Carpetblogging

Sun - March 29, 2009

Notes and Blogs

No essay this week, I confess, as I've happily spent the last seven days entertaining my friend Walter, down from Boston for a springtime visit, our first since we saw each other at the opening of Dreaming Their Way in Dartmouth two and a half years ago. Our week ended with an invitation for me to give a talk on Aboriginal art in nearby Siler City, North Carolina, a rural community with a thriving arts district. The NC Arts Incubator sponsored a didjeridu-making workshop Friday afternoon, followed by my talk to a group of about 20 Australophiles. The workshoppers gave me an impromptu "welcome to country" serenade! Great fun for all. So instead of writing this weekend, I'll take this opportunity to catch up on a few short notes that have been washing about the shores of my desktop.

An excellent new paper by Jon Altman of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research is now available online. It is entitled "Beyond Closing the Gap: Valuing Diversity in Indigenous Australia." The paper was originally presented at the Centre for Public Policy's conference on "Values & Public Policy" in February of 2009; here is a brief abstract of its arguments, thanks to Australian Policy Online.

In his Apology speech the Prime Minister attempted to balance the symbolic with the practical while emphasising that ‘business as usual’ is not working. Ultimately though, the 'Closing the Gap' approach is business as usual that fails to value Indigenous difference and fails to accommodate Indigenous aspirations in all their diversity. Unless we get beyond CTG, the next phase in Indigenous policy making and program investments is as ‘destined to fail’ as previous approaches.

This paper advocates for the pendulum to swing back, to accommodate and value diversity and difference rather than just statistical equality. In doing so, the author provides some reflexive comment as an academic on these policy swings. In 2005, Tim Rowse and Jon Altman wrote a piece on Indigenous policy that contrasted the contending approaches of economics and anthropology to Indigenous affairs policy: the first emphasising equality of socioeconomic outcomes, the second the facilitation of choice and self-determination. The former implies integration, the latter adherence to different and diverse life worlds. Over time, the author has used economics and official statistics to highlight socioeconomic disadvantage and neglect, while at the same time using anthropology to critique any approach that uses mainstream social indicators that only reflect the dominant society’s social norms. This paper will continue in the same vein using a dual disciplinary approach. However, without being over-reflexive, as an anthropologist of development he is clearly uncomfortable with the current dominance of the 'Closing the Gap' framework.

February also saw the publication of a six-part series at NewMatilda.com entitled "Two Week Intervention." Scott Mitchell, a journalist and student in Sydney, chonicled two weeks of living in Newtown under conditions designed to approximate those of Indigenous residents of one of Alice Springs' town camps.

His income will be $460 in total for the full fortnight, with $100 of that taken for rent, $30 for child support and another $30 for government repayments or fines.

Half of his fortnightly income will be quarantined with a local supermarket in Newtown and this cannot be spent on cigarettes, alcohol, porn or gambling.

A large sign will be placed on the front of his house that reads "Prescribed Area: No Liquor".

He is not allowed to drink alcohol (or use porn) within his local area (Newtown).

He is not allowed to catch the bus, only the train. This is because most Town Camps are not serviced by public transport, meaning residents have to walk a considerable distance to the nearest bus stop. Scott's residence is more than a kilometre from the nearest train station.

He is not allowed to use the internet at home, only in a net café, and has to use a public phone box to make calls.

While some of the "approximations" seem a bit far-fetched, I found the story fascinating most of all for the way in which Mitchell found himself in a variety of troubles stemming largely from a sudden dislocation of his accustomed habits of thinking and living. It was not simply a matter of having to change his way of living; rather he seemed to get into trouble with his new lifestyle by failing to adjust his way of thinking. Despite the very self-conscious nature of the experiment, Mitchell was tripped up often by falling into assumptions about how he could control his daily life, realizing only too late the consequences of mundane actions. The copious comments left on this short-term blog are as fascinating as Mitchell's own story.

Finally, I've been following another blog out of the Ngaanyatjara lands for a couple of months now. Robbo bills BitingTheDust as "a view of pharmacy and health from a very remote pharmacist," but sells himself quite short in doing so. While many of the earliest entries (BitingTheDust has been online since August 2008) focused on health issues in remote lands, there is much more in the way of content available here.

There's natural history, reminiscent of Bob Gosford's essays on birds and snakes in The Northern Myth. There are regular posts on Desert art, and a few here and there on music coming out of his part of the country (The Wilcannia Mob, for instance, or today's post of a new recording by Gosha Jackson and Basher Woods out of Mantamaru, "I Miss My Home"). And there are some brilliant photographic essays. The sequence documenting an approaching and then enveloping dust storm kept me riveted for a long time; I'm still bemused by the architectural wonder of the long-drop dunny at an abandoned homestead near the Strzelecki Creek.

