Carpetblogging

Sat - May 31, 2008

Art News on the Web

I've written before about footy and Indigenous culture, but if you really want to know about footy, art, and culture in the Indigenous sphere, you need to talk to Beverly Knight of Melbourne's Alcaston Gallery. A longtime champion of the Essendon Bombers, she was the first woman director in the AFL, joining the Essendon Board in 1993. (Uncultured Yank that I am, I once got my teams confused and asked Bev how Collingwood was going. I now own Bombers cap to make sure that I don't make that mistake twice.)

Martin Flanagan recently posted a lovely essay, "White Knight," on realfooty.com.au that details the many ways in which Bev's passion for footy, Aboriginal art, and helping people from Indigenous communities have come together over the years. She was Michael Long's sponsor and mentor when he first came to play in Melbourne. In 1996, for the centenary of the VFL, she worked to have Indigneous artists included in an exhibition on the theme of art and footy, and sometime in the past decade (my memory and my records are terribly shoddy), she organized an entire show about footy at Alcaston. Bev has always been an outspoken supporter of her team and her proteges, but she's never really boasted about her involvement and support. She's certainly been a generous friend to us over the years, and it's delightful to see that spirit of generosity celebrated in this article.

In other media news, it's been a delight to see Nicolas Rothwell back on the art beat at The Australian. Although all of the shows he recently reviewed have now come down, you can still enjoy both his lovely prose and a look at the art works themselves on the web. "The Dark Wings of Desire" (April 11, 2008) looked at the art and Dreamings on display in Kukula Mcdonald's recent series of black cockatoo paintings in the Mwerre Anthurre exhibition at Karen Brown in Darwin in April, which also included work by Billy Benn.

Rothwell's review of Tjunkiya Napaltjarri's recent solo show at Utopia Gallery in Sydney ("Landscape of Feeling," April 29, 2008) probes her newly broadened palette, her biography, her relationship (in visual terms) to the work of Nyurapaia Nampitjinpa and Naata Nungurrayi, as well as Tjunkiya's connection to the Dreaming site of Yumari, long celebrated not just in her own work but in some of the greatest canvases of Uta Uta Tjangala. Rothwell ends his musings with a striking observation:

As to the internal motives that fuel her work, we know little. And this is one of the oddest aspects of Australia's protracted romance with desert art. Not only do we have little understanding, on the psychological or social level, of the particular artists whose paintings evoke such strong responses in us; not only are they, despite the endless streams of enthusiastic praise for their art, total strangers to us: the truth is that scarcely any attempt has yet been made to know them and present them as individuals with lives, characters and outlooks of their own. It is a task that awaits, and as the old desert artists pass into oblivion it seems to press upon us each day with greater force.

His most recent piece, "Evolution in Sacred Tradition" (May 8, 2008) was occasioned by two spectacular shows of ground-breaking new work from Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala: Wanyubi Marika & Young Guns II at Bill Gregory's Annandale Galleries, and Bitpit: New Growth Sculpture Project , mounted by Dallas Gold at Raft Artspace in Darwin. (Bitpit is a bud or shoot emerging from a tree.) Wanyubi's new barks are a startling departure, not just for the artist, but possibly for Buku-Larrnggay as well, recalling the sensation of Buwayak: Invisibility at Annandale in 2003. Here the visual motif is a series of circles that represent the state of the water at the shore of Yalangbara at the instant that the Djang'kawu Sisters withdrew their paddles from the sea, the instant before they stepped ashore to begin tracing the creation across the Land of the Sunrise where the Yolngu live still today. For those accustomed to the dominance of white in the traditional palette of Buku's painters, this show will look startlingly brilliant in color, despite adhering to the traditional registers. And indeed, the paradox that Rothwell takes as the starting point of his essay is the fact that one of the most conservative and traditional communities in Indigenous Australia is consistently producing the most innovative art works.

The sculptural works at Raft in Bitpit are likewise astonishing mixtures of the traditional and the cutting edge. The acknowledged star of this exhibition in Nawurapu Wunungmurra, who has been best known to date for his zigzag evocations the sacred expanse of water, Gulutji, where it empties into Djalma (Blue Mud Bay) at the end of its journey from Gangan. In recent years he has been adorning larrakitj bearing the deep water design with a frieze of clouds that float above the watery imagery. The sculptures in this show are mokuy spirits, a classic form of Yolngu carving given an astonishing new twist. These tall, attenuated, skeletal figures are carved in high relief and would best be not encountered on a dark night.

Two other sculptures in the show are heart-achingly beautiful. One is a figure of the creator, Barama, by Gawirrin Gumana, that matches anything produced by the genius of the ancient Greeks for its mien of nobility. The other, by Djambawa Marawili, depicts the crocodile ancester Baru rearing up on his hind legs, embracing the shoulders of a spear-carrying man. I don't know if this represents a moment of transformation or a promise of protection, or something else altogether. I do know that it is almost a match for Gawarrin's figure in nobility and majesty.

