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The Native Born: Contemporary Original Art From Ramingining, Australia

The Original Australians, on Their Creative Turf

ART REVIEW

By GRACE GLUECK

25 October 2002 - When the Australian government changed its currency from the Australian pound to the dollar in the 1960's, it used a design made from a bark painting by an Aboriginal artist, David Daymirringu, on the back of the new dollar note. But it neglected to ask the artist's permission, or even to notify him of its interest in his work.

The omission was in keeping with a general belief that Aboriginal art was simply a natural resource, like air, water and, well, the Aborigines themselves. No one needed to be consulted or credited. But when white supporters protested, the mint took heed. It struck a medal honoring contributors to the note's design and presented one to the artist, along with a fee of $1,000 (Australian).

Although arts groups and other cognoscenti had recognized Aboriginal artists as individuals since the 1950's, the Daymirringu case fixed the idea in the public mind. What's more, the payment of royalty fees by a government agency, the Royal Australian Mint, to an Aboriginal artist called attention to the question of artists and copyrights and cast Aborigines in a new light. In 1967 -- although their forebears had occupied the land for thousands of years -- they won full Australian citizenship in a referendum.

And their ancestor-worshiping work has become widely recognized. Daymirringu (1927-1999) came from the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land in northern Australia, the largest Aboriginal group in that territory. Yolngu (the word means human being) artists are known for their rock and bark paintings, sculptures and weavings. Their crosshatched paintings, done on the bark of eucalyptus trees, are less familiar, however, than the "dot and circle" paintings by the people of the central Australian desert that are widely associated with the term Aboriginal.

But as seen in "The Native Born: Contemporary Original Art From Ramingining, Australia," at the Asia Society and Museum, the objects made by the Yolngu are every bit as lively, spirited and aesthetically inventive as those of the desert Aborigines, whose work was presented in a 1988 show at the Asia Society called "Dreamings." The current exhibition, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, is focused on the Yolngu artists' community in Ramingining, Arnhem Land, a settlement of 1,000 people begun in the 1970's near the northern Australian coastline.

On view are more than 200 works: bark paintings, weavings, wood sculptures and natural objects like shells, river stones and feathers. They were selected by Djon Mundine, an indigenous Australian curator who worked as art adviser in the Ramingining community. To emphasize the close ties of Aboriginal work with the natural world, he has arranged the exhibition to reflect the six different environments in the area: mangrove swamps, forests, water holes, jungles, beaches and plains.

The Gulunbuy, or water hole, section is one of the show's most aesthetically fertile. Water has a religious significance for Aboriginals, and the name Gulunbuy means "of the belly," referring to the relationship between mother and child that it symbolizes. Water holes, the show's handsome catalog recounts, are full of life and are thought to contain the souls of the unborn and the dead. Those of the dead are present in newborn catfish.

In legend the water holes around Ramingining were created by a diving duck known as Burala, which plunged down to open the earth with its beak. In another tale two sister spirits known as Djan'kawu appeared at time's beginning when the land was dry and made water holes with sacred digging sticks.

Works in this section of the show salute the water hole's teeming life: the duck and the catfish it feeds on, the water plants, the tree groves at the water's edge, the crocodiles, the flying foxes that live in rocky overhangs, the magpie geese that nest in the reedy waters when the monsoon rains end in April.

In colors based on earth tones and flat, stylized images that often border on abstraction, the water hole, home of so many ancestor figures, is reconstituted. (Birds are done in profile; fish and animals are usually painted as seen in nature, while lizards, snakes, tortoises and crocodiles are viewed "in plan," or from overhead.)

George Malibirr's "Magpie Goose," a painting done mainly in golden yellow, white and black, is a highly sophisticated, patternlike portrayal of a group of these creatures, their long black necks and black tails set off by crosshatched white and yellow bodies against a crosshatched ground of what might be reeds and water. In another bark painting, Jimmy Wululu's "Diver Duck," a row of seven identical streamlined birds with pointed bills, solid yellow heads and tails and crosshatched bodies are seen against a black field that might be the earth they are about to open.

Jimmy Moduk's "Salt Water Crocodile" is a creepy-crawly but sprightly lizard seen from the top, with a black head and black saw-toothed tail, four black legs with clawed feet and a body patterned in black, white and yellow squares on a crosshatched ground that looks like a woven mat. It is accompanied by paler creatures, including a fish and what might be crocodile offspring.

A small menagerie of carved wooden water animals includes a northern snake-necked tortoise by Wally Lipuwanga, its back marked in black, red and white stripes and semicircles; a gaily marked lungfish with a red head and a yellow tail by Tony Danyala; and a mean-looking catfish eel with a yellow head and protruding prong teeth by Norman Mangawila.

A central feature of the water hole section is the large sand sculpture, a site-specific floor piece by Richard Birrinbirrin and Nevile Gulay Gulay, constructed of white sand. Circular in shape, like a well, it salutes the creation myth of the Djan'kawu who travel the land, bringing water to it. It was made for the show to evoke a purification ceremony used by the Yolngu in rites relating to the dead.

Other treasures await the viewer in other sections: a wonderfully appealing bark painting of mud crabs in red ocher outlined in white, pincers primly folded against oval bodies, by Tony Danyala; a number of carved wooden birds, mostly in black and white, by various artists; a hanging yam vine strung with white feathers by Mary Gubriawuy.

In his catalog essay, Mr. Mundine writes, "Aboriginal artworks involve more than just ochres on bark; they represent a social history; an encyclopedia of the environment, a place, a site, a season, a being, a song, a dance, a ritual, an ancestral story and a personal history." That's as good a way as any of summing up the poetry of this show.

Source: The New York Times

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