Of late Robbo has added a new category to his blog: "Indigenous News Update." Sometimes he collects a half-dozen links to news stories on a general topic like politics or health; other times he ranges far and wide in a single post, from Indigneous Rugby Union on tour in Thailand and China, to Jimmy Little, to culture shock among Intervention workers.

No matter what subject he lands on in any given post, the perspective is always enlightening, often amusing, and definitely worth a look. Remember Clarke and Dawe on the Intervention? If not, check it out here along with a selection of the best of Crikey! on the subject.

Posted at 12:05 PM

Tue - January 27, 2009

Maybe I'm Amazed

I have just learned that my recent post on Herbert Basedow's career in Central Australia has been named to the list of Best Blog Posts of 2008 by On-line Opinion: Australia's e-journal of social and political debate and Club Troppo! Gobsmacked!

I am indebted to Jim Belshaw, who often writes about Aboriginal issues in his corner of New South Wales (New England) for the nomination, and of course, grateful to the judges for this unexpected and deeply flattering accolade.

My dear friend Jonathan Shaw, author of Family Life, who inspired me to start these adventures in blogging, has helped me out once more by finding the only words I can come up with to describe what I'm feeling right now: "That is so cool!"

Posted at 08:19 PM

Sun - November 9, 2008

SlowTV's Greatest Hits

There are plenty of good reasons to subscribe to The Monthly. I'm not sure there's any other publication that boasts a regular column by Shane Maloney, for one thing. For another, you can subscribe to an online edition that gives you instant access to the entire backfile without having to devote a bookshelf to it. And without having to pay international postage if you live outside of Australia--no small consideration for me.

And of course, there's the writing itself. If you want to sample (for free!) some interesting articles on Indigenous topics, how about Noel Pearson on Barack Obama? If current events intrigue you less than the history wars, try Henry Reynolds' review of Michael Connor's The Invention of Terra Nullius, the latter published by Keith Windschuttle's Macleay Press.

Robert Manne is a regular contributor. Well, to be precise, he's the chair of the editorial board. His recent essays have compared Pearson and W. E. H. Stanner and reviewed Sven Lunqvist's Terra Nullius and Louis Nowra's Bad Dreaming. He too has written about Windschuttle (The Fabrication of Aborginal History) and rebuffed Andrew Bolt with a bibliography of documentary sources on the Stolen Generations.

The Monthly was where Chloe Hooper started writing about the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee, work that ultimately resulted in her book The Tall Man (Penguin, 2008). It began with an article of the same name and continued with an examination of the state of Palm Island after the inquest.

But what prompted me to write this piece was the continuing appearance in my mailbox (because I subscribe, of course) of short notices about SlowTV, "a free internet TV channel delivering interviews, debates, conversations and public lectures about Australia's key political, social and cultural issues." So you don't even need to subscribe to enjoy this bountiful and carefully edited selection of speeches, lectures, and conversations with some of the keenest minds around.

Each program runs about 45 minutes, and is usually presented in two parts. I've taken to watching 20 minutes or so of an evening when I'm too tired to read, but alert enough to demand something more nourishing than most of what one finds on YouTube. I've given thought to reviewing some of their programs on Indigenous themes, but have decided that writing about television is a joyless task, and reading about television probably even deadlier. So instead, I'll offer up a short list of programs for your consideration, and hope that you enjoy the experience.

May 2008. Samuel Wagan Watson on his influences and inspirations. In this segment of the 'Writers as Readers' session at the Sydney Writers' Festival 2008, poet Samuel Wagan Watson speaks about the inspirations and influences, primarily musical, on his writing.

June 2008. Deborah Rose on indigenous and Western understandings of nature. Deborah Rose discusses indigenous and Western understandings of nature through the exploration of a seminal story from each of these two radically different cultural spheres. This talk was part of the Raimond Gaita-curated 2008 Wednesday Lectures series, whose theme is "Rethinking Our Place in Nature". ACU National, Melbourne.

July 2008. Chloe Hooper in conversation with Sally Warhaft about The Tall Man. Chloe Hooper discusses the writing of her new non-fiction book The Tall Man with Monthly editor Sally Warhaft. Exploring the events surrounding the death of Cameron Doomadgee in police custody on Palm Island, the book expands on the story originally told in her Walkley Award-winning essay in The Monthly in November 2006. Readings Carlton, Melbourne.

