Elders in art passing

Gone but not forgotten: Artist Obituary Email notice from Aboriginal Art Directory 9 March 2015

by Jeremy Eccles 'If anyone wanted proof of the tribal differences that still define Aboriginal Australia then the individual painting styles that four recently dead women artists made their own ought to be sufficient.  Sadly, in the last few months, we've lost Angelina George from Ngukurr on the Roper River, Sally Gabori from Bentinck and Mornington Islands, Munmarria Daisy Andrews from Fitzroy Crossing via the Great Sandy Desert and Myra Cook from the Ngaanyatjarra Central Desert lands. In a sense, Angelina and Daisy both painted the places where desert met mountain ranges, and both reflected the murderous expansion of those pastoral 'pioneers' who all-too-often killed the people whose land tenure system they couldn't comprehend but whose lands they coveted - but how differently they saw them as a result of both geography and centuries of acculturisation.  For Daisy Andrews, her 'Kaningarras' and 'Lumpu Lumpus' were blood-red with unhappy memories of lands lost, relatives shot, sacred water-holes defiled and songlines disrupted. Yet she used synthetic polymer paint on paper to create deceptively appealing landscapes - so successfully that the West Australian Opera commissioned a 12 metre backdrop for their production of 'Alcina' in 1996. I wonder if Perth opera audiences recognised their complicity in Daisy's pain? "I knew that country in my mind from my brother Boxer. That country is empty now. It made me cry. I tell you I was just upset" Meanwhile, Angelina George had a mix and match childhood involving traditional ceremony in the mountains south of the Roper River and Christianity in town, school and chapel (where her father was the first Indigenous pastor), and she worked assiduously for a decade to find a way to capture the importance of the land to her. Sidney Nolan's outback paintings have been associated with the result in her 'Ruined Cities', which she shows as something between a real world swirling in constant motion, and abstraction. Romantic (with a capital R) has also been used by a critic who felt the touch of Casper David Friedrich. Yet Angelina's emphasis actually was: "I have special memories from my travels ... I can paint my memories and imagination ... not exactly what it looks like. You know. Traditional way and law. My imagined country never stops in my memory." Such a powerful force, memory - especially when these elders had at least first-hand reports of the days before the white man came and spoilt everything. In Sally Gabori's case, the missionaries did their best to negate her Kaiadilt memories of life on the strands of Bentinck Island - cut off from both black and white intrusion for centuries - by forcibly transferring them all to Mornington Island when drought, a cyclone and tribal fighting combined to threaten their existence. These untamed people were thus opened up to Christianity - and Gabori's husband Pat lost 2 of his 4 wives. But..."Such was the trauma of this forced shift that for several years no child was born and survived, rupturing forever the chain by which one sibling transmits language to the next". Dr Nicholas Evans of Melbourne University has written about vanishing languages internationally, inspired by his Kaiadilt studies. But in human terms, this trauma meant that Sally Gabori could never pass her tribal lore on to the offspring of her own 11 children through song or conversation. Painting was the only way.  And she dedicated the last 9 of her 90 years to playing catch-up with canvas, delighting the market with her unpredictable blocks of "sizzling scarlets, piercing yellows (and) opulent blues" which somehow reflected essential facets of her island home. Actually, I suspect Gabori's black and white paintings will best stand the test of time.  Did Myra Yurtiwa Cook down in the Gibson Desert have such a tough time? She seems to have moved in and out of Country freely with her family, bringing her children up in Blackstone and Warnan. The pioneering Warburton Art Project gave her the first opportunity to paint in the classic way of desert dotting. But after that, reality caught up with her as her life was tossed and turned between opposing forces in the Aboriginal art business. The purists at Desart in the Noughties sought to restrict artists to working only in community art centres; some artists wanted to make their own choices. And the 'notorious' John Ioannou was standing there to assist them. For a time, he actually ran a community art centre at Irrunytju - at the behest of its artists. You wouldn't know it from the CV available at Myra Cook's valedictory show (in a Warakurna group) currently at the Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery in Danks Street, Sydney, but she painted fabulous works for the Irrunytju cooperative. They were big, bold and confident portraits of her birthing place at Kartjinguku Creek, with one priced at $18,000 by Ioannou's Agathon Galleries in 2009. Her other base at Warakurna - a highly politicised establishment - seemed to give her only small canvases and accept easy answers. "Comparisons are odorous", as Shakespeare malapropped. But, though there's still official discrimination against the Irrunytju works, they're the ones that will represent Myra Cook's reputation in the future, an artist hailed by NGV curator Judith Ryan as "treating important Tjukurpa concepts with a vision aligned to that of artist and mystic William Blake". We shall miss all of these women elders, as will their families. But their art will live on to educate them and delight us.' Myra Cook Warakuna Arts and here  Warakuna artists PDF

