National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | National Indigenous Art Triennial 07

This painting depicts the birth of life, breaking throughout the warmth of eternity, bringing the beginning of the Dreaming Boodja, a place mankind calls earth. It is placed among the galaxy to guide the Nyoongar people through their journey of life and dreaming. Shane Pickett, 2007

The manager’s wife was a nursing sister and once a week she would inspect the houses on the mission to make sure that our homes were clean and tidy, which they were. She wanted to know how mum’s floors were so white seeing that we had no electricity to use an electric floor scrubber. That’s when mum showed her a piece of sandstone, by which she was very surprised! Elaine Russell, 2004

Dowling’s portrayal of Walyer, a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman resistance fighter, is a rallying cry of opposition. Dowling’s protagonist, standing like an antipodean Bodicea, is a culture warrior, overturning the myth of passive submission. George Augustus Robinson, a former missionary, and Chief Protector of the Aborigines in the Port Phillip District (Victoria) from 1839 to 1849, referred to Walyer as ‘an Amazon’. Shortly after her capture in 1830, she died on 5 June 1831 from another insidious gift from the colonists: influenza. She had fought on behalf of her people with bravery and tenacity in a war for which no memorials exist. Walyer (aka Te Nor and Tarenorerer), a Plair-Leke-Liller-Plue woman from Tasmania, was abducted in her teens by men from another tribe and traded to sealers for flour and dogs. Such transactions occurred as Tasmanian Aboriginal people’s lives were disrupted by encroaching European settlement. Sealers took Aboriginal women for labour and as sexual commodities. During her time with the sealers, Walyer learnt English and how to use firearms. She escaped in 1828 and joined the Lairmairrener group of Emu Bay. In 1830, colonial authorities reported that Walyer was leading violent attacks against settlers and other Aboriginal groups. She and her group used muskets in these assaults, which was previously unprecedented in Aboriginal attacks. Walyer represents to me the hundreds of women who fought for their land against the invading colonial forces. Walyer also represents the women of today who see that their struggle has never ceased in obtaining rights for their people over their land and lore. I painted Walyer gesturing towards a group of colonial houses in the distant right. The moon shows light from behind the clouds, outlining her cloaked body as she holds two guns. She is gesturing to the viewer as if they were one of the fighters she has assembled to battle the colonial encroachments upon their land and hers. There is a road carved into the trees under the distant mountains leading to the houses, which have smoke coming out of their chimneys, signifying their occupancy. Walyer stands in action, holding a fowler’s rifle with a small flintlock pistol held in the belt around her skirt. She wears a bookah (kangaroo cloak), a shell necklace and clay ornamentation covers her hair. This painting is about early historical interactions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Australia. First contact relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the colonies reveal much about the divide that continues to exist today and this painting is about what we can learn from such engagements. Aboriginal people use their oral histories as well as written historical records from non-Aboriginal colonial perspectives to construct racial consciousness and visions of Aboriginal self-determination. I have painted the stories of Aboriginal resistance fighters to grapple the construction of the hero in art. Romanticism was widely used in early colonial art in Australia emphasising Rousseau’s theory of the noble savage. These early power relations must be highlighted so that we can see how nationalism and imperial sentiment were constructed. As an Aboriginal person, I feel that it is important to understand colonial art practices brought here and how they can be used for decolonisation. By using the colonial romantic imagery of Aboriginal people as a tool, I can inform non-Aboriginal people of the denial of Aboriginal culture in current representations of Australian history. Julie Dowling, 2006

