Indigenous Australian art
[1][2][3] Rock art, including painting and engraving or carving (petroglyphs), can be found at sites throughout Australia.
Examples of rock art have been found that are believed to depict extinct megafauna such as Genyornis[4] and Thylacoleo in the Pleistocene era[5] as well as more recent historical events such as the arrival of European ships.
[8] It is thought this decorated fragment may have once formed part of a larger ceiling artwork, however, the shape of the original motif is unknown.
[11][12] The Maliwawa Figures were documented in a study led by Paul Taçon and published in Australian Archaeology in September 2020.
[13] The art includes 572 images across 87 sites in northwest Arnhem Land, from Awunbarna (Mount Borradaile[14]) area across to the Wellington Range.
[13][21] Other painted rock art sites include Laura, Queensland,[22] Ubirr, in the Kakadu National Park,[23] Uluru,[24] and Carnarvon Gorge.
[citation needed] The rock engravings at Murujuga are said to be the world's largest collection of petroglyphs[26] and includes images of extinct animals such as the thylacine.
[citation needed] The appearance of the site is similar to that of the megalithic stone circles found throughout Britain (although the function and culture are presumably completely different).
[29] Smaller stone arrangements are found throughout Australia, such as those near Yirrkala, which depict accurate images of the praus used by Macassan Trepang fishermen and spear throwers.
The reason Aboriginal people made wood carvings was to help tell their Dreaming stories and pass on their group's lore and essential information about their country and customs.
The mimi, spirits who taught the art of painting to the Aboriginal people, and ancestors are "released" through these types of artwork.
They are transmitted from one generation to the next, and include handmade textiles, paintings, stories, legends, ceremonies, music, songs, rhythms and dance".
[45] Many culturally as well as historically significant sites of Aboriginal rock paintings have degraded over time, as well as being desecrated and destroyed by encroachment of early settlers and modern-day visitors (including erosion caused by excessive touching); clearing for development of industries; and wanton vandalism and graffiti in criminal acts of destruction.
[49] In 2023, three large panels of rock art were removed from Murujuga in Western Australia, in order to build a new fertiliser factory.
Featured strongly are turtles, fish, dugongs, sharks, seabirds and saltwater crocodiles, which are considered totemic beings.
[52] Elaborate headdresses or dhari (also spelt dari[53]), as featured on the Torres Strait Islander flag, are created for the purposes of ceremonial dances.
World-renowned artist Ken Thaiday Snr has created elaborate dharis using modern materials in his contemporary artwork.
[57][58][59] The Islands have a long tradition of woodcarving, creating masks and drums, and carving decorative features on these and other items for ceremonial use.
[63] In the 1930s, artists Rex Battarbee and John Gardner introduced watercolour painting to Albert Namatjira, an Indigenous man at Hermannsberg Mission, south-west of Alice Springs.
[66] Namatjira's style of work was adopted by other Indigenous artists in the region beginning with his close male relatives, and they became known as the Hermannsburg School[67] or as the Arrernte Watercolourists.
[68] In 1988 the Aboriginal Memorial was unveiled at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra made from 200 hollow log coffins, which are similar to the type used for mortuary ceremonies in Arnhem Land.
It was made for the bicentenary of Australia's colonisation, and is in remembrance of Aboriginal people who had died protecting their land during conflict with settlers.
[69] In the late 1980s and early 1990s the work of Emily Kngwarreye, from the Utopia community north east of Alice Springs, became very popular.
[70] In 1971–1972, art teacher Geoffrey Bardon encouraged Aboriginal people in Papunya, north west of Alice Springs to put their Dreamings onto canvas.
1973), started translating traditional skills into the more portable forms of printmaking, linocut, and etching, as well as larger scale bronze sculptures.
Other outstanding artists include Billy Missi (1970–2012), known for his decorated black and white linocuts of the local vegetation and eco-systems, and Alick Tipoti (b.1975).
These and other Torres Strait artists have greatly expanded the forms of Indigenous art within Australia, bringing superb Melanesian carving skills as well as new stories and subject matter.
[78] The Rebecca Hossack gallery in London has been credited with "almost single-handedly" introducing Australian Indigenous art to Britain and Europe since its opening in 1988.
[80] It also commissioned paintings on the roof and ceilings of its building on the rue de l'Université, housing the museum's workshops and library, by four female and four male contemporary Aboriginal artists: Lena Nyadbi, Judy Watson, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Ningura Napurrula; John Mawurndjul, Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford, Michael Riley, and Yannima Tommy Watson.
