Week 7 focused on understanding and familiarising ourselves with the various styles in Indigenous art, culture and design. For one to enable appreciation for this genre, it is vital to first understand its diversity. This was done so by focusing on 5 different styles from various areas in Australia. Beginning with...
The Desert:
Central, Western and
Southern Desert
The Desert was the home for the beginnings of the Papunya dot movement in 1971. It was the birthplace for the one of the most historic moments in Indigenous art.
It is an area with are which focuses on tradition orientated communities with artworks based on traditional designs but also maintaining a status as contemporary art. The art from these areas is created where language and culture are still strong and where ceremony is still practiced. Classical desert art takes many forms. These include decorated weapons to personal adornments, sacred and secret incised boards and stones (tjuringa), rock engravings and paintings, and the art of body painting, sand drawings, ceremonial constructions and ground paintings. The artwork from these areas of Australia celebrate the sacred nature of 'place'.
The iconography of desert is a different language distinct from that of Arnhem Land. Its characteristic designs and icons include those denoting place or site, and those indicating paths or movement. Concentric circles may indicate a site, a camp, a waterhole or a fire. In ceremony, the concentric circle provides the means for the ancestral power which lies within the earth to surface and go back into the ground. Meandering and straight lines may indicate lightning or water courses, or they may describe the paths of ancestors and supernatural beings. Tracks of animals and humans are also part of the lexicon of desert imagery. U shapes usually represent settled people or breasts, while arcs may be boomerangs or wind-breaks, and short straight lines or bars are often spears and digging sticks. Fields of dots can indicate sparks, fire, burnt ground, smoke, clouds, rain, and other phenomena.
It features a full European colour palette and the use of Acrylic on board and also acrylic on
canvas. It is unique in that it uses materials of Western European art to represent cosmology of the people of
the Western desert in a finely structured and balanced way.
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| Clifford Possum 'Men's Spider Initiation' |
The Kimberley Region:
The east Kimberley region inhabits the community of the Warnum people. The paintings by artists from Warnum display some similar elements of the art of the desert, in particular the use of concentric designs such as circles to signify specific sites, lines of dots to describe shapes, and a planar view of the landscape. The shapes in these works relate to a story and are often bordered with white dots. Works produced in this area can be identified by the use of blocks of colour and its limited palette of natural earth pigments as opposed to desert art which uses a full range of colour. Warnum artists dig the colour out of the earth which reiterates their connection with the environment in which they are being creative and its importance to the practice of creating the art. Warnum artists, however, the emphasis is on the depiction of the features of the environment created by the ancestors, rather than on the narration of ancestral events, as in desert painting. Each painting has a different story for the artist and their family. It is also home to a variety of styles of art within the region.
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| Warnum School |
Arnhem Land:
Arnhem Land is a place where Aboriginal language and culture is still strong. The works from this area feature many stylistic differences. In many paintings there is cross hatching in the background. Every family has their own style of cross hatching and this element of the image creates another dimension of language in itself. The Arnhem Land people create many of their works on bark unlike those in the desert which are ground paintings. In 1963, North East Arnhem Land people used art as a means of expressing to the world the nature of their attachment to the land; bark paintings were submitted as evidence of legal title to their land to the Australian Government in constitutional procedures concerning Aboriginal land rights. It was not until 1976, however that land rights legislation in any form was finally enacted in the Northern Territory.
The Arnhem people use natural pigments and ochres from the earth including a range of red and yellow ochres, white from kaolin or pipeclay, and black which is usually obtained from charcoal. The sites at which ochres are quarried are often of important ritual and political significance. Colours and the substances from which they are made are symbolic in themselves. White clay is used in mourning; red ochre is associated with the blood ancestor- beings who now reside in the earth. These works have a contemporary feel and rhythm, although most traditional forms, ground paintings for example, continue to be largely restricted to ceremonial use, others, such as painting on bark and wood sculpture readily fulfil ritual functions and are made for the public domain as well. Arnhem Land is renowned for bark painting, sculptures and weaving, with a variation in emphasis and styles across the region. In general the paintings of the west tend towards the figurative, and as one moves east, geometric designs become more prominent.
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| David Malangi |
Arnhem Land art is also famous for its use of X-ray vision. The artists paint using a style which allows the viewer to see the internal skeleton of its subject, for example an animal. It is estimated that this element was introduced in the past 3,000 years due to the changes in climate and sea level.
The Arnhem Land region is also rich in other forms of art
including painted wood sculpture and dyed woven natural fibres which often
incorporate feathers. Bark is a perishable material and the antiquity of the
tradition of bark painting is difficult to establish. The practice of painting
on large sheets of bark used for the walls of shelters was seen when the
Europeans first arrived, and the earliest recorded bark paintings were
collected on Essington Island between 1838 and 1878. Bark is peeled from the
trunks of stringy bark trees during the wet season when the sap is rising and
the bark is easy to remove. The curved sheet of bark is cured and made pliable,
then flattened under weights for a few days while it dries. Next, the rough
outer layer is removed and the inner surface rubbed smooth in readiness for the
painting.
A range of brushes are made from a variety of fibres and
sticks, the ends of which are either frayed by chewing or have hairs or
feathers attached. Broad areas of the background colour are often blocked in
using the hands. A particularly fine brush made of several long hairs attached
to a stick (called marwat, meaning ‘hair’ in eastern Arnhem land) is used to
paint intricate cross hatched patterns. In recent years commercially available
brushes have been used, these are often modified to suit the specific needs of
the artist.
As elsewhere
in Aboriginal Australia, the process of making art was often more important
than the finished product
Tiwi Islands:
Tiwi Graphic Art is bold and colourful. The ochres used are
more friable than those found in Arnhem Land, and are therefore crushed rather
than ground in the preparation of the paint. Traditionally, brushes are made of
frayed bark or feathers, and now European brushes are also used. The
distinctive ‘pwata’ comb as well as a short
cylindrical stick supply the dots however dots from the Tiwi Islands are not the same as those from the Western Desert areas. Tiwi artists do their dots in lines. The use of brushes amongst Tiwi artists also enables them to apply elements of cross hatching to their works although due to the tools that are used, Tiwi and Arnhem land cross hatching can be told apart by the thickness of the lines. Arnhem Land cross hatching is done with a single hair where as Tiwi cross hatching involves thicker lines. While the
traditional forms of art persist in contemporary times, since 1968 Tiwi artists
have been at the fore in innovation, using new techniques and materials such a
vehicles for their rich pictorial heritage. The repertoire of Tiwi art have
been expanded to include screen printed cloth, batik, ceramics, printmaking and
painting on paper as well as canvas.
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| John Baptist Apuatimi |
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| Close up of Cross Hatching |
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| Timothy Cook |
Torres Strait Islands:
Artists and their works from the Torres Strait have a different identity of their own again. Artists such as Ken Thaiday have given Torres Strait artwork a new contemporary voice with works such as his sculptural piece Bamboo Hammerhead Shark Headdress and his series of the Dance machines.