This painting is drawing direct reference from the hand-coloured lithograph produced by Louis Auguste de Sainson...De Sainson was the appointed draughtsman on the Astrolabe commanded by Dumont d’Urville. The lithograph itself was printed in 1833. The image depicts the area within King George Sound, south-west Western Australia, probably Middleton Beach. In the foreground, members from d’Urville’s expedition load water onto one of the ship’s longboats via a long flexible hose. Interaction between the crew and the Minang people is obvious and positive with several individuals helping to load water.1 This historical image is a rare snapshot of some of the first interactions between Europeans and the Minang people. It shows the exchange of ideas however different they are. It is the point where new ways of thinking are discovered. Physics provides a detailed equation using pressure, depth, atmospheric pressure, density of water and acceleration of gravity to explain how a siphon works. Hydrology (the science of water on earth) gives us detailed theories and explanation of river formation, one of which I have placed within the painting. To me the work provides optimism through the way in which the French interact with the Minang people, but it also symbolises the beginning of change in ideas and, ultimately, beliefs. Christopher Pease, 2005 1. Alternative names: Minung, Meenung, Mirnong, Mean-anger, Minnal Yungar (lit. ‘southern men’), Meenung (name given by Ko:reng), Mount Barker tribe.

The title of a solo exhibition held in Brisbane in early 2007, ‘a complicated fall’, refers to the comment by the state coroner, who referred to Mulrundji Doomagee’s death on Palm Island as being caused by ‘a complicated fall’. This was a surprising finding considering the physical damage [‘four broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and a liver almost split in half’] that the man had suffered during his ordeal in the Palm Island jail. ‘A complicated fall’ could also refer to a fall from grace, a fall of government, etc. Other works in the exhibition referred more specifically to recent events on Palm Island and or used familiar motifs within my body of work (e.g. shells, ribs, plants and maps). While I was making many of the works in this exhibition I was listening to ABC Radio National. At this time there were many news updates about events on Palm Island. Part of my response to this was an internal grieving that I was aware of when I was pushing and scrubbing the raw pigments into the canvas. Blue is the colour of memory and associated with water, washing over me. Waanyi people are known as ‘running water people’ because of the inherent quality of the water in their country. The deep blues of the background of the canvas are made by scrubbing the intense Prussian (dark) blue and ultramarine (purplish) blue pigments onto the material using a stiff brush. The white circular forms are constellation-like, pin points of light that suggest movement and shifting focal points within the image. I first used these round forms in 1993, during an artists camp in Norway in a glacial valley where I played with points of light on a rock using a mirror. Then I made an installation of glacial mud nests within an ampitheatre of rocks. For the Venice Biennale in 1997 they morphed into bronze stones. They often appear as points of light or dark within other works on canvas. The white outline at the top of the canvas is suggestive of a stingray. When I visited Palm Island in the mid 1980s I remember wading through shallow water around a bay in which there were masses of stingrays. It was an unnerving experience: hoping they would swim by you without stinging you with their tail. As Tony Albert from Queensland Art Gallery has noted, since Steve Irwin’s death from a large stingray barb through the heart, an image of a stingray will carry other memories. The shape at the bottom of the form is a map of the main island of the Palm group (or cluster of islands). It has the major roads marked on it but the white dotted shapes along the edge suggest the sparkling of light on the water and beaches fringing its coastline. Physically it is a paradise but it carries a heavy history. Judy Watson, 2007

The eight panels depict the Great Sandy Desert near Well 33 in Western Australia. Jan Billycan is a maparn (medicine woman) from this country. She can see ‘inside’ the human body, and is a renowned traditional healer. This is evident in her landscapes, as the visceral nature of her work is reminiscent of the internal organs of the human body. A living waterhole becomes a liver or kidney, while the tali (sand dunes) are stretched across the canvas like the human ribcage. The body is just an extension of the land. Billycan knows these things on a deep metaphysical level and does not like to discuss her talents. However, it is important for kardiya (whitefellas) to be aware of this in order to understand the significance of Billycan’s work. Jan Billycan, 2006

John MAWURNDJUL, Mardayin design at Dilebang 2006, painting, bark painting, natural earth pigments on stringybark, 200.0 (h) x 47.0 (w) cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Australia, © John Mawurndjul, courtesy Maningrida Arts & Culture

