Related pages
Australian Aboriginal Studies 2008 volume 1 Abstracts
Rock-art of the Western Desert and Pilbara: Pigment dates provide new perspectives on the role of art in the Australian arid zone
Jo McDonald (Australian National University) and Peter Veth (Australian National University)
Systematic analysis of engraved and painted art from the Western Desert and Pilbara has allowed us to develop a spatial model for discernable style provinces. Clear chains of stylistic connection can be demonstrated from the Pilbara coast to the desert interior with distinct and stylistically unique rock-art bodies. Graphic systems appear to link people over short, as well as vast, distances, and some of these style networks appear to have operated for very long periods of time. What are the social dynamics that could produce unique style provinces, as well as shared graphic vocabularies, over 1000 kilometres? Here we consider language boundaries within and between style provinces, and report on the first dates for pigment rock-art from the Australian arid zone and reflect on how these dates from the recent past help address questions of stylistic variability through space and time.
Painting and repainting in the west Kimberley
Sue O’Connor, Anthony Barham (Australian National University) and Donny Woolagoodja (Mowanjum Community, Derby)
We take a fresh look at the practice of repainting, or retouching, rockart, with particular reference to the Kimberley region of Western Australia. We discuss the practice of repainting in the context of the debate arising from the 1987 Ngarinyin Cultural Continuity Project, which involved the repainting of rock-shelters in the Gibb River region of the western Kimberley. The ‘repainting debate’ is reviewed here in the context of contemporary art production in west Kimberley Indigenous communities, such as Mowanjum. At Mowanjum the past two decades have witnessed an artistic explosion in the form of paintings on canvas and board that incorporate Wandjina and other images inspired by those traditionally depicted on panels in rock-shelters. Wandjina also represents the key motif around which community desires to return to Country are articulated, around which Country is curated and maintained, and through which the younger generations now engage with their traditional lands and reach out to wider international communities. We suggest that painting in the new media represents a continuation or transference of traditional practice. Stories about the travels, battles and engagements of Wandjina and other Dreaming events are now retold and experienced in the communities with reference to the paintings, an activity that is central to maintaining and reinvigorating connection between identity and place. The transposition of painting activity from sites within Country to the new ‘out-of-Country’ settlements represents a social counterbalance to the social dislocation that arose from separation from traditional places and forced geographic moves out-of-Country to government and mission settlements in the twentieth century.
Port Keats painting: Revolution and continuity
Graeme K Ward (AIATSIS) and Mark Crocombe (Thamarrurr Regional Council)
The role of the poet and collector of ‘mythologies’, Roland Robinson, in prompting the production of commercial bark-painting at Port Keats (Wadeye), appears to have been accepted uncritically — though not usually acknowledged — by collectors and curators. Here we attempt to trace the history of painting in the Daly–Fitzmaurice region to contextualise Robinson’s contribution, and to evaluate it from both the perspective of available literature and of accounts of contemporary painters and Traditional Owners in the Port Keats area. It is possible that the intervention that Robinson might have considered revolutionary was more likely a continuation of previously well established cultural practice, the commercial development of which was both an Indigenous ‘adjustment’ to changing socio-cultural circumstances, and a quiet statement of maintenance of identity by strong individuals adapting and attempting to continue their cultural traditions.
Negotiating form in Kuninjku bark-paintings
Luke Taylor (AIATSIS)
Here I examine social processes involved in the manipulation of painted forms of bark-paintings among Kuninjku artists living near Maningrida in Arnhem Land. Young artists are taught to paint through apprenticeships that involve exchange of skills in producing form within extended family groups. Through apprenticeship processes we can also see how personal innovations are shared among family and become more regionally located. Lately there have been moves by senior artists to establish separate out-stations and to train their wives and daughters to paint. At a stylistic level the art now creates a greater sense of family autonomy and yet the subjects link the artists back in to much broader social networks.
Making art and making culture in far western New South Wales
Lorraine Gibson
This contribution is based on my ethnographic fieldwork. It concerns the intertwining aspects of the two concepts of art and culture and shows how Aboriginal people in Wilcannia in far western New South Wales draw on these concepts to assert and create a distinctive cultural identity for themselves. Focusing largely on the work of one particular artist, I demonstrate the ways in which culture (as this is considered) is affectively experienced and articulated as something that one ‘comes into contact with’ through the practice of art-making. I discuss the social and cultural role that art-making, and art talk play in considering, mediating and resolving issues to do with cultural subjectivity, authority and identity. I propose that in thinking about the content of the art and in making the art, past and present matters of interest, of difficulty and of pleasure are remembered, considered, resolved and mediated. Culture (as this is considered by Wilcannia Aboriginal people) is also made anew; it comes about through the practice of artmaking and in displaying and talking about the art work. Culture as an objectified, tangible entity is moreover writ large and made visible through art in ways that are valued by artists and other community members. The intersections between Aboriginal peoples, anthropologists, museum collections and published literature, and the network of relations between, are also shown to have interesting synergies that play themselves out in the production of art and culture.