La Biennale Venice announcements

Venice Biennale 2015

All the World's Futures

News of Okwui Enwezor's selection of artists include

Daniel Boyd
Emily Floyd
Marco Fusinato
Sonia Leber & David Chesworth
Emily Kngwarreye
Harry Newell

Also: Sonia Boyce, Kutlag Ataman, Isaac Julien, John Akomfrah

Not to forget the Australian Pavillion will show the wonderful Fiona Hall

Indigenous knowledge resources

Not comprehensive but here is a list of internet links/ resources

North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance

Inspirational lawyer Terri Janke resources esp re IP here

Living knowledge resources and plans for teachers and students from ANU

Interinstitutional Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge, Penn State University

Blog from Finland University in Helsinki for the Indigenous Knowledge and Cultures multidisciplinary Masters course

Beyond the Papunya Dot 2012

Papunya in France 2012
Exhibition Le Point de Papunya virtual 

IDAIA
“Beyond the Papunya Dot”, 11-28 October 2012, Musée du Montparnasse in Paris

“Beyond the Papunya Dot” invites ten Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian artists to present their vision of the Aboriginal art world through the exhibition of new works.

In Australia, the Papunya Story is well-known and art lovers know that the dot painting movement has developed and spread out from this small community of Central Australia. They also acknowledge that since the end of the 70's, contemporary Aboriginal artists from all around the country have experimented many other styles, generating a very diverse and prolific art industry.

The complexity of the Aboriginal art world is unlike relatively unknown in France, due to a lack of exhibitions opportunities and by the discourse of certain agents who prefer to maintain the idea of the 'untouched and 'Dreamtime'-based indigenous society'. 

The exhibition “Beyond the Papunya Dot” aims to show other aspects of the Australian art world than the well-known dot paintings and to give a voice to ten very different artists. These artists have been invited by the curator to engage with a series of questions relating to the history of the Aboriginal art history and to the processes of art creation and art history writing. 

'Bali 9'

Indonesia officials indicate that Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will be transferred in next 48 hours to Nusakambangan Island, southern coast Java from Bali for preparation to be executed by firing squad for smuggling 8.3kg of heroin.
The two men will be executed with 8 others.

Timeline here

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." Oscar Wilde

Prisoners Indonesia is preparing to execute:
Nine drug offenders are known to be awaiting execution. It is unclear who the 10 referred to by Prasetyo will be.

• Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso (Philippines)
• Serge Areski Atlaoui (France)
• Martin Anderson alias Belo (Ghana)
• Raheem Agbaje Salami (Nigeria)
• Rodrigo Gularte (Brazil)
• Myuran Sukumaran (Australia)
• Andrew Chan (Australia)
• Zainal Abidin (Indonesia)
• Silvester Obikwe (Nigeria)

blog following death penalty issues worldwide here

Robert Campbell Jnr retrospective curated by Djon Mundine for Artbank
Link here

Robert Campbell Jnr, Giver of Life, 1986, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 93 x 122 cm. Artbank collection, purchased 1987.

Robert Campbell Jnr: History Painter

20 Feb - 23 May 2015

Artbank
1/198–222 Young Street,
Waterloo, NSW, 2017
t: 02 9662 8011
www.artbank.gov.au

Tues to Sat 10am–5pm.

- See more at: 

Robert Campbell Jnr: History Painter

20 Feb - 23 May 2015

Artbank
1/198–222 Young Street,
Waterloo, NSW, 2017
t: 02 9662 8011
www.artbank.gov.au

Tues to Sat 10am–5pm.