IFWECAN’TEXPECTPROTECTIONFROMTHELAW,THENHOWCANWEBEEXP ECTEDTORESPECTTHELAW?OURYOUNGPEOPLE,PARTICULARLYYOUNG MALES,AREROUTINELYCRIMINALISEDFORMINOROFFENCESTHATRAREL YATTRACTSPOLICEACTIONINWHITENEIGHBOURHOODDS.YOUHAVECON VINCEDYOURSELVESTOBELIEVETHATABORIGINALPEOPLEAREDIRTY,LA ZY,LYING,DRUNKENCRIMINALS.BUT,DEEPD.OWNYOUKNOWTHATYOUAR ERIPPINGUSOFF.YOUKNOWTHATWEDON’TGETA‘FAIRGO’.WORSE,YOUKN OWWEHAVENEVERHADAFAIRGOINTHIS,OUROWNCOUNTRY.THENYOUJUS TIFYTHEACTIONSOFYOURFOREBEARS.YOUDENYANYEVIDENCETHATCLAI MSVIOLENCEBYYOURANCESTORSAGAINSTABORIGINALPEOPLE.THENYO UABSOLVETHEMOFANYBLAMEFORSOMETHINGTHATYOUCLAIMTHEYNEV EREVERDIDINTHEFIRSTPLACE.NOTTOOFARFROMTHISRATIONALISATION YOUARRIVEATTHECONCLUSIONTHATWESHOULDACTUALLYBETHANKFU LTHATITWASTHEENGLISHWHO‘CONQUERED’AUSTRALIARATHERTHANTH EFRENCHOR,GODFORBID,THESPANISHORDUTCHORPORTUGESE.YOUHOL DTHATWEMUSTBEETERNALLYGRATEFULFORTHEGREATFAVOURYOURAN CESTORDIDFORUSBYDISPOSSESSINGUS.WESHOULDBENOLESSGRATEFUL FOREVERYBITOFWELFARETHROWN OURWAYEVENTHOUGHYOUWILLBEGR UDGEUSEVERYSINGLETHINGTHATWEGET.YOUMAKEUPLIESABOUTUSTOE XPIATEYOURGUILT…BEWARNED…JUDGEMENTDAYCOMETH.

I started this series of drawings with my ‘heroes’. A portrait of my grandfather, Mick Miller. He was larger than life and held a special role in society. Grandfathers are already fully evolved when you meet them. Their personality is not evolving or growing, it’s set in stone…Different to the father–son relationship. Grandfathers have an immediate fondness toward their grandchildren. They are also very much heroes to everyone in the family. I thought it was natural to want to portray them on a large scale, to make them large drawings. If I made a video of my grandfather I would want it to be projected really big… I’ve done a few self-portraits in pastels to try it in the past, but other than that. not many. It’s really just like any self-portrait – I just do whatever strikes me at the time. I have license to make any comment that strikes me. They also say more about me than any other work because they are unavoidably me. When I am making them I don’t have to worry about making the subject look good, or portray myself as big, brave, sexy or handsome, because I don’t need to. There is more to say in being honest and conveying a sense of an Aboriginal experience in each of my self portraits. Now I have the opportunity to make more self portraits which offers the opportunity to find out more about myself… …the other part of the drawing is of my grandfather Mick Miller. All of my other portraits of my grandfather have been of him as a young man, taken from museum photographic records. Whereas here he is drawn as I remember him, a 70-year-old man. In the corner a tag reads ‘Waanyi Man, Lawn Hill, Palm Island’. He was a Waanyi man sent to Palm Island, where he met my grandmother, who was born there. I was pleased to do this work as it’s me and my grandfather. I am very comfortable in recreating our relationship, but I’m also adding a new dialogue. Here I’m posed in museum style with a front and side profile, which is poetic as it’s like the standard museum photographs of my grandfather…I’ve also rendered myself in a different way from any other portrait I’ve done. Here I’ve used thick broad strokes to marks that look like cuts on skin. This is commenting on my grandfather’s life as a young man and the tough life of that generation living in north Queensland. I wouldn’t have taken this approach in creating another person’s portrait. Vernon Ah Kee, interview by Bruce McLean, Artlines, no.2–2007, pp.14–15.

