Tracey Naughton
Currently showing in Pretoria is an exhibition of Australian Aboriginal art owned by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Some may question this showcasing of Aboriginal culture, titled Seasons of the Kunwinjku, in the context of the Australian prime minister’s reluctance to offer an official apology for the effects of history on the generation who have been called the “stolen children” of the aboriginal community.
As a modern country built on immigration, and which encourages cultural diversity, Australia is dealing with a recreation of its image to the world. The strong monocultural image inherited from the British colonial era is dissolving into a more complex mixture that embraces European, Asian, Latin American and Pacific influences. The development of a multicultural identity on one hand, and the reclaiming of the cultural identity of the indigenous people, are intertwined in a period of Australian history that Gatjil Djerrkura, chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in Australia, says is a “defining period in the nation’s history”.
The exhibition shows seasonal changes in the West Arnhem Land area of Australia, through the eyes of the Kunwinjku (pronounced Gun-wing-koo) people, who are indigenous to that area.
Affectionately known to Australians as the “top end”, the area is near Darwin in the Northern Territory and is not topographically dissimilar to the Okavango Delta in Botswana.
The Kunwinjku people divide the year into six distinct seasons, dispensing with the “whitefella” concept of 12 calendar months and reflecting the closeness of Aboriginal culture to the machinations of geographical location. The seasons depicted in the exhibition correlate to the area’s dramatic weather patterns – from monsoon rains and electrical storms of the wet season, to the stillness of parched and dusty earth in the dry, and the subtle changes that build up to and wind down from these most striking periods.
The Kunwinjku, as with all Aboriginal people, have a deep as well as practical connection to their land. Seasons determine the food supply that will be abundant at various times of the year. There are hundreds of Aboriginal clan groups in Australia and the dreamings produced from clan to clan vary.
Historically, Aboriginal culture was not drawn to the construction of long-lasting monuments, but was expressed in more ephemeral ways – through elaborate body painting and head dress, ground design, sand sculptures and wood carving. It was and is based on a communion with nature, rather than Western concepts of bending nature to meet the human will.
In Aboriginal tradition, the “dreamtime” was the period during which ancestral beings, in the form of spirits, heroes and heroines, journeyed across the land creating the people, animals, birds, reptiles, tress, rivers and flood plains. The dreamtime was a process as well as a period – it had its beginning when the world was young and unformed, but it has never ceased. The ancestor who established law and the patterns of behaviour is as alive today as when the original creative acts were performed. The sacred past, the dreamtime, is for Aborigines also the sacred present, the eternal dreamtime.
Artistic works like those on show in Pretoria are among the most important mediums for the passing of the dreamtime stories down the generations, and are one of the most vital links with Aboriginal tradition and identity. More than a form of individual expression in the Western sense, the artist has a personal responsibility to keep alive their area of ancestral connection to the dreamtime.
Each symbol or icon within an art work can have a multitude of meanings that can be interpreted according to the ritual, social or political situation in which they are presented. It is the level of interpretation that is important, and this level of interpretation requires a deep ritual knowledge, which in turn distinguishes both the authority of the interpreter and that of the viewer.
For example, ritually senior men and women will have access to a broad range of meanings of a particular image, and yet confine their account of the image to a level appropriate to their audience.
While the sanctity of sacred art continues to be maintained as an essential part of the traditions and customs of those communities that choose to live traditionally orientated lifestyles, some artists have in recent years made their art work more commercially viable and accessible.
The Seasons of the Kunwinjku exhibition demonstrates just how accessible some Aboriginal communities are prepared to make their art without compromising traditional beliefs and value systems and is a superb survey of works, accompanied by photographs of seasonal changes in the top end landscape.
The exhibition of Australian Aboriginal art is showing at the Pretoria Art Museum until July 23. For more information contact Tel: (012) 344 1807