The final delight is that both shows, at Annandale and Raft, have catalogs that are accompanied by insightful commentary by Will Stubbs, who has returned to Yirrkala and to Buku-Larrnggay. Will's combination of insight and style is unparalleled among art centre spokesmen. Here is his account of a trip out into the thickets with Djambawa to procure a kapok tree that is to be transformed into a work of art.

Djambawa asked me "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine."
"No, I mean, how do you really feel?"
"Well...I'm buggered."
"Yes. And..?
"I'm really hot and thirsty. My head feels like it's going to explode."
"And what else?"
"My body is aching and I'm covered in scratches and mud."
"Exactly! So! The next time you are sitting behind your desk and I bring my handicrafts in I want you to remember just how you are feeling now!"
And I have. I still have scars from that afternoon.

If you check the Links section in the sidebar on the right, you'll find a new blog listed, Wordy-Gurdy. Written by Jackey Coyle-Taylor who, with husband Roger, manages the Warmun Art Centre since June of 2007. Her blog predates her move to Warmun, so it is a personal record, but of course, it is now dominated by Jackey's experiences in her new job. She captures all the joys and heartaches of the work and the community, and it's a moving read. And the pictures are fabulous, especially since Warmun has a "no photos" policy for visitors. Click on the small photos that stud most entries and they'll enlarge to more than fill your screen. Good on you, Jackey; I'm looking forward to many more postings!

And finally, things are starting to get hot in Darwin, despite the onset of winter. The second Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair can be previewed at its new website. Apolline Kohen has once more masterminded a three-day (August 14-16) exposition of art from nearly two dozen community art centres, including man of the places I visited on my tour with Austrade last year. I'm excited about the opportunity to renew acquaintances and catch up with old friends.

And there's been a preliminary launch of the program for the Darwin Festival 2008. Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu headlines a concert that will also feature Wildflower, at the Star Shell on August 16. Tickets will be going fast!

Posted at 10:30 AM

Thu - April 17, 2008

Performance/Art

News and notes from around the web:

Geoffrey Gurrunmul Yunupingu was the star of this week's Awaye! on ABC Radio National, and his appearance is the occasion of the program's first vodcast. The eight-minute video is available for downloading now from Awaye's website and features Gurrumul performing two songs with Michael Hohnen on double-bass, "Djilawurr" (originally recorded on the Saltwater Band's Djarridjarri - Blue Flag album) and "Djarrimirri" from his new solo album. The quality of the recording is excellent, and the fact that you can download it takes a bit of the sting out of the fact that the radio broadcast is not available this time as a podcast. You can listen to the program for the next few weeks from the website, and I urge you to give it a go. It features recordings from his second solo live performance at the 2006 Darwin Festival, and while the sound quality is a little more uneven, it's still a pleasure to hear him captured in performance, and to hear the audience's response. As an incidental bonus, host Daniel Browning notes that the Saltwater Band has just finished recording their third album!

For another video treat, check out two new promos featured by Edwina Circuitt on her blog Thriving in the Desert, "Warakurna Artists: Our Story, Our Art Centre," with a soundtrack featuring UPK's "Tilun Tilun ta," and the new "Thriving in the Desert: Warakurna Artists," also to the sounds of UPK, "Ulkiyala." And if you like the music, you can buy UPK's CDs from the Nganampa Health Council.

While I'm on the subject of performing arts, there was an interesting article, "No More Fading to Black" in the Sydney Morning Herald on March 24 on Wesley Enoch's proposal to create a National Indigenous Theatre. Predictably, the idea has its supporters and detractors. Those who favor the idea (including some high-powered identities like Deborah Mailman, Rachel Maza, and Stephen Page) see the need for a well-funded entity that can preserve work over time; Enoch points to limited successes of Redfern's National Aboriginal Black Theatre in the 1970s and the Black Playwrights Workshops of the 1980s as initiatives that could have benefited from the strengths of a national organization. Many of the skeptics include representatives of regional theatre who fear what the competition for funding from such a high-profile establishment might mean for their own chances of success, and point to the regional theatre as the incubator of new ideas and the voice of distinctive local cultures and idioms. Sadly in an era of limited funding, both sides are right.

The issue of regional vs national recently emerged in Nicolas Rothwell's musings in the aftermath of the theft of several early Papunya boards from the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory ("Mystery of our art in darkness," The Australian, April 5, 2008). Rothwell raises an unusually large number of extremely important questions in this short piece, but there is one that I want to address briefly here. Pondering why so few of these surviving masterpieces are on view anywhere in Australia, he reports on one proposal to increase access to those paintings that can be viewed and studied without risk of breaching sensitive cultural protocols.