Kanpi Tjukurpa (Dreaming story from Kanpi). This place is called Katatjita. It’s a rock hole underground. It’s like a big underground cave inside. There is one woman sitting inside, she’s from the Tjukurpa (Creation Time). Her name is Malilu. She’s frightened and hiding in the cave. The man was trying to sleep with her but she said wanti (no). The man speared her many times and she fled to the safety of the cave. Jimmy Baker, 2007

This is Kuru Ala. These are creeks and rock holes everywhere, and many trees. There is puli (rocks) and apu (rocky hills). This is Minyma Tjuta Tjukurrpa (Seven Sisters Creation Story). This area is close to Tjuntjuntjarra [in Western Australia, near the South Australian border]. Maringka Baker, 2007

Yirrikapayi (male crocodile) was once a man who lived around [Cape] Fourcroy [Bathurst Island]. They been spear him. He crawled into the water and turned into a crocodile. Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, 2007

Brown, from rural Victoria, began painting native animals when he was a teenager living rough and homeless. He depicts his beloved animals in idyllic bush settings, in an idiosyncratic style, having been encouraged to develop his art through adult art classes at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. His paintings of native fauna can be considered as metaphors for his people, as in Dreamtime kangaroo and bird 2006.

Christine CHRISTOPHERSEN, The past, the present, the future 2006, painting, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 200.0 (h) x 248.0 (w) cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2007

Colour blinded exemplifies the way we work together, when we work together. Destiny thinks her thoughts and Virginia thinks hers. Neither of us recalls a time we’ve talked much about making work together, or discussed ideas or methods except while doing it and even then only briefly. In this case Destiny proposed doing something with sodium lights that Virginia had used before, though not in joint works. Destiny wanted to take black-and-white photos and Virginia suggested using orthochromatic film because of the way it reads and reduces colour. Destiny dreamt up and took the photos and proposed and directed most of the scenarios for the video, which Virginia shot and edited. Destiny had the idea for the snow dome and Virginia made it work. That’s the mechanics of it. But the other things that go into it result from what we’ve each been separately thinking, doing and reading; our awareness of current events and our personal histories in contact with each other and anyone else we’re working with; materials, media and the occasion or opportunity for making and showing work. The empty space in the installation is as important to us as the objects in it. When anyone walks into the space they’re absorbed into it and, visually at least, become part of the work, instead of getting in the way of it. It was exciting when a serious and respectable-looking older woman standing with her friend in Colour blinded in Paris clapped her hands and laughed and asked in French, ‘Are we alive or dead?’ Part of the point of the lights is always the same: the somewhat sinister thrill of the change they make to whatever and whoever is in their range, and the way they illustrate that how you look at things – literally the light you see them in – affects what you see. Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, 2007

The weaving technique used in Yabby is shared by Indigenous nations of the southern and south-eastern regions, particularly along the river systems that meander across state borders and clan lines. The technique was transposed to Arnhem Land in the early 20th century by missionaries, who encouraged Aboriginal women to practice craft and create objects for sale through the tourist market of the time, in spite of the ancient weaving traditions of communities in the Top End. Treahna Hamm is one of a number of artists who over the past decade or so have researched customary techniques and been responsible for cultural revival and regeneration. This work was the result of a dream. In Indigenous culture, teachings are very different from the concept of mainstream teachings. Many aspects of life are interpreted with listening to the land and to elders through stories that are then reinterpreted into our own lives. The work gives substance to my identity and that of my cultural teachings. Treahna Hamm, 2007

