I read an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about Reko Rennie, a contemporary Indigenous artist from Melbourne - Rennie's work focuses on what it's like to be an urban Aboriginal man in contemporary society. He does stencil-based, graffiti influenced art that I'm actually pretty drawn to (this is not my usual cup of tea). Anyway, the article focused on a new neon piece (called "Neon Natives") located in a laneway in Melbourne.

"Neon Natives is not only about expressing his own heritage, but showing the broader population that contemporary Indigenous art is more complex than dots and ochre. 'A lot of people have this idea or notion of what contemporary Aboriginal art should be, and it's not the case,' he says, explaining that he tries to sway people from this by using very bright colours and materials. He also tries to educate about what it means to be an Indigenous artist in contemporary society. 'We aren't all dark with loincloths. There is this romanticised stereotype of the noble savage imagery. We are from different walks of life, different academic backgrounds and able to articulate ourselves. It's a really exciting time for contemporary Aboriginal art.'"

Found this article the other week about the Desert Mob show in Alice Springs. I have recently become really interested in finding articles about Indigenous art in newspapers and non-art periodicals to see what the different views are like.

An excerpt from the article:

"With so great a wealth of paintings and sculptural pieces on view, the spectator rushes to compare and judge. But the sheer profusion of the works, the totality of the exhibition, is its core message. The desert art centres are a managed, artificial archipelago, but the rich variation in the tapestry of the artworks they harvest makes a simple point. All through the desert inland, the show seems to murmur, this is going on. These multiple ways of conceiving and picturing the country still thrive. Along with the income management, poverty and abjection, this is also present. Make of it what you will. The remote communities are not just zones of crisis, then; they are also home to a strange, persisting renaissance. Consider Amata, a small collection of houses in the heart of desert range country and in years gone past a byword for petrol-sniffing chaos. It is now the home of Tjala, one of the region's most successful art centres. Large works by its painters dominate the main gallery of Araluen, and the key canvas is an elusive, hieroglyph-like emblem in reds, blues and deep orange and yellow colours by Wawiriya Burton, an old woman born in the bush and steeped in her traditions. She says next to nothing about the core subject matter of her work; there it hangs like a veil of beauty, something to be astonished by as much as something to gather up and own. It is striking how many of the most potent paintings in the exhibition are by men and women of senior standing in their ceremonial religious realms; how many, too, are by prominent healers. The most lyrical canvas in the show, Wati Ngintaka Tjukurpa (lizard man dreaming), by Harry Tjutjuna from Ninuku Arts is one example: a wash of loosely intermeshing colours -- reds, pale shades of ochre, pinks, purples and deep night-sky blues, in the midst of which the lizard figure, half-hidden, can be made out.

Here is both the wonder and challenge of the desert art-making tradition, caught by this show in its evolving flight. It embodies a distinct way of apprehending the landscape and this difference, which lends it consummate value for outside eyes, is what makes it almost impossible to decode and grasp. It is a tradition under dreadful threat: even the fact that it needs to be husbanded and preserved speaks of its weakness.

Can it be prolonged, and renewed? Can the tradition be passed on to younger artists, through instruction, workshops and all the other courses outsiders love to provide? Should it be? The masterworks with immediate appeal in Desert Mob 2011 are almost all by elderly artists -- figures such as Lily Hargraves from Lajamanu in the Tanami Desert, or Tommy Mitchell and Carol Golding from Warakurna Arts in Western Australia -- and this association of artistry with age is natural.

Painting, in Aboriginal communities with surviving deep culture and language, is linked with ceremonial knowledge systems that are passed on slowly through decades of instruction. Much of the work of cultural transmission goes on far beyond the realm of art centres and publicly funded schemes. Yet the art centre movement is widening its bid to preserve desert life-ways and a symposium held in concert with the opening of the exhibition reviewed the range of programs that have sprung up as part of this campaign."

This week, we're talking about Bell's Theorem...here is a quick lowdown on the topic.

Aboriginal art is not controlled by Aboriginal people.

It is effected by the following:

Western Art (example - Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'Avignon and the African masks).

Spirituality (non-Aboriginal "experts" and incorrect or incomplete interpretations).

Art Centres (a way for the government to control the industry that caters for Aboriginal art).

Two kinds of false experts of Aboriginal art - BINTS (Been In Northern Territory), bookees (who learn everything about Aboriginals from books).