July 2008. Dollar Dreaming: NY Times critic Ben Genocchio on the Aboriginal art world. Australian author, essayist and art critic (New York Times) Ben Genocchio discusses his new book on the world of Aboriginal art, Dollar Dreaming, with Age art critic Robert Nelson. He talks about its economic aspects as well as his experience interviewing curators, collectors, gallery owners, and travelling to very remote communities in Australia to talk to the artists themselves. Readings Carlton, Melbourne.

August 2008. Germaine Greer's Keynote Address on Rage. Melbourne Writers Festival. In her opening night keynote address at the Melbourne Writers Festival, Professor Germaine Greer delivers a stirring speech on the topic of rage. With characteristic intellectual breadth and dynamism, the talk ranges from classical literary representations of rage and the genealogy of the concept to its modern social implications.

August 2008. Geoffrey Blainey and James Boyce: History is but a fable agreed upon. Recorded at the Melbourne Writers Festival, Geoffrey Blainey and James Boyce address the proposition that 'history is but a fable agreed upon'. Their presentations address the role of the historian and the obligations of the position of the historian, in particular in relation to Australian history.

September 2008. Marcia Langton and Clare Martin debate the NT intervention. In a dynamic and at times tense discussion chaired by Archbishop Philip Freier, the Hon Clare Martin (former NT Chief Minister) and Professor Marcia Langton (Chair of Indigenous Studies at Melbourne University) debate issues relating to the lead-up and implementation of the recent NT intervention. They also touch on the implications and reactions to the recent apology by PM Kevin Rudd.

October 2008. Melissa Lucashenko on Survival. Sydney PEN Voices: 3 Writers Project. The second lecture in the 2008 Sydney PEN Voices: 3 Writers series, Melissa Lucashenko delivers a stirring treatise on the subject of Survival. "Traditional Aboriginal culture has been portrayed by many outsiders as embodying the Aussie values of survival... From an Indigenous perspective, however, survivalism is anything but a value worth striving for. It is, rather, the signature value of a degraded and unsophisticated culture of random violence which arrived along with Arthur Phillip".

Posted at 07:15 PM

Sat - November 8, 2008

Lighting Up the Territory

Since late September, frequent Crikey! contributor and self-described "disgruntled, one-legged, anti-social, curmudgeon of an occasional lawyer" Bob Gosford has been lighting up the blogosphere as well as the Northern Territory with The Northern Myth, a new blog that's dedicated to... well, it's dedicated to lots of things. As Bob says:

Here I want to write about politics, law and life in the Northern Territory - looking back over my shoulder every now and then to remind myself and you, dear reader, of what has passed before, so that we might not forget lessons already learned. I’ll also write about the things that I love and share this part of the world with - the birds, animals, the acculturated landscapes and the people of central Australia. Hopefully you will like what you read and make your own views known. If I get things wrong, need to be pulled up or get a bit full of myself please feel free to correct me as you seek fit, while at all times maintaining a forceful civility. But of course I’ll reserve to myself the right to disagree, rationally or otherwise, with anything you say.

HIs latest post will be of interest to regular readers of this blog, as it is a long analysis of the proposed resale royalty that makes the scheme seem even more buffel-headed than I originally thought. I'm not going to steal his thunder, though. You should read what he has to say for yourself.

And while you're there, scroll through the archives. There are several great posts that describe the effects of the Intervention from inside the Territory, specifically from Yuendumu, where Bob is living these days. His coverage of the recent opening of the Yuendumu pool is a brilliant look at local politics and the effects of bad journalism.

There's plenty of local color of a less political variety, too, as his recent post on the Tanami Track evidences to great delight.

And finally, there are wonderful essays on what I'll loosely call natural history--mostly birds and dogs. Several of these themes--dogs, art, life in the Territory--can intersect in a single post, like the recent "Dion Beasley and his Cheeky Dogs." Dion Beasley is a young Aboriginal artist who lives in Tennant Creek and has recently had an exhibition of his prints at the Olive Pink Botanical Gadens in Alice Springs. The prints are available from Nomad Arts. It's not really too soon to be thinking about Christmas gifts, is it?

Posted at 11:42 AM

Sat - September 20, 2008

Intercultural Affairs: news on the web

Ochre and Rust

The net has recently brought me the news that Philip Jones's Ochre and Rust: artefacts and encounters on Australian frontiers (Wakefield Press, 2007) had won the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Jones is a curator and historian at the South Australian Museum and Ochre and Rust employs objects from the Museum's collections as the basis for historical meditations that are often insightful and imaginative. Jane Simpson has examined his use of linguistic materials in a post on Transient Languages and Cultures that gives a good glimpse into the delights of this book.