Yawkyawk is a word in the Kunwinjku/kunwok language of Western Arnhem Land meaning ‘young woman’ and ‘young woman spirit being’. The different groups of Kunwinjku people (one of the Eastern dialect groups call themselves Kuninjku) each have Yawkyawk mythologies, which relate to specific locations in clan estates. These mythologies are represented in bark paintings and sculptures of Yawkyawk beings. There are also a few examples of rock art images of these beings. The female water spirits Yawkyawk or Ngalkunburriyaymi are perhaps the most enigmatic of mythological themes. Sometimes compared to the European notion of mermaids, they exist as spiritual beings living in freshwater streams and rock pools, particularly those in the stone country. The spirit Yawkyawk is usually described and depicted with the tail of a fish. This the Kuninjku people sometimes call the ngalberddjenj which literally means ‘the young woman who has a tail like a fish’. They have long hair, which is associated with trailing blooms of green algae (called man-bak in Kuninjku). At times they leave their aquatic homes to walk about on dry land, particularly at night. Aboriginal people believe that in the beginning most animals were humans. During the time of the creation of landscapes and plants and animals, these ancestral heroes in human form transmutated into their animal forms via a series of various significant events now recorded as oral mythologies. The creation ancestor Yawkyawk travelled the country in human form and changed into the form of Ngalkunburriyaymi as a result of various ancestral adventures. Today the Kuninjku believe that Ngalkunburriyaymi are alive and well and living in freshwater sites in a number of sacred locations. Some features of a respective country are equated with body parts of Yawkyawk. For example a bend in a river or creek may be said to be the tail of the Yawkyawk, a billabong may be the head of the Yawkyawk, and so on. Thus different groups can be linked together by means of a shared mythology featured in the landscape, which crosscuts clan and language group boundaries. Felicity Green (ed.), Togart Contemporary Art Award (NT) 2007, exhibition catalogue, Darwin: Toga Group, 2007, p.20.

I can remember coming here as a boy in old wooden boats to be taught by my grandparents and my parents. I’ll be 57 this year and I have missed only one year when my daughter Leanne was born. Mutton birding is my life. To me it’s a gathering of our fellas where we sit and yarn, we remember and we honour all of those birders who have gone before us. Sometimes I just stand and look out across these beautiful islands remembering my people and I know I’m home. It makes me proud to be a strong Tasmanian black man. This is something that they can never take away from me. Murray Mansell, Big Dog Island, Bass Strait, 2005

Wakkewakken, the legless women, is associated with the ancestral honey in areas around where Nadjamerrek lives – his country Kabulwarnamyo. Dulklorrkelorrkeng has legs, arms, an ‘arse like a monkey’ and the pushed backed face of the ghost bat. Nadjamerrek depicts Dulklorrkelorrkeng with a black whip snake at its thumb. The Wakkewakken was painted first and Nadjamerrek indicated early that he was going to paint a row of four or five of these beings – obviously a change of mind occurred soon after. The areas of hatching on the malevolent Dulklorrkelorrkeng and snake have been executed by two hands – Nadjamerrek’s and his son’s wife Jenny. Nadjamerrek moved to his granddaughter’s house to finish this work. Here his son and wife were also camped and Jenny was instructed to infill the marked out areas of his design. Her practical hand is honest and workman like, differing to his lines, which not only show his confident lightness of touch, creating tonal variation, but also of an old man’s tremor. Dulklorrkelorrkeng are malignant spirits associated with a site of the same name in the Mok clan’s estate. Dulklorrkelorrkeng are usually described as evil spirits or devils similar in nature to the malevolent Namande spirits living throughout western Arnhem Land. Dulklorrkelorrkeng are of both genders and are only visible to the ‘clever men’. Nadjamerrek learnt what they look like, how they live and about their activities from his father, who was a ‘man with power’ as he had special qualities and could see the invisible. Dulklorrkelorrkeng eat poisonous snakes and angurrk (gum) from a number of local tree species. Their pets are djapo (northern quoll), but not the small species known to common people; their pets are djapo namandegen, large animals said to be as large as wolfhounds. Dulklorrkelorrkeng live in anberrk (forest usually described as dry country as it lacks surface water) where they sit on hollow logs that serve as their home. They get their djiddjirrdok(drinking water) from hollow anbulurrdak and andjalen trees. If you tap these trees, you can hear the water splashing and the movement of Dulklorrkelorrkeng inside.