Urban Aboriginal people "...have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Still we survive."

The Regional system (the classification of art based on geographical areas erected and maintained barriers between Aboriginal people).

The Native Title Act

Paternalism (Land rights).

Appropriations (Rights of an image - cultures are not for sale).

Anthropologists (knowledge - or lack of knowledge - about a culture they aren't part of).

Exploitation (of artists, culture, and traditional imagery).

Regulation (lack of; issues of the middleman when dealing art).

Stereotyping of Indigenous people (as drunks, homeless, useless).

Although I can't say that I'm terribly surprised to hear about all of these things, it still shocked me to see the extent of the exploitation that many Aboriginal artists are put through - this is a subject that has yet to grace the news in other countries (or at least, where I lived before moving to Australia), and which I believe needs to be known about. There are a lot of ways that some Aboriginal artists get screwed out of the money coming from their artwork, and it seems like there is little to no respect in some cases.

I found this article about Arnhem Land bark painter, Kay Lindjuwanga, whilst casually perusing my weekend newspaper. The article outlines her artistic family - her husband, John Maningrida, is famous for his use of rarrk or crosshatching, and her father, brothers, and daughter have all been influential practicing artists. Lindjuwanga won the Telstra prize in 2004 for her bark paintings, which are described as "lyrical...very fine in detail".

The article was pretty vague, but I thought it was nice, quick introduction to Lindjuwanga's art.

Spirit in the Land

So, this week I went to the Spirit in the Land exhibition at the Flinder's gallery on North Terrace - a pretty small gallery, but full of some beautiful Indigenous art. Here are some brief notes I took whilst visiting the gallery:

Rover Thomas

Gula Gula (Manking), 1989. This piece reflects the dance cycle undertaken by the spirit of Thomas' mother. She transmitted the songs and images to him through dreams - the paintings show her journey as a shade across the Kimberly landscape.

Bedford Downs, 1984. This painting is about the history of various massacres in East Kimberly, and shows the landscape using the "mapping" technique that Thomas is famous for.

Lorraine Connelly-Northey

This artist made Narrbongs (described as a string bag/waradgerie for the pouch of a marsupial) out of rusted wire, pressed tin, fencing, mesh, and iron paint. I found these particularly interesting with the play between traditional Aboriginal items made out of the ruins of modern white Australia.

Lin Onus

Jimmy's Billabong, 1988. Ginger and My Third Wife Approach the Roundabout, 1994. These works by Onus clearly reflect the gap between Indigenous and white Australia, addressing the country, culture, past, present, and combining traditional design and Western-Realist styles of painting.

John Davis

His sculptures have a focus on the fish - indicating the silent traveller or nomad of the river. The sculptures are made of twigs, thread, and calico.

Dorothy Napangardi

These paintings were particularly beautiful - expressing the sand dune patterns and salt lakes of the Tanami. The paintings are from an aerial perspective of the land.

Emily Kngwarreye

Kngwarreye's paintings reflect decades of applying women's ceremonial Awelye body markings, using the dusty reds and browns of the dry season in one painting and the greens, yellows, and pinks of the wet season in her other painting.

A common thread that I found with all of the work in the gallery was the relationship between the artist and the land - between the Indigenous and the white Australian land, the land before and after colonization.

I think the idea that a viewer of a different cultural background can never know the true meaning of an artwork is absolute rubbish. Yes, it may be difficult to extract specific implications or messages - but isn't art the universal language? We use art to express visually what we can't express verbally because of language barriers. It's about feeling, expression, community or individualism - can this not be reflected to a wide audience simply because we don't know everything about the culture?

I'm not a Christian, and in fact, I know pretty much nothing about Christianity - does this mean that I can't understand the work of the greats in the Renaissance like Leonardo or Raphael? No way! While the Australian Indigenous culture is a small one, it doesn't mean that I can't learn anything from it. If you don't understand something that you're attracted to, wouldn't you attempt to gain some knowledge about it?

Obviously, remote Aboriginal communities have been able to avoid Western influence - making Indigenous Australian art some of the most pure forms in the world, and hence, much of the attraction toward it - we are a world built on education of other cultures and histories. Many contemporary Australian artists incorporate Indigenous imagery into their works, however, because it's a way to break down or enhance the perception of these barriers. It's a way to attempt to bring different cultures together - this is not necessarily a good thing, but it's a method of understanding each other.