I

carried the volume around Australia with me on my 2007 tour of the Outback, and having read it serially and discontinuously, before, during, and after the trip, I never got around to writing it up myself, despite having greatly admired it at the time. It's the kind of book whose premise could have led the author into disaster by attempting to build a significant edifice on the flimsy foundation of, for instance, a string bag. This is precisely where he starts the essay "Spearing Bennett" that Simpson explores in her post. As she notes, the trail leads from that bag, to word lists and place-names, among other things. Ultimately, the essay becomes the story of John Bennett's friendship with the denizens of the country we call Darwin, and how that friendship precipitated his death. In the course of doing so, Jones manages to write one of the best essays on cultural difference that I have ever read, one that is sympathetic and unsentimental and therefore all the more illuminating.

Another attraction of this book--in truth, there are many, but the one that captured me immediately--was Jones's reconsideration of the mysterious toas that were collected by the Rev. Johann Reuther in the early years of the 20th century. Artefacts, art works, sign posts, repositories of mystery, the toas are quite unlike anything else in Aboriginal material culture. Howard Morphy selected them as the subject for his Master's thesis, and Jones and Peter Sutton organized a major exhibition and publication on them twenty years ago, Art and Land: Aboriginal sculptures of the Lake Eyre region (South Australian Museum, 1986). Originally understood to be markers by which the nomads of the Lake Eyre region indicated their direction of travel or their projected destinations, the toas never quite lived up to any interpretation that was made of them. Despite their understandable desire to provide definitive answers, Jones and Sutton were ultimately unable to commit to an explication of these "works of great beauty and variety" (Art and Land, p. 77).

In Ochre and Rust, Jones returns to ponder the toas at length in a superb chapter entitled "Unearthing the Toas." Here too, his theme is that of intercultural understanding and his argument that the toas represent one of the earliest recorded forms of Western aesthetics influencing Indigenous artistic creation--there are obvious if largely unspoken parallels to contemporary practice in acrylic and canvas--is both surprising and satisfying. Reading Jones's peregrinations with the meanings of the toas brought to mind a wonderful bit of anthropological wit, the title the journal Ethnos's 1999 special issue Objects on the Loose: ethnographic encounters with unruly artefacts.

In other essays Jones explores the human face of "professional savages" and looks at Albert Namatjira and Daisy Bates through physical traces they have left behind. Widely reviewed at the time of its publication, Ochre and Rust deserves to be put back in the spotlight by the Prime Minister's selection: perhaps it can serve to illuminate the search for intercultural understanding that we need so desperately to succeed at today.

Twelve Canoes

At the start of the same week during which the award for Ochre and Rust was announced came the official debut of the Twelve Canoes website, an equally wonderful intercultural encounter. Bringing the world of the Yolngu from Ramingining to life through video, art, and music, the website follows from the experiences of the community in making the film Ten Canoes. According to director Rolf de Heer,

... in 2003, while collaborating with the Indigenous Yolngu people of Ramingining to devise a story line for the film "Ten Canoes", a lot of material, of greatly varied subject matter, was brought in for discussion, with the individual Yolngu contributors each very keen to have their ideas incorporated, and that the film in some way should reflect the entirety of their lives, culture and history.... There was soon general recognition that no film could achieve all that, and the idea of a website was born ("12 Canoes Online Today," World Film Festivals, September 8, 2008).

The website has three major components, the briefest of which is "About Us." This offers a glossary, a connection to Google's map of the Glyde River and Arafura Swamp region (zoom in to see the streets of Ramingining itself), and the promise of a study guide (still under construction) that will benefit educators. (There's an excellent study guide for the film Ten Canoes available from Screen Education.) The majority of the site's content lies under the rubrics of the "Gallery" and "Twelve Canoes."

The "Twelve Canoes" comprise a dozen subjects for which films and slide shows detail aspects of Yolngu life, history, and culture in the Ramingining region. Among these topics are "Language," "The Macassans," "The Swamp," "Kinship," and "Ceremony." Many of the segments are narrated by a man who recalls in tone and style David Gulpilil's narration of Ten Canoes, although the stories offered here are obviously much smaller in scope. And in some ways, they are more uncompromising in their presentation of Yolngu world views than the film, more apt to puzzle. On viewing these short films, one is less likely to think, "Ah, the Yolngu are just like me." As a result, the Twelve Canoes site invites us further into the world of the Yolngu, ancient and modern, but it is also more opaque.