Marrapinti is the rock hole site west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. Ancestral women of the Nangala and Napangati subsections camped at Marrapinti during their travels east. There, the women made nose bones, also known as marrapinti. During ceremonies relating to Marrapinti, the older women pierced the nasal septums of the younger women who were participating in the ceremony. Now, nose bones are only used by the older generation for ceremonies. Upon completion of the ceremonies at Marrapinti, the women continued their travels east, passing through Wala Wala, Ngaminya and Wirrulnga, before heading north east to Wilkinkarra [Lake Mackay]. The lines in the painting represent the surrounding tali (sand hills) in the area around Wirrulnga. A group of ancestral women once gathered at this site to perform the dance and sing the songs associated with the area. Wirrulnga is known as a traditional birthing site for the women of the area, and while the women were at Wirrulnga a woman of the Napaltjarri kinship subsection gave birth to a son who was a Tjupurrula. While at Wirrulnga the women also gathered the edible berries known as kampurarrpa or desert raisin from the small shrub Solanum centrale. These berries can be eaten straight from the bush but are sometimes ground into a paste and cooked in the coals to form a type of damper. Doreen Reid Nakamarra 2007

This is a legend that took place on the Mai Kusa River on the western coast of Papua New Guinea. Following the death of his wife, a man decided to give his daughter a pet to help console her and keep her company. He brought her a puppy but she didn’t like it. He then brought her a piglet but she didn’t like that either ... One day when he was out spearing fish in the back he came across a baby crocodile, which he caught and took home to show his daughter. She really liked it and named the crocodile Ubirikubiri. As the crocodile grew, the man kept enlarging the pen. After Ubirikubiri had become fully grown, the father went to visit friends in another village, and he neglected to feed the crocodile the entire time he was away. When he returned Ubirikubiri was very hungry and very annoyed at having been left without food for such a long time. As the father went to feed Ubirikubiri some fish, the crocodile grabbed him and killed him, then it broke out of the pen, placed the father on his back and headed to the Mai Kusa. The daughter, who had not been at home when Ubirikubiri seized her father, saw the broken pen and evidence of a skirmish. She followed Ubirikubiri’s tracks to the river, calling out to the crocodile to tell her about her father. At ziba ziba (dusk), Ubirikubiri appeared on the river bank with the girl’s father on his back. She pleaded with the crocodile to give up her father but, shaking his huge body, the crocodile refused and headed back into the river. There is a moral to part of this story that instructs us that if animals are taken from their natural environment they must be looked after and treated and cared for properly. Dennis Nona and the Australian Art Print Network, 2007

Arthur Koo'ekka PAMBEGAN JNR, Face Painting 2006, painting, natural earth pigments and hibiscus charcoal with synthetic polymer binder on canvas, 56.0 (h) x 168.0 (w) cm, purchased 2007 © Arthur Pambegan Jnr, courtesy of Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane

H.J. WEDGE, No more drinking 2006, painting, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 120.0 (h) x 120.0 (w) cm, courtesy of Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Co-Operative Ltd. © H.J. Wedge

Kuninjku artists Owen Yalandja and Anniebell Marrngamarrnga have created three-dimensional representations of the same ancestral being, the yawkyawk. Yawkyawk (also known as yawk yawk and yalk yalk) are female water spirits that are often referred to within European cultures as mermaids. They are half fish, half Ancestral Being, who entice unsuspecting men beneath the water of the billabongs and lagoons, where they reside throughout Arnhem Land. In some representations they have long reed-like hair, referring to the waterweed, and are able to transform their features into that of a fish snake. They are able to morph further as they grow into adulthood, leaving their watery domicile and flying like dragonflies. Closely associated with the powerful Ancestral Being Ngalyod the Rainbow Serpent, yawkyawk are often linked with sorcery. Yalandja’s majestic, elegant carvings of Yawkyawk 2007, hewn from eucalyptus trunk, denote strength and power. The chevron design, his signature design, indicates the shimmering scales on the fish-like body of the creatures, catching the light and suggesting the inherent power within the billabong where yawkyawk reside. Yalandja, the son of renowned carver and senior Mumeka custodian Anchor Kuningbal (c. 1922–1984), was taught to carve by his father.

