine artists are housed in boardrooms across the country and have been showcased at major international presentations. What precipitated these developments? And who are the people who make this art?
Aboriginal people have inhabited this southern continent for over forty thousand years. The Pintubi, Anmatjera, and Walbiri once were described as archetypal "stone age" people. The blinkered and racially superior views of white Australia in the 1950s relegated these intensely spiritual and aesthetic peoples to a primordial era that was assumed soon would pass. The literature of the time spoke of the Australian desert Aborigines as nomadic peoples who eked out their living in harsh environment. As the decades have progressed, this picture has altered dramatically. Art has played significant role. Artistic activity developed in one tiny and remote community has flourished and spread to others. Now, the desert economy is substantially affected by art.
The paintings produced by desert artists are an aesthetic triumph that has lifted the community from the depressed and dislocated circumstances of the 1960s into the international spotlight. An exhibition titled Dreamings was held at the Asia Society Gallery in New York. An exhibit titled Magiciennes de la Terre, at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, aroused great interest. Most recently the work of the desert artists was exhibited in Russia, as present (February to May 1993), an important exhibition is taking place at the san Diego Museum of Man.
The picture was immensely different in 1971. At that time a young schoolteacher, Geoff Bardon had just completed an art degree at a Sydney college, traveled to the very center of the Australian desert area, to Papunya, 150 miles northwest of Alice Springs. Papunya had been established in the early 1960s at a time when most of the Pintubi and many Walbiri and Anmatjera still lived nomadic lives. A long drought had caused concern for their survival, the Pintubi in particular. The welfare branch of Australia's Northern Territory sent out patrols to gather and bring the people to a government camp called Papunya. Patrols contacted small family group[s and brought them in, in successive waves.
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