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Haute Outback

by Laszlo Buhasz

16 October 2004 - The art of Australia's Aborigines is garnering awards, selling for six figures at Sotheby's auctions and drawing travellers to city galleries and dusty villages in search of rising talent. Not bad for paintings recently dismissed as 'folk art.' LASZLO BUHASZ explores the appeal of this bold and intricate work, and offers a guide on where to start hunting

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA -- Enter the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and the first thing you see is the Aboriginal Memorial, possibly the most unique and beautiful commemoration to the dead anywhere.

An installation of 200 hollow-log coffins that stand upright and oddly at ease in the modern space, the memorial is to the thousands of indigenous people who lost their lives defending their land during the first 200 years of European settlement on the continent. The logs, like the ones used in dupun, a traditional mortuary ceremony, represent "a forest of souls, a war cemetery and the final rites for all aboriginal people who have been denied a proper burial," said Susan Jenkins, the gallery's assistant curator of aboriginal and Torres Strait islander art.

But as I stood in this modern institution, beyond the solemn and poignant nature of the memorial I was struck by the sheer primitive beauty of the paintings that decorate the logs. I had come to Australia to learn more about Aborigine culture -- visiting remote communities in Arnhem Land, the great parks south and east of Darwin and the archeological site of Mungo National Park in New South Wales -- but I had not expected to become so engaged by the country's indigenous artwork.

Here, in the capital's premier art museum, it seems natural that the log coffins occupy pride of place in the building's first gallery. Prepared by 43 artists from Central Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, the designs of clan totems that represent connections to ancestral beings are executed in a palette of red, yellow, white and black. Their bold and intricate images -- framed by dots and accentuated by fine crosshatching using brushes made from human hair -- are stunning examples of an art form that has exploded in popularity both in Australia and abroad.

Paintings, carvings and sculpture that recently were dismissed as "folk art" are today garnering awards and selling for six figures at Sotheby's auctions. International art collectors and visiting tourists are hunting through art galleries in Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin and even Alice Springs and other Outback communities for indigenous works that are not only aesthetically appealing, but can also be good investments.

The past decade has seen exhibitions of aboriginal works tour the world -- including the Jalanguwarnu exhibit on display this past summer at Ireland's Carlow Institute of Technology, borrowed from the University of Virginia's Kluge-Ruhe Museum. And the art form will soon play a prominent role in cultural institutions in Toronto and Paris.

When the Art Gallery of Ontario's new permanent galleries reopen in 2008 after a $500-million redesign and expansion, a major collection of Aborigine art will have its own place of honour under the same roof as the European art from the Thomson Collection, the African art donated by the Frumm family and Canadian First Nations acquisitions. This is thanks to a recent 1,000-item windfall collected by an anonymous Toronto donor over the past 15 years.

"An assessment we have from an appraiser is that it is the finest collection of its kind in North America," Dennis Reid, the AGO's chief curator, said in an interview.

The collection, primarily composed of artifacts from the 19th and early 20th centuries, is particularly rich in shields, boomerangs and other objects of use that were created at a very high artistic level. Part of the rationale for the gallery's expansion is to present new material "that extends the idea most people have about what constitutes art," Reid said. "The [Aborigine] artifacts are deeply imbued with religious and cultural meaning. They were collected as art and that is how we will be displaying them."

In Paris, one of the world's great cultural capitals, Aborigine art will soon be a prominent feature in a new museum that will house France's large, but scattered, collection of indigenous works.

When the $330-million Musée du Quai Branly opens in early 2006, it will feature ceilings painted by artists recruited from Australian Aborigine communities by senior curators at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney and at the National Art Gallery in Canberra.

Source: The Globe and Mail (Canada)

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