A while ago I was asked to do some work about the Chris Hurley case. Because I wasn’t directly involved I decided to do a more general painting on black deaths in custody. This is it: FIGHT: To Survive; To Live; To Die! My first thought was to depict a subversion of events. Instead of a blackfella being beaten by the cops, here, you’ve got the cops being beaten by a blackfella. My central figure is the key to this painting: an image of resilience, of fighting back against the odds. The boxing tent to the left refers to a history of blackfellas fighting in Australia. Here I use it as a sign of empowerment with the blackfellas as heroes and the redneck crowd as villains. The left panel shows the faces of the rednecks. Like criminals, their faces are obscured by stockings. This obscurement refers to how racism can be masked or institutionalised. It’s a kind of crowd mentality. The crow on the right of the central panel refers to the spirit of blackfellas who have died in custody, ascending from the jail cell. To its right, the dove symbolises the resting place of those spirits: a place of freedom and peace. As for the global symbol, I’ve used this in the past. Global decisions impact on us locally, such as multinational companies drawing resources from Indigenous lands. It’s a reminder that the fight is not just against crooked cops. Gordon Hookey, 2007

A wonderland of truly wondrous things That nowhere else upon this Earth are found; Of reptiles rare, and birds that have no wings, And animals that live deep in the ground; And those poor simple children of the Earth, (A disappearing race you here may meet), Whom whites have driven from their land of birth To regions still untrod by booted feet.1 Danie Mellor’s (re)creation of this gleefully contrived never-never land is realised in his phantasmagorical tableau The contrivance of a vintage Wonderland (A magnificent flight of curious fancy for science buffs…a china ark of seductive whimsy…a divinely ordered special attraction…upheld in multifariousness) 2007, which is the kind of diorama that should have been on display in the social history museums of the past. Mellor’s magical installation conjures up flights of fancy that might have been the imaginations of those terrified and ignorant initial ‘boat people’. Mellor’s creatures are manufactured from an amalgam of the man-made and the natural: real macropod paws and ears, and smaller marsupial possum paws and ears adorn life-size fibreglass models encrusted with a mosaic of shattered blue and white willow pattern Spode crockery – with one red and white willow pattern oddity.2 A motley flock of stuffed native birds – a giant emu, an owl, brilliantly coloured parrots, including hybrids – and a tree cloaked in mosaic rather than bark conjure metaphors of the hybridity that most of contemporary Indigenous Australians experience everyday. Notes 1. AG Bolam, The trans-Australian wonderland, Melbourne: The McCubbin-James Press, 1927. 2. Spode is an English manufacturer of pottery and porcelain, based in Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom, c. 1770.

This painting represents a component of the Wagilag Sisters epic creation story. The upper-left corner of the work shows Wititj the sacred python emerging from its home, Mirarrmina waterhole. Wititj has already swallowed and regurgitated the sisters and their child, and the child is drinking the Mirarrmina water from a mungulk (a paperbark water vessel). The rarrk roundels in the work are djamundurr or gunda, which are stones. The stones are found surrounding Mirarrmina waterhole and the sisters use the stones for killing goannas to eat. ‘How much goanna? one, two, three, four…buduk (wait)…five. Five goanna.’ The goannas are djarrka(the Mertens’ water goanna) who live in hollow logs around the waterhole. This goanna is painted as a body design on initiates in high-order ceremonies such as Ngulmarrk and Djungguwan. Not all men make it to this level of ceremonial initiation as it is reserved for the (potentially) more powerful leaders and lawmen. The triangular shapes are ngambi (stone spearheads) collected from Ngilipitji, a quarry in the region. The women have used their fingernails to prise the rocks from the quarry. There is a spear under the arm of the sister on the left. The Wagilag Sisters used spears in their time until other people were made and born, when men took over the use of spears for hunting. In the lower right quadrant of the painting there is rinytjangu (yam or bush tucker) next to a stone spearhead, between the legs of the sister on the right. Both of the Wagilag Sisters are of the Dhuwa moiety. Reputedly the younger sister had fornicated with her brother, giving rise to the child. The child is the first Yirritja moiety person. Hence the creation of the Yirritja moiety. The Wagilag Sisters are central to the four important ceremonies of the Dhuwa moiety: Djungguwan, Gunabibi, Ngulmarrk, Mandaialla. The story is primarily an account of how, in the distant past, the two Wagilag Sisters came out of the southern interior and came across the countryside to the Liyagalawumirr waterhole at Mirramina. There, the younger sister profaned the pool of the great python by accidentally allowing her blood to fall into the waterhole. Because of this the women and the child were swallowed by the python amid thunderstorms and rain – the first wet season. The great flood covered the land and all the other sacred pythons stood up with their heads in the clouds and talked to each other with voices like thunder. The python from Guruwana was one of those. He lives in a rocky mud bank where there are many oyster beds. The pythons discovered that they had different languages and skins. The Mirramina python confessed to eating the two women – his own moiety – and fell to earth, making a big depression in the ground. The big wind blew across the land and caused the first dry season. The python vomited the women up, but swallowed them again before going back into the waterhole.