- See more at: http://artguide.com.au/whats-on-page/show/robert-campbell-jnr-history-painter/#sthash.3lcWcJ4b.dpuf

Robert Campbell Jnr: History Painter

20 Feb - 23 May 2015

Artbank
1/198–222 Young Street,
Waterloo, NSW, 2017
t: 02 9662 8011
www.artbank.gov.au

Tues to Sat 10am–5pm.

- See more at: http://artguide.com.au/whats-on-page/show/robert-campbell-jnr-history-painter/#sthash.3lcWcJ4b.dpufRobert Campbell Jnr: History Painter

20 Feb - 23 May 2015

Artbank

1/198–222 Young Street,

Waterloo, NSW, 2017

t: 02 9662 8011

www.artbank.gov.au

Tues to Sat 10am–5pm.

- See more at: http://artguide.com.au/whats-on-page/show/robert-campbell-jnr-history-painter/#sthash.3lcWcJ4b.dpuf

Robert Campbell Jnr: History Painter

20 Feb - 23 May 2015

Artbank
1/198–222 Young Street,
Waterloo, NSW, 2017
t: 02 9662 8011
www.artbank.gov.au

Tues to Sat 10am–5pm.

- See more at: http://artguide.com.au/whats-on-page/show/robert-campbell-jnr-history-painter/#sthash.3lcWcJ4b.dpuf

Robert Campbell Jnr, Giver of Life, 1986, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 93 x 122 cm. Artbank collection, purchased 1987.

Robert Campbell Jnr: History Painter

20 Feb - 23 May 2015

Artbank
1/198–222 Young Street,
Waterloo, NSW, 2017
t: 02 9662 8011
www.artbank.gov.au

Tues to Sat 10am–5pm.

- See more at: http://artguide.com.au/whats-on-page/show/robert-campbell-jnr-history-painter/#sthash.3lcWcJ4b.dpuf

Robert Campbell Jnr, Giver of Life, 1986, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 93 x 122 cm. Artbank collection, purchased 1987.

Robert Campbell Jnr: History Painter

20 Feb - 23 May 2015

Artbank
1/198–222 Young Street,
Waterloo, NSW, 2017
t: 02 9662 8011
www.artbank.gov.au

Tues to Sat 10am–5pm.

- See more at: http://artguide.com.au/whats-on-page/show/robert-campbell-jnr-history-painter/#sthash.3lcWcJ4b.dpuf

Robert Campbell Jnr, Giver of Life, 1986, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 93 x 122 cm. Artbank collection, purchased 1987.

Robert Campbell Jnr: History Painter

20 Feb - 23 May 2015

Artbank
1/198–222 Young Street,
Waterloo, NSW, 2017
t: 02 9662 8011
www.artbank.gov.au

Tues to Sat 10am–5pm.

- See more at: http://artguide.com.au/whats-on-page/show/robert-campbell-jnr-history-painter/#sthash.3lcWcJ4b.dpuf

Dance, knowledge and climate change

Dance & knowledge

Dalisa Pigram of Marrugeku has worked with dancers and knowledge to think about climate change from an indigenous perspective and encourage the audience to think through feeling.
See article here 

Cut the Sky is at the Perth Festival 27 Feb - 1 March 2015

Edwin Lee Mulligan stars in Cut the Sky, a new work by Broome-based dance company Marrugeku.

Photograph: Marrugeku 

Indigenous Dance Bibliography

Thanks to  Brenda Farnell and Monica FA Wong Santos for sharing their bibliography online:

A Bibliography of the Literature on Australian Aboriginal Dancing (1987-2013)

Dada | Readymades | Duchamp

Useful links for reference:
Readymades
The Dada movement
Marcel Duchamp

Find articles on Tout-fait.com - the Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal

Surrealism in Australia

Photographic resource | French National Museums

Réunion des Musées Nationaux project started in 1946 and records the artworks held in the major museums 

Link here

Variety and Diversity

Sunili Govinnage's top 25 non-white reads and commentary here
Keeping the link to Good Reads here
Includes Sci-fi, and chic lit by Anita Heiss (Indigenous Australian Academic)