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Australian
Aboriginal Art
Australian
Aborigines have been employing the careful arrangement of soils
and sands of different textures and colours to create pictures whose
patterns and symbolism relate to the stories and myths of the Australian
Aboriginal's ancestral tribal and cultural history - their Dreamtime.
The Dreamtime is the sacred world of the tribe's ancestral spirits
whom the Aboriginals regard as the creators of all living things.
Today there are many indigenous Aboriginal artists who work with
convential western materials such as acrylics, canvas or board to
create beautiful visual effects, at the cutting edge of modern art,
but who have synthesised old traditional imagery to conventional
techniques.
Australian Aborigines have survived for so many thousands of years,
often in quite challenging and inhospitable conditions, and their
huge success was predominantly due to the indigenous Aboriginal's
inate ability to adapt, and it is the expression of that adaptability
which we can clearly see in todays fabulous Australian Aboriginal
art.
The Western Desert painters are a group of Australian Aboriginal
artists who have adapted their tribal art forms to the western world
but only with regard to the western materials and techniques which
they employ, the subject matter remains tightly focused on the stories
and imagery which was passed down to them by their tribal ancesters.
In Arnhem Land, the Aborigines or Yolngu, still live in the
traditional way, hunting, fishing and performing ceremonies that
can go from days to sometimes weeks. Arnhem
Land art is distinguished by the cross-hatching or 'raark' design.
Often the works portray human or animal figures on them, they can
be bold with certain repeating patterns and tell stories of the
Dreamtime creation. There are many different communities in Arnhem
Land who use the cross hatching style, albeit with some variation;
the 'raark' work illustrates a unity between all that live in Arnhem
Land and has a shimmering appearance when finely executed. Works
are still painted in earth pigments, ochres, but when artists do
use acrylic paint they are applied in the traditional earth pigment
colours. Traditionally, women were not permitted to paint but were
able to assist their husbands doing the more repetitious work. Today
that has significantly changed and many women artists from this
area are creating exquisite works for the art market. As Arnhem
Land is located close to the sea there are many works depicting
animals, fish and plants drawn from that area.
The Tiwi of Bathurst and Melville Islands tend
to paint vibrantly coloured crosshatched and dotted non-figurative
designs. The Aboriginal designs are painted on bark baskets (tungas),
carved ironwood sculptures and other cultural material which features
in Pukumani mortuary ceremonies. Some early records still exist
of white pipeclay paintings in bark shelters within that region.
Elcho
Island, north east Arnhem Land, works are bold and strong.
Cross-hatching can often fill the area and figures are painted
in black. Red and black diamonds symbolise the Fire which was
present during the Creation. It is said that Baru the crocodile,
had his back burnt when he put the fire out and was left scarred
with a cracked and rough skin.
Groote Eylandt bark paintings are highly distinctive in
the way that figures are shown against a black background, more
recent works have the background filled with crosshatched designs.
Paintings show graphic depictions of animal totems, ceremony,
creation narratives, geographical mapping and historical events
which include the interaction with Maccassan traders. The Groote
Eylandt artistic expression is very particular to that location
and the art is not reproduced by any other Aboriginal group.
In
Oenpelli, the Xray art depicts the internal organs of an animal,
which not only provides anatomical tuition for the young but it
also informs that all parts of the animal are equally important,
and that those interwoven individual parts are collectively the
whole!
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