Site and being: a symbiotic relationship, catalyst for Aboriginal art
The idea of a collective impetus, of kinship and shared responsibility toward nature is a crucial frame of reference.
Therefore, it is important to take note of Aboriginal art’s historicity: beyond its aesthetic effect, painting is also a site for cultural affirmation, a way for artists to embed their works in profound knowledge and thus ensure that the legacy of the past is kept. There are certain politics to contend with, not least their custodianship of the land, a right
All this lends Aboriginal Art its continuity and liveliness. It is anything but a fossilized art form: rather, we should look at it as a life force that springs from a collective impulse to tell stories that speak of time and humankind of the past for actual and future generations.
We should therefore acknowledge the interplay between pictorial sight and the artists’ personal sense of ‘country’. Place is indeed the shared bedrock, the epitome of their work which treads a very fine line between life and art.
Wandjuk Marika 1 clearly states that art and life are not distinct: “art upholds the laws by which we live”, he says, and “relates to the physical world around us.”
Clearly, attachment to the land stimulates the artists’ creative responses. Their work traverses a wide range of media, from painting, to music and dance… Art making is channeled through nature and in turn imbedded, located in nature: dislocated to a gallery space, these exhibits and so-called ‘artifacts’ shift identities –from sacred art to secular ‘artifacts’. The totemic quality is somewhat lost, as it no longer fits with the land.
Still, the acrylics at least offer a glimpse of these painted ‘mind maps’. At the same time, we can recall their original setting lest we forget the intrinsic depth of meaning. Site is the node and vehicle for appreciation. Murals; bark and sand paintings; ceremonial music and dance: all these are contingent on site and to be taken as a whole; not as isolated parts: sight taps into site…
Artistically, the song lines echo landscapes…
1 Source: “Aboriginal arts in relation to multiculturalism”, by Henrietta Fourmile, in Culture, Difference and the Arts, p.76