The struggle of aboriginal artists to have their work accepted as art, worthy of museums and galleries, reflects in many ways the arc of our own Warli, Madhubani and Gond artists, although in the case of Australian Aboriginal art, the transition has been more rapid.
Aboriginal culture goes as far back as 60,000 to 80,000 years ago, when these communities first settled in Australia. The first evidence of their culture is to be found in the still visible rock art, more than 20,000 years old. It is heavily coded with symbolism, mythology and the sympathetic magic performed by shamans, who sought to conquer animal spirits before the hunt or appease forces of nature.
NGMA’s New Delhi exhibition, ‘Indigenous Australia: Masterworks from the National Gallery of Australia’, gives a valuable
insight into this art with a wide range of works on display, featuring both traditional Aboriginal artists and contemporary practitioners, with a special emphasis on artists of mixed ancestry. The exhibition is drawn from NGA’s extensive collection, among the largest of its kind in the world.
The work on show includes intricate ‘dot art’, drawings done with natural pigments on eucalyptus bark, decorated shields, carved boomerangs and masks.
There is also a striking collection of paintings on canvas and fabric made by contemporary Aboriginal artists: intricate paintings that speak of creation myths, in which ancestor spirits bring the world into being in a state of dreaming. This is represented in a stunning work, ‘Yanjilypiri Jukurrpa’ (Star Dreaming), made by three senior Warlpiri artists, Paddy Sims, Larry Spencer and Paddy Nelson.
It is one of the first large canvases to emerge from Yuendumu in the Northern Territory of Australia. It relates to the fire ceremony of the Warlpiri. According to folklore, participants of the fire ceremony shook smouldering branches and specks floated into the night sky to create the constellations — these are represented by circles and stars in the foreground while thick bands of colour in the background evoke the surface of the earth.
The Warlpiri-speaking Yuendumu people were the first Aboriginal community in the Western Desert region to begin painting for the art market. Although they made a hesitant start, they now have their own organisation, the Warlukurlangu Art Centre.
Inverted view
Interestingly, the gallery showcases the contemporary voices first. As you go further inside, you encounter the works produced by Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from the late 1800s. This inverted view is a homage to the concept of the ‘usable past’ — of making sense of a national experience in ways that unify rather than separate peoples. The arrangement of the artworks underlines the issue of racial discrimination that has dogged the country for years.
In the contemporary section, one is struck by ‘Austracism’, by Vernon Ah Kee, from Brisbane, Queensland. Ah Kee represents the Kuku Yalanji/ Yidinji/ Waanyi/ Guugu Yimithirr/ Koko Berrin peoples. His moving text-based work talks of racism. It begins by saying, “I am not racist, but I don’t know why Aboriginal people cannot look after their houses properly… and I am not racist but… they are very ungrateful people and… I am not racist but they never wore any clothes until the coming of the whites… I am not racist, but you know there are poor white people too…” and goes on to take apart the bigoted beliefs of the coloniser.
Kitschy complicity
Another disturbing work is ‘Ash on Me’, by Tony Albert, who belongs to the Girramay/ Yidinji/ Kuku Yalanji peoples from Townsville, Queensland. The installation is made up of ‘opportunity shop’ (charity shop) ceramic and metal ashtrays decorated with kitschy images of Aboriginal people and culture.
The old found objects, arranged in a way that spells out the word ‘Ash’, underline their original use and the casual racism hidden in them: cigarette butts are to be stubbed out on the faces of Aboriginal men, women and children.
When seen in a curio shop, these items may look kitschy enough to seem innocuous, but the innocence comes apart when we look closer.
William Barak (1824-1903) belonged to the Wurundjeri/ Woiwurung peoples, of Port Phillip. His work bridges the divide between the traditional and the contemporary.
He moves away from the traditional geometric patterns in the work of the Aboriginals that did not depict humans, but were a means to seize the animal spirit. In Barak’s painting ‘Corroboree’ we have people of cooler regions, dressed in Possum skin cloaks. Barak was a child when Europeans began to make incursions into Port Phillip and he represents the transition of cultures in his works. The Europeans referred to him as the ‘last chief of the Yarra Yarra Tribe.’
Three sisters
The video room has works of the Bidjara artist, Christian Thompson. Three large monitors at the centre show three women of mixed ancestry. An off-screen fan blows their hair and they are bathed in a yellow light. The idea is that they are in the Queensland desert, buffeted by its arid winds. A lilting piece of music — hypnotic, calming and sensuous — accompanies the images.
I learn that the three are not just any women — they are three sisters whose grandfather is Charlie Perkins, the first Aboriginal person to gain a degree and become a permanent head of federal government. His parents were of mixed blood. His daughter, Hetti Perkins, is an influential curator. Thompson
chose the trio to comment not just on their mixed heritage but also on the harsh desert landscape of Central Queensland to which they belong and which is also his own father’s country.
“I love the mysticism and the seductive cruelty of the desert, my home, and how it can be so elusive, alluring and potentially life threatening,” writes Thompson. The artist is currently London-based, with a multidisciplinary practice that explores notions of identity, cultural hybridity and history.
The exhibition also includes haunting black-and-white photographs by Ricky Maynard titled ‘The Healing Garden’, ‘Wybalenna’, ‘Flinders Island’ and ‘Tasmania’. His photographs act as documents, recording the everyday lives of Aboriginal Australians in Tasmania. The landscape in his photographs also becomes a topography of healing and loss.
Moving to the centre of the next gallery, one encounters Lin Onus’s work, ‘Dingoes’, made from synthetic polymer, paint on fibreglass, wire and metal. It may seem like a simple depiction of dingoes, the wild dogs indigenous to Australia that were much-maligned and hunted in large numbers by the colonisers.
But Onus has spent time at Lake Eyre studying the habits of these animals. Having observed them keenly, he recognises their resourcefulness and ability to survive in the wild: they seem to share these qualities with the Aboriginal people, who have also suffered incredibly rough treatment in the hands of the colonisers. The injustice of history is brought out through five vignettes, from that of a mother with her pups to a dingo lying dead in a trap.
ON SHOW: ‘Indigenous Australia: Masterworks from the NGA’ at is on show at the National Gallery of Modern Art, in New Delhi, till August 26.
The writer is a critic-curator by day, and a creative writer and visual artist by night.