Black on White: Or varying shades of grey? Indigenous Australian photo-media artists and the ‘making of‘ Aboriginality
Marianne Riphagen (Radboud University, The Netherelands)
In 2005 the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne presented the Indigenous photo-media exhibition Black on White. Promising to explore Indigenous perspectives on non-Aboriginality, its catalogue set forth two questions: how do Aboriginal artists see the people and culture that surrounds them? Do they see non-Aboriginal Australians as other? However, art works produced for this exhibition rejected curatorial constructions of Black and White, instead presenting viewers with more complex and ambivalent notions of Aboriginality and non-Aboriginality. This paper revisits the Black on White exhibition as an intercultural event and argues that Indigenous art practitioners, because of their participation in a process to signify what it means to be Aboriginal, have developed new forms of Aboriginality.
Culture production Rembarrnga way: Innovation and tradition in Lena Yarinkura’s and Bob Burruwal’s metal sculptures
Christiane Keller (University of Westerna Australia)
Contemporary Indigenous artists are challenged to produce art for sale and at the same time to protect their cultural heritage. Here I investigate how Rembarrnga sculptors extend already established sculptural practices and the role innovation plays within these developments, and I analyse how Rembarrnga artists imprint their cultural and social values on sculptures made in an essentially Western
medium, that of metal-casting.
The metal sculptures made by Lena Yarinkura and her husband Bob Burruwal, two prolific Rembarrnga artists from north-central Arnhem Land, can be seen as an extension of their earlier sculptural work. In the development of metal sculptures, the artists shifted their artistic practice in two ways: they transformed sculptural forms from an earlier ceremonial context and from earlier functional fibre objects. Using Fred Myers’s concept of culture production, I investigate Rembarrnga ways of culture-making.
Australian Aboriginal Studies 2008 volume 2 Abstracts
Mawul Rom Project: Openness, obligation and reconciliation
Morgan Brigg (Universtiy of Queensland) and Anke Tonnaer (University of Aarhus, Denmark)
Aboriginal Australian initiatives to restore balanced relationships with White Australians have recently become part of reconciliation efforts. This paper provides a contextualised report on one such initiative, the Mawul Rom crosscultural mediation project. Viewing Mawul Rom as a diplomatic venture in the lineage of adjustment and earlier Rom rituals raises questions about receptiveness, individual responsibility and the role of Indigenous ceremony in reconciliation efforts. Yolngu ceremonial leaders successfully draw participants into relationship and personally commit them to the tasks of cross-cultural advocacy and reconciliation. But Mawul Rom must also negotiate a paradox because emphasis on the cultural difference of ceremony risks increasing the very social distance that the ritual attempts to confront. Managing this tension will be a key challenge if Mawul Rom is to become an effective diplomatic mechanism for cross-cultural conflict resolution and reconciliation.
Living in two camps: the strategies Goldfields Aboriginal people use to manage in the customary economy and the mainstream economy at the same time
Howard Sercombe (Strathclyde University, Glasgow)
The economic sustainability of Aboriginal households has been a matter of public concern across a range of contexts. This research, conducted in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, shows how economically successful Aboriginal persons manage ‘dual economic engagement’, or involvement in the customary economy and the mainstream economy at the same time. The two economies sometimes reinforce each other but are more often in conflict, and management of conflicting obligations requires high degrees of skill and innovation. As well as creating financially sustainable households, the participants contributed significantly to the health of their extended families and communities. The research also shows that many Aboriginal people, no matter what their material and personal resources, are conscious of how fragile and unpredictable their economic lives can be, and that involvement in the customary economy is a kind of mutual insurance to guarantee survival if times get tough.
Indigenous population data for evaluation and performance measurement: A cautionary note
Gaminiratne Wijesekere (Dept. of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Canberra)
I outline the status of population census counts for Indigenous peoples, identifying information on Indigenous births and deaths, and internal migration estimates. I comment on the ‘experimental’ Indigenous population projections and question the rationale for having two sets of projections. Program managers and evaluators need to be mindful of limitations of the data when using these projections for monitoring, evaluating and measuring Indigenous programs.