For example, among the twelve features, there is one called "Creation." In scenes made up of landscapes and bark paintings, it tells the story of two wangarr, or creation beings, the dog and the flying fox. The narrative is brief and enigmatic: the dog chases the flying foxes out of a cave, and creates three streams. The one that flows inside the cave is sacred and its waters restricted to initiated men. The dog leaves the cave and travels north where he meets the female dog, and ultimately enters the sea to travel to an offshore island. The flying foxes turn themselves into men through the practice of circumcision. Connections among these narrative threads remains unspoken, shrouded, pregnant.

Most of the "canoes" carry "extras." In the case of "Creation" there are two very short films in which a Ganalbilngu elder acts as guide to a striking rock formation. In the first, "Dawurra," the rock that marks where the Creation started, the cameraman is invited to photograph this totemic marker of the black-headed python and to share it with family back in his own country as proof that the Yolngu have given permission for the visitor to "have a good look." At the second site, "Poison Rock," we are shown a rock whose two eyes are the eyes of the creator serpent Gunungurr. It is a special place that only people with gray hair are allowed to visit, and only with the permission of the site's custodian, Peter Minygululu. So why reveal this site? I think we are being invited to puzzle over what we are shown, prompted to ask more. It takes only a little surfing to discover the Gunungurr is indeed the name of the black-headed python and so to understand that the two sites are related. More research will be needed to explain the differences between the apparently public Dawurra and the restricted Poison Rock--whose name in Ganalbingu is not revealed.

There is more information in the "Gallery," but still only tantalizing glimpses into this world. The Gallery itself has three sections: "Art," "Music," and "People and Place." I went looking through the paintings reproduced in the art section for more information. There are dozens of paintings reproduced here, with short annotations of the story and an accompanying biographical notes about the artists. I found several representations of Gunungurr among the paintings in the Gallery, although many, interestingly, had scant information given. One, by George Jnr Pascoe, is entitled Moitjwakangalal; the artist said only that it was a special place for him, although the association with Gunungurr is clear.

Another painting, by Roy Burnyila, is called Nyalyindi (Dog Story). Two snakes occupy the central panel, with rarrk-patterned objects between them, and flying foxes above and below. Burnyila's story, quite brief, states this:

Those two snakes are Gunungurr. Those are the rocks between the snakes, where the streams came from. And the warrnyu (flying foxes) top and bottom. But it is the dog story.

So here we have a clear connection between Gunungurr and the wangarr beings whose story is told in the "Creation canoe," the story of the streams that the dog created at the cave he chased the flying foxes from. The first film made no reference to the serpent, but by digging a little deeper in the material provided on the site, one begins to appreciate the complexities, the interrelatedness. But unambiguous meaning remains elusive.

The "People and Place" section of the Gallery provides another dimension, unfortunately not so well documented, offering dozens of photographs of the countryside: are those mangrove beaches the spot where the dog entered the sea? There are also wonderful photographs of the people of Ramingining, their homes and stores, the school, and most of all, the children. The "Music" section offers not just the didjeridu, but clapsticks and vocal music as well.

Apart from the richness of its content, the Twelve Canoes website is beautifully composed. Floating icon windows reveal their titles on mouse-over; artworks and thumbnails for photos and musical pieces swim enticingly across the screen. Short animation loops trick the eye into thinking that background images of the swamp are ruffled by the wind and soundtrack loops of bird calls and geese honking, barely audible in the background, lend another layer to the sense of place that the website evokes to such good effect.

One word of technical advice: there's a choice of video settings, low or high. I can't vouch for how they behave in Australia, but overseas, the high-speed connection isn't workable at all. The good news is that the low-speed connection is more than adequate; in fact I'm puzzled as to why the designers opted for a choice at all. The designers themselves remain anonymous; there are no credits given, although a list of partners is accessible from a link at the lower left of the screen. (The lack of credits prevents me from identifying the narrators: Gulpilil may indeed be responsible for the voice-overs in some of the films, but the narrator of the segment "Thomson Time" refers to Raiwalla as his father and says that as a young man he knew Thomson. My thanks to Kim Christen for pointing out the Partners link.)

Twelve Canoes is as delightful and intriguing as a video game, as serious a site about Aboriginal culture as any that I've seen. There's a one-minute long teaser on YouTube that unfortunately doesn't nearly do justice to the site's appeal. Luckily, every story on Twelve Canoes has a link that allows you to share it via email. Your friends will receive a link to whichever story you choose to share along with this message: "Passing a story from one person to the next plays an important part in keeping the Yolgnu culture alive. We encourage you to visit the 12 Canoes website and actively participate in the storytelling process."

Posted at 07:24 PM

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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