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.