But the most elegant blueprint is the plan nursed by the foremost scholar of the early boards, Vivien Johnson, who believes there should be a gallery at the centre of Australia, holding all the early Papunya paintings from state museums and galleries in a definitive national collection. Such a museum could be in Papunya or in Alice Springs. It should be a magnificent building, with special provisions made for the most sensitive paintings to be held in secure closed storage and for certain works to be displayed in a separate wing, where indigenous women would be in no danger of seeing forbidden images or designs.

There's an obvious appeal to this proposal. If Rothwell's number are correct, such a national gallery of early Papunya painting could contain the 210 boards from MAGNT's collection, the 96 paintings from the Papunya Tula archive now in the Australian Museum in Sydney, and the holdings (number not specified) of the National Gallery in Canberra. Imagine such a collection! Imagine the wealth of knowledge, the opportunities for scholarship, for comparative analysis. Having just had the chance to see a mere twenty works from the 1970s by half a dozen artists at the Kluge-Ruhe this past weekend, my mouth waters at the thought. I can't help it.

But looking back at my own experience of visiting museums across Australia, I also can't help but draw back from endorsing the notion. Long ago, I set up a Google Alert for "Aboriginal art." The vast majority of the citations I get from that service are from traveler's accounts of visiting a museum in a single city on their travels and saying something quite simple and unsophisticated: "Saw incredible aboriginal art at the museum." Now certainly there's more to be seen, more on display everywhere, than just Papunya painting from the 1970s. But I'd like to think that travelers could have the opportunity, no matter where they go, to experience this incredible chapter in world art. And I'm not just speaking from my international perspective here. My love affair with Australia has taken me to all the capital cities: how many Australians can say that, let alone international visitors?

So for now, I will argue that collections, however small they might be, of these seminal works remain scattered across Australia, so that visitors to the NGA, NGV, AGWA, AGNSW, MAGNT, AGSA, QAG, as well as the Araluen Centre can delight in the serendipity of discovering a national treasure wherever their journeys take them.

And a final note tonight from the recent pages of The Australian. In an article entitled "Forget Me Not " (April 5, 2008) Sebastian Smee asks "which Australian artists working at their peak today will be the subjects of books and retrospectives at our leading galleries in 20, 30 or 40 years. Who will be given the kind of attention that artists such as Williams, Nolan and Arthur Boyd are given today?"

Smee narrows his criteria somewhat by excluding those artists who have already attained "legendary" status, for example John Olsen and Jeffrey Smart. He also declines to speculate on the rising younger generation, preferring to focus on "artists no longer in their 30s but not yet in their dotage; artists who already have an extensive body of work behind them and who -- though they may be well established in the art world -- are not so well known to the wider public."

One Indigenous artist makes the cut of nine: John Mawurndjul. Says Smee: "Mawurndjul's bark paintings of the rainbow serpent Ngalyod and, more recently, the Mardayin ceremony are impossible to forget. They relate the drama of ritual to visual forms and patterns that seem to squirm across the surface of the already undulating bark he prepares and paints on. The best of them are spellbinding images -- sometimes figurative, sometimes abstract -- that flicker with light and syncopated visual rhythms."

Spot on, so far as it goes. Would anyone like to nominate other "mid-career" artists? Leave a comment with your suggestions and rationales.

Posted at 09:11 PM

Mon - March 31, 2008

Theft!!

This just in from the ABC:

'Priceless' artworks stolen from NT museum

Darwin Police are investigating the theft of seven Aboriginal paintings from the Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery.

Security staff at the museum alerted the police at 4:20am ACST after noticing thieves had smashed a window to get inside.

Police say the paintings were stolen from the building's main area.

It has been confirmed six Papunya Tula style paintings from the Western Desert and a central Australian watercolour painting have been taken.

The paintings are all highly regarded.

Darwin Police Watch Commander Bob Harrison says an investigation is underway.

"We've had the museum staff initially attend it [the scene] and they've told us that the value of the paintings is priceless," he said.

Watch Commander Harrison says people should be on the lookout for the stolen art.

"We'd certainly be warning people if they were approached by anyone with paintings that are too good to be true they probably are," he said.

"We are waiting for a description which will be certainly circulating once we have it in hand, and we'll be certainly looking in the normal areas to try and locate these paintings."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/01/2204203.htm

Update:
Darwin Police say a person is in custody in relation to the theft of $500,000 worth of Aboriginal art from the Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery.

Security staff alerted the police at 4:20am ACST after noticing thieves had smashed a window to get inside.
Six Papunya Tula paintings and a central Australian watercolour were taken.

Territory Police have arrested a 37-year-old man over the theft. Officers say he was picked up at a Parap bus stop.
Assistant Police Commissioner Graeme Kelly says all seven works were recovered just before midday.

Senior Constable Brad Currie says it does not appear to be an organised crime and the man is known to police.
"He'll be interviewed and is expected to be charged with unlawful damage, criminal damage and stealing," he said.

