Spanning eight rooms and around 150 works, the 2007 inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial Culture Warriors is the largest display of Indigenous Australian art at the National Gallery for over a decade.
Culture Warriors is a landmark, being one of the few large-scale, curated, and themed exhibitions of Indigenous Australian art. Exhibition curator Brenda Croft explained that her selection of works should make viewers feel as though they had entered a "black Alice in Wonderland." The first art instalment in particular achieves this "fantastical" effect, created by an enormous diorama of stark, white trees with native birds on limb and porcelain-skin-affixed plaster kangaroos surrounding.
Recent work of 30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island artists are featured across a wide range of media, including bark and canvas paintings, installation, sculpture, textiles and photomedia.
The exhibit traces two broad themes, albeit barely separated: there is the personal, traditional and mystical; and then there is the historical, contemporary and political. Ancestral Dreamtime beings, vast and distant galaxies, and mythical stories of great deeds and special healing powers feature alongside commentary on contemporary Indigenous Australian life, artistic challenges to conservative Eurocentric interpretations of history. The name 'Culture Warriors' refers to this latter aspect of the works, as well as to actual warriors from the past featured in some of the paintings.
The Art of Dennis Nona, Malu Sara
Artist Dennis Nona, whose traditional name is Malu Sara (meaning ocean bird), won the much coveted 2007 Telstra Award for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art for his intricate bronze and pearlshell sculpture Ubirikubiri , purchased this year by the National Gallery. Standing at over a metre high and 3.6 metres long, the sculpture of a crocodile with a man on its back is based on a legend that took place on the Mai Kusa River on the western coast of Papua New Guinea. Mr Nona told the The Epoch Times that "This sculpture I made was to reprensent the dance ceremony corrigraphed on Badu Island, and the song was composed on Badu Island in Kala lagau ya language (a western Torres Strait language) by Badu Island elders. The ceremony was practised on Badu Island at Awayailau kasa in the 1800s. The elders told me that it is important, and to make sure that this sculpture is based on the ceremony on Badu island—that's why it was approved by them."
Inspiration for these ancestral stories comes from visions, which are then handed down over generations and are expressions of a deep understanding and relationship with the landscape; important information is also communicated. "We have lots of traditional stories handed down since old times related to constellations, navigations from ancestral times most of the stuff is also associated with the harvesting, the right time to harvest," said Mr Nona in an interview with The Epoch Times . The artist emphasised his acknowledgement of the elders of Badu Island for giving him permission and approval to depict the Ubirikubiri .
Another of Dennis Nona's works in the exhibition is Yawarr , which tells of the character's unwitting victimisation wrought by vengeful and jealous villagers. His version of the story is from the Arrgan traditional region on Badu Island, (a west-central Torres Strait Island) close to the Awyieal Kasa river. "It's a legend story, a traditional story, it just teaches us not to be greedy and [to] share," he said. "Originally it's based on the yam ceremony, when you plant the yam and [during] the yam ceremony they put all the yams together," said Mr Nona. "Every time they had the ceremony Yawarr was always the winner, his yams were very big because he used magic, like a black magic called kui." The villagers sought his secrets, but kept forgetting them before the next monsoon season. After giving the villagers the secret twice, Yawarr refused a third time. "[The villagers] were upset and asked the spirit people, very powerful people, they moved him by creating rainbows and transported him to Murray Island," explained Mr Nona.
At the end of the long black and white print Yawarr is on the island of Mer, represented by a dugong, within which is depicted prolific vegetable gardens that Yawarr is said to have made and given to the Murray Island people.
Mr Nona expressed his deep spiritual connection to the stories he depicts, which inform and guide his painting process: "However you put it, I have so much experience; all those sacred stories, they are kind of attacking me in a good way. They want me to draw them because they know when I draw them they are well protected."
Traditional Indigenous Art With Profound Themes
Moving past the entrance, the first couple of rooms are clearly devoted more to the personal and traditional aspects of Indigenous Australian art. There are Philip Gudthaykudthay's series of paintings on badurru logs hollowed by termites, whose significance derives from their use as stores for the bones of the dead. These are decorated with delicate paintings telling rich Dreamtime stories of totemic animals and creation beings.
Moving through the exhibit reveals further mystical insight and expression by Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Australian artists. Notably, there is Gulumbu Yunupingu's Garak the Universe , an important ancestral story realised on stringy bark. The bark is covered with stars, representing perpetuity and intuition, invoking the vastness of the cosmos. The museum explained that Yunupingu's works are about the entire universe, calling on ancestral beings with infinite vision, who see the skies bright and full of stars every night, things that exist far beyond any scientific expedition or estimation; everything that can be imagined and all that cannot. These stars, invisible to us, represent ancestor spirits who exist in the 'astral dimension'. They are also connected to bodies of water in the Northern Territory.
Some of the mystical and spiritual elements continue in the next room. There is Jimmy Baker, who felt he had been awarded special healing powers from higher beings, later travelling to Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory to apply his knowledge and skills, healing those in suffering. His works are large and dramatic, using broad areas of colour. Concentric circles relate to sites of significance, which stories are often based around – the stories tell tales of both misfortune and daily life, spent digging for food.
Another renowned Indigenous Australian artist, Jan Billycan, has three paintings on display, showing images of land according to Aboriginal traditions. The artist grew up in the desert, where water is supposed to have originated from and stayed under the ground. Water is likened to a snake in some of these paintings, which the local people hypnotise and seduce to the surface so they may drink. Billycan is a renowned traditional healer who possesses the power of seeing inside the human body. These bold, expressive and rich paintings almost breathe with life, and in this portray their ineffable meaning. According to the curator's explanation, the waterholes are depicted viscerally, because they are alive, and mirror a human liver or kidney. The tali (sand dunes) are stretched across the canvas like the human ribcage. Here, the boundary between internal/external is blurred, and the human body becomes part of the universe; an extension of the land. The artist is said to exercise modesty in her talents, but points their meaning out such that their significance be correctly understood.
As the exhibit advanced, so did the progression of ideas. Part II of the Culture Warriors review will examine the politically aware, contemporary art that dominates the second half of the exhibit, taking the place of more traditional works and themes.
Culture Warriors is on display at the National Gallery of Australia until February 10, 2008.
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