Mission & Justice

Nicolas Rothwell; 14/10/08

Just as the passing of desert artist Darby Jampijinpa Ross in 2005 possessed a certain elegance, the day after he received a congratulatory telegram from the Queen for his 100th birthday, so the first retrospective of his painting career boasts a formal shape and beauty all its own. Lovingly assembled by Simon Wright, director of the Dell Gallery at the Queensland College of Art, and on view from next month at the Araluen Centre in Alice Springs, Darby Jampijinpa Ross: Make it Good for the People presents not just the details of a life in art but the broad lines of a distinctive desert way of thought. For Darby, one of the best known traditional Aboriginal leaders of the past generation, a key figure in the Warlpiri community of Yuendumu, emerges from this exhibition as a philosopher and painter of the first order, a man who felt a special urge to communicate his culture through his art. Darby painted on canvas for Yuendumu’s Warlukurlangu Art Centre from its inception in 1986. In the years that followed, he poured out jewel-like works that made his reputation and placed the Warlpiri realm on the contemporary art world’s map. But long before, in 1960, he was already drafting bright-coloured pastels on paper for American anthropologist Nancy Munn. For Darby adored colour, he loved nothing more than to speak through its language, he believed in its capacity to move minds and hearts. The rainbow seems to shimmer through all his works in this show: deep blues, dark greens, the purple-grey of storm clouds, the mauve of sunsets, the rich red of claypans after rain.

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Natasha Robinson; 11/9/08

When retired teacher Joie Boulter devoted her life to looking after a disabled Aboriginal boy, she had no idea that a few years later she would be sitting in a swanky Top End gallery with Darwin’s arts fraternity, sipping champagne and toasting the boy’s artwork. But, then, no one could have predicted the flourishing artistic partnership between Boulter and 17-year-old Dion Beasley. Dion, who has muscular dystrophy and is profoundly deaf, had barely been to school when Boulter took him under her wing. Reared in the remote Northern Territory community of Canteen Creek, 275km southeast of Tennant Creek in the vast stretches of central Australia, Dion was a malnourished child whose family was struggling with the effects of alcohol abuse. Boulter met him at Tennant Creek High School when she was still teaching. Dion had never been taught sign language. Unable to communicate, he lived in a silent, isolated world, his development severely delayed.

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Iain Shedden; 25/8/08

No matter how many trophies singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu picks up at the Northern Territory Indigenous Music Awards in Darwin next Saturday, he can be secure in the knowledge that he is already a champion. In just a few months since the release of his self-titled debut album, Gurrumul, the former member of landmark Top End rock band Yothu Yindi has become the poster boy for indigenous music in Australia. His album, lauded by critics here and overseas, has sold 38,000 copies: an unprecedented amount for an Aboriginal singer and an achievement that most independent artists in this country don’t even come close to realising. It has earned him multiple nominations at next week’s awards. Gurrumul, who is blind and comes from East Arnhem Land, has one of the sweetest and most distinctive voices in Australian music today. His songs, sung in his native Yolngu, portray life and culture in his homeland. They are richly evocative folk tales in which spirituality seems to be embedded. It’s powerful stuff. But he is not alone. There’s a wealth of musical activity going on throughout the Territory that doesn’t receive the same attention as Gurrumul.

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Joel Gibson; 29/7/08

A year after a Senate report revealed widespread exploitation of indigenous artists by unscrupulous art dealers, elderly Aborigines are missing medical treatment in Alice Springs because they are being locked up in lucrative painting camps, a health worker has said.The claims come as auction houses are selling indigenous art for record prices and sections of the burgeoning $500 million Aboriginal art industry are crying out for increased government scrutiny and regulation. Relations between some private dealers and community or government-funded art centres have grown so bitter that six art centres boycotted this year’s prestigious Telstra Art Award because of the involvement of a controversial private dealer.

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Rosalie Higson; 2/7/08

When filmmakers and producers Rachel Perkins and Darren Dale sat down together earlier this year to begin curating the ninth annual Message Sticks Indigenous Film Festival, they wanted to offer a snapshot of Aboriginal life in a post-apology world. “We keep our ear to the ground about what films are being made, and a lot of the films out there were real-life stories,” Dale says at his Blackfella Films studios in a smart terrace house in Redfern, Sydney. They chose 14 films. “Not all are advocacy films, and they’re not saying how great we are and isn’t Aboriginal culture wonderful,” he says. “Certainly there are films talking about the strength of Aboriginal culture, but they’re not all purely dealing with that; they’re dealing with what it is to be very human, which I think is a shift, and I think we will see that more and more.”

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4/6/08

Clancy Dann Patrick, Gija Painter, Performer; 1/7/1947— 28/2/2008; 4/6/08

Clancy Patrick, a painter, performer, stockman, lawman and culture teacher of the Gija people, has died of cancer at Warmun (Turkey Creek) in Western Australia’s East Kimberley region. He was 60. Patrick was a star actor and dancer in the stage show Fire, Fire Burning Bright, which was performed at the 2002 Perth International Festival of the Arts and the Melbourne Arts Festival that year. The performance told the story of the Bedford Downs massacre. In the first part of the show, Patrick, his face painted white to look like a gardiya (non-Aboriginal), played the main station boss who organised the massacre.

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Angus Hohenboken; 30/5/08

Australian indigenous writer Tara June Winch has been taken under the wing of a Nobel laureate through the world’s premier artistic development program, the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative. The 24-year-old NSW writer was selected for the year-long mentoring program by Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian author, poet and playwright known for his criticisms of brutal African regimes. Winch, speaking in London last night, said she could not stop crying when first told that Soyinka would be her mentor. “I borrowed all my friends’ library cards and went and read all of his books,” she said. The writer has spent many years of his life in exile and in prison. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986 and is an emeritus professor in literature and a UNESCO goodwill ambassador.

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Russell Skelton; 28/5/08

Janet Holmes A’Court was emphatic: “This celebration of Emily’s painting stamps her as a great 20th-century painter.” Speaking at the blockbuster opening of the Emily Kame Kngwarreye exhibition in Tokyo last night, the patron of indigenous art declared that the debate about its value was also over.”This exhibition takes the life out of the debate about indigenous arts versus non-indigenous art,” she said. “Kngwarreye has been anointed as not just a great indigenous artist, which she is, but a great artist full stop.” Kngwarreye was “up there with Monet, Modigliani and all the rest”, Mrs Holmes a Court added.

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Nicolas Rothwell;10/5/08

They Are Meditating: Bark Paintings from the MCA’s Arnott’s Collection; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

In the mid-1960s, Jerome Gould, an American graphic artist with a keen eye and a taste for adventure, took a series of field trips into the remote terrain of Arnhem Land. Gould was a collector; he had a big budget and a strong visual sense: indeed, his innovative design for Michelob beer bottles was all the rage just then. He chartered light aircraft and flew through the north, snapping up early masterpieces of Aboriginal bark painting from missionary settlement craft shops. During those years, in the margins of his journeys, he did contract design work for Arnott’s Biscuits. So, by a strange and convoluted chain of circumstances, was born one of Australia’s greatest and least-known holdings of indigenous art.

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Louise Bellamy; 19/4/08

Leading art auction houses say that changes to Victorian heritage laws affecting the sale of indigenous art are forcing them to conduct sales in Sydney, robbing Melbourne, where they traditionally occur, of national and international interest. The move follows the introduction in May last year of laws under the Australian Heritage Act 2006 that require individual cultural heritage permits — costing $143 each — to sell, market, advertise or display Aboriginal artefacts not made for the purpose of sale.

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