Gallery staff will meet tomorrow to assess security at the site.

A Northern Territory Government spokesman says the paintings were found hidden amongst bushes less than 500 metres from where they were stolen.

Museum director Anna Malgorzewicz told a media conference some of the works have been soiled but can be restored.

"As one can expect, they've been stressed, they're slightly soiled but they are in very good condition," she said.
"They are [easy to clean up], the works have already been returned to the museum and gallery and they're currently in our conservation laboratory where are conservators are condition reporting them."

'Significant collection'

The seven paintings included six boards by the Papunya Tula group from the Western Desert and one water colour from central Australia.

Ms Malgorzewicz says while they are not the most valuable in the gallery, the paintings are historically significant.
"It's a historic collection, a very significant collection of works," she said.

"We have quite a number here in our collection. Created in the early 1970s, they are a body of work. One of the first bodies of work from that particular area, so [they are] historically very significant."

Ms Malgorzewicz says the alarms rang straight away, but there was still time for the thieves to get away with the loot.

"They were very quick. We understand it was about 15 or so minutes in the gallery," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/01/2204831.htm

Posted at 09:40 PM

Thu - March 27, 2008

Carpetblogging #1

Since I began writing this blog two and a half years ago, I've resisted the temptation, common to many bloggers, to simply reprint or point to stories that someone else--journalist, blogger, researcher--has written. I've felt that if I didn't have something substantial to add to what someone else had already said, I should just keep quiet.

That hasn't stopped me from recognizing superb work done on many of my favorite blogs, which are listed in the sidebar on the right. But it has stopped me from sharing interesting things I stumble across on the web. I use a wonderful piece of software for the Mac to snag all those articles and links and save them in an electronic notebook. The software is called Mori, from Apokalypse Software Corp., and I highly recommend it. (Its authors recommend another product NoteLens, for Windows users.) My "Aboriginal Culture" notebook now has 1482 entries in it, organized into loose categories like "Sorry Business," (123 entries) about the devastation and sufferings in remote communities, or "Howard's End" (a personal favorite, 204 entries) and "Kevin 07" (74 entries).

So I've decided to try an occasional series that will consist of short paragraphs pointing my readers to some of these gems, websites, interesting trivia, and news reports that I come across. Since I still can't shake the feeling that I'm profiting unfairly from someone else's labor, I've decided to call the series "Carpetblogging."

***

Wik, Weipa, and China. Earlier this week The Age carried a story ("Can Chalco show the way in deal with Aborigines?", March 24) about new developments around the bauxite mine at Weipa. The mine was established in the 1950s, and rumor has it that Midnight Oil's landmark land rights hit, "Beds are Burning," tells of the destruction of the mission town of Mapoon to make way for the mine. Now Chalco, the Chinese state-owned aluminum corporation, has signed a deal with Wik landowners to open new operations on the west coast of Cape York. Although the article pays a deal of lip service to the potential for development, renewal, and benefits for the Indigenous people of the area, I would feel a lot better about the story if it weren't focused on what the media likes to call "anti-social behavior." An aura of mutual respect seems to be a fond hope at this point.

***

Barbarians at the Gates. Meanwhile, The Australian is keeping up its one-sided campaign against the permit system ("Community gatekeepers are keeping us from the truth," March 22). It's the same tired argument: allowing Aboriginal people to control who comes into their communities is only nominally about protecting culture and safeguarding land rights. The real invidious Indigenous intent is to prevent the supposedly objective light of Australian journalism from shining on rapists and drug runners. But as David Ross of the Central Land Council pointed out (admittedly in The Australian--maybe they're not entirely one-sided, just lopsided) a couple of months ago "Permit system protects residents," January 23), the problems that exist in Indigenous communities "would probably escalate. Breaking down the barriers ... may indeed by a pyrrhic victory." But maybe it's all just another example of journos telling the world how misunderstood and put upon they are, as the latest report indicates "Journalists to get blanket exemption" (March 27).

***

Indigenous Welfare. One of the best ways to keep up with what The Australian is saying about Indigenous issues is to bookmark their "Indigenous Welfare" index. It doesn't cover everything that the broadsheet publishes on Aboriginal concerns, but it's still a great way to keep up to date on many national issues.

***

And finally, a personal note. When I was last in Melbourne I struck up a friendship and have since enjoyed corresponding with Henry Skerritt, who manages the Collingwood branch of Indigenart. When Henry was still in Perth in the late 90s, he fronted a folk-rock band called The Holy Sea that became quite well known out West. Now they've reformed in Melbourne, recorded some new tunes, and are starting to tour. Check out The Holy Sea on MySpace to listen to the infectious "Paddy There's Got To Be One More Bar Open" and consult their touring schedule.

Posted at 09:01 PM

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