"We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia, and their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to all First Nations peoples, their cultures and to their Elders, past, present and emerging." An email from an employee of the Australian High Commission in India comes bearing this familiar signature. It is the start of Australia's National Reconciliation Week - from May 27 to June 3. And the high commission in India has organized a small exhibit of 10 indigenous artworks, at central Delhi's Triveni Kala Sangam. The theme this year is Bridging Now to Next. Fittingly, the works on show here were created by Aboriginal artists in 2007, after spending six weeks along the historic Canning Stock Route that is credited as being one of the first points of contact between indigenous Australians and Europeans in the early 1900s.
Show and tell
In the open-air gallery of Triveni, each display contains an artwork, a photo of the artist (an important addition, given that indigenous communities around the world have seldom been given credit for their work and knowledge), a write-up about a story or place that's important to the piece and, in most cases, a map to identify where along the Canning Stock Route to place the artwork. This contextualizing of the art - within the stories, the brief artist biography and photo, and map - is a feature, not a bug of the show. It helps especially, as the show tours other countries where this history may not be known - the show went to Japan in 2016-17.
The Canning Stock Route was carved out in the early 1900s, when a tick infestation threatened to upset the supply of meat to the rash of goldmining towns coming up all over Western Australia. To counter the tick problem, an idea was floated to transport the animals over land through hot deserts where, the hope was, the ticks would fall off - before this, the animals were being transported over waterways. The route is also credited as one of the first connecting the indigenous population with European surveyors and pastoralists.
A note on the National Museum of Australia website explains: "The opening up of the Canning Stock Route was initially violent. Eventually, however, the land and its resources came to be shared, to the extent that many Aboriginal people began to work on remote cattle stations and along the stock route. Today a number of Aboriginal communities lie on, or near, the old stock route, and a vigorous art movement flourishes in these communities."
The Canning Stock Route, named after the surveyor Alfred Wernam Canning, passed through three deserts: the Great Sandy Desert, the Little Sandy Desert and the Gibbon Desert (the route is so rough and arid even today that adventurists use 4x4's to traverse it today). Cattle-owners continued to use this 1,850-km route through the desert for a few decades after it opened, to go to market. Over time, the path gathered both stories and settlers. In 2007, the National Museum of Australia enabled nearly 70 artists to return for a six-week engagement with and all along this route and turn it into art.
The present selection is not the first time these artworks are being shown in India. In 2015, a much larger set (over 100 artworks) from what's come to be known as the Canning Stock Route collection of the National Museum of Australia had travelled to New Delhi, and had been exhibited in an upscale mall. Now, the much smaller selection of 10 works has made its way back to the city. In some ways, the set of 10 feels like its own loop (more on this later).
Painting landscapes
Step back and the dots and lines acquire a map-like quality. There are lakes and other watering holes, marked clearly amid vast tracts of desert. Step closer and you see where artists have shared notes on the landscape and relevant histories and mythologies surrounding it. What you are seeing is aboriginal art and stories about the Canning Stock Route from Western Australia's Halls Creek to Wiluna in the country's mid-west. Where you are seeing this is at a show organized by the National Museum of Australia at Triveni Kala Sangam in Delhi.
Looking at Aboriginal art in India, it's impossible not to think about its resonances with Indian tribal art. Both present ways of looking at the natural world that are deeply contextual but also feel deeply universal at the same time. When a Warli artist paints a fishing village scene or an Aboriginal artist paints water wells amid miles of desert, there is a distilling of big ideas into small, repetitive forms. Often in Aboriginal art, one gets the feeling of seeing the landscape from above - taking in features and temperatures from just dots, lines and colours.
The Canning Stock Route collection takes this a bit further, by sharing the stories of the people who made the art as well as popular local stories about these places. Take, for instance, the piece titled 'Kunawarritji to Wajaparni', made by eight artists - Jeffrey James, Charlie Wallabi Tjungurrayi, Patrick