The customary greeting between male relations and family members in Thompson’s The Sixth Mile and Desert Slippers both created 2006 are profoundly moving in the intensely personal rituals revealed to an unaware public audience. Thompson inhabits many bodies – young, male, urban, Blak, androgynous, playful, mimic, and performative – always Bidjara.1 [The video work] presents the viewer with a very intimate, family ritual. We see the artist and his father involved in what could be interpreted as a greeting ceremony. Speaking in Bidjara, their bodies turned towards each other, the men are engrossed in acting out the same gestures repetitively. The non-Bidjara viewer, who can’t understand what is being said, is nonetheless invited into this private space of communication and learning between father and son. The artist explains that this work follows on from earlier videos that similarly focused on Bidjara rituals, made visible by means of a Western visual language. It forms a response to the increasingly conservative government policies and, in particular, to the recent media coverage of dysfunction in Indigenous communities, something described by the artist as ‘Aboriginal man-bashing.’ Choosing video because of its potential for direct and intense audience engagement, Thompson offers insight into Indigenous rituals and notions of masculinity and father-child relationships in personal and challenging ways. Marianne Riphagen, ‘Intersections in the screen pit’, RealTime, no.76, Dec–Jan, 2006, p.54. Notes 1 The term ‘Blak’ was first used by Destiny Deacon in the exhibition Kudjeris at Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, 1991, with one of her works titled Blak lik mi.

Yunupingu’s source of inspiration is Garak the Universe, an important ancestral story – particularly for the Yolgnu of north-east Arnhem Land. Although Garak appears to be a literal representation of the Milky Way, Yunupingu has stated herself that her art is about the entire universe, all the stars that can be seen by the naked eye, and also everything that exists far beyond any scientific expedition or estimation – everything that can be imagined and all that cannot.

King No Beard 2007 is a direct appropriation of the portrait of King George III painted in London in 1773 by Nathaniel Dance, which is now held in the Hermitage collection in St Petersburg. Boyd’s regal portrait of King George III in all his frills and finery is brought undone by closer observation of the stately necklace: the expected gold orbs having been replaced by skulls. The portrait also contains a self-portrait, mockingly included as a decapitated specimen in a jar, gazing mournfully heavenward like a latter-day Saint Sebastian, martyred like so many of the first Indigenous resistance fighters of Australia. Boyd’s portraits directly reference 18th-century portraits of figures associated with the earliest days of Australia’s colonisation. Within these portraits are other references, as is the case with the macabre self-portrait in which Boyd shares the fate of 18th-century Dharug/Dharuk resistance leader Pemulwuy (c. 1750–1802). Pemulwuy led uprisings against the colonisers for 12 years before finally being captured and executed – having escaped from captivity at least once. His severed head was then bottled and sent back to his home Country. Boyd also alludes to the £50 million recently paid for British artist Damien Hirst’s work For the love of God, a diamond encrusted human skull, which was sold in June 2007. Boyd’s painting is a response to an art market gone absurd, particularly in light of the secondary and auction market for Aboriginal art.