Reaching out to a younger generation using a 3D computer game for storytelling: Vincent Serico’s legacy
Theodor G Wyeld (Flinders University, Adeliade) and Brett Leavy (CyberDreaming Australia)
Sadly, Vincent Serico (1949–2008), artist, activist and humanist, recently passed away. Born in southern Queensland in Wakka Wakka/Kabi Kabi Country (Carnarvon Gorge region) in 1949, Vincent was a member of the Stolen Generations. He was separated from his family by White administration at four years of age. He grew up on the Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve in the 1950s, when the policies of segregation and assimilation were at their peak. Only returning to his Country in his early forties, Vincent started painting his stories and the stories that had been passed on to him about the region. These paintings manifest Vincent’s sanctity for tradition, storytelling, language, spirit and beliefs. A team of researchers was honoured and fortunate to have worked closely with Vincent to develop a 3D simulation of his Country using a 3D computer game toolkit. Embedded in this simulation of his Country, in the locations that their stories speak to, are some of Vincent’s important contemporary art works. They are accompanied by a narration of Vincent’s oral history about the places, people and events depicted.
Vincent was deeply concerned about members of the younger generation around him ‘losing their way’ in modern times. In a similar vein, Brett Leavy (Kooma) sees the 3D game engine as an opportunity to engage the younger generation in its own cultural heritage in an activity that capitalises on a common pastime. Vincent was an enthusiastic advocate of this approach. Working in consultation with Vincent and the research team, CyberDreaming developed a simulation of Vincent’s Country for young Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons from the Carnarvon Gorge region to explore Vincent’s life stories of the region. The use of Vincent’s contemporary paintings as storyboards provides a traditional medium for the local people to interactively re-engage with traditional values. Called Serico’s World, it
represents a legacy to his life’s works, joys and regrets. Here we discuss the background to this project and Vincent’s contribution.
A singular beeswax representation of Namarrkon, the Lightning Man, from western Arnhem Land
RG Gunn (La Trobe University) and RL Whear (Jawoyn Association)
Samples from a beeswax representation of Namarrkon, the Lightning Man, from western Arnhem Land were analysed for radiocarbon and dated to be about 150 years old. An underlying beeswax figure was found to be approximately 1100 years old. The Dreaming Being Namarrkon is well known throughout Arnhem Land, although his sphere of activity is concentrated around the northern half of the Arnhem Land plateau. Namarrkon is well represented in rock-paintings in this area and continues to be well represented in contemporary canvas-paintings by artists from the broader plateau region. We conclude that representations of Namarrkon in both painted and beeswax forms appear to be parallel manifestations of the late Holocene regionalisation of Arnhem Land.
‘Missing the point’ or ‘what to believe — the theory or the data’: Rationales for the production of Kimberley points
Kim Akerman (Moonah)
In a recent article, Rodney Harrison presented an interesting view on the role glass Kimberley points played in the lives of the Aborigines who made and used them. Harrison employed ethnographic and historical data to argue that glass Kimberley points were not part of the normal suite of post-contact artefacts used primarily for hunting and fighting or Indigenous exchange purposes, but primarily were created to service a non-Indigenous market for aesthetically pleasing artefacts. Harrison asserted that this market determined the form that these points took. A critical analysis of the data does not substantiate either of these claims. Here I do not deal with Harrison’s theoretical material or arguments; I focus on the ethnographic and historical material that he has either omitted or failed to appreciate in developing his thesis and which, in turn, renders it invalid.
The intensity of raw material utilisation as an indication of occupational history in surface stone artefact assemblages from the Strathbogie Ranges, central Victoria
Justin Ian Shiner (La Trobe University, Bundoora)
Stone artefact assemblages are a major source of information on past human–landscape relationships throughout much of Australia. These relationships are not well understood in the Strathbogie Ranges of central Victoria, where few detailed analyses of stone artefact assemblages have been undertaken. The purpose of this paper is to redress this situation through the analysis of two surface stone artefact assemblages recorded in early 2000 during a wider investigation of the region’s potential for postgraduate archaeological fieldwork. Analysis of raw material utilisation is used to assess the characteristics of the occupational histories of two locations with similar landscape settings. The analysis indicates variability in the intensity of raw material use between the assemblages, which suggests subtle differences in the occupational history of each location. The results of this work provide a direction for future stone artefact studies within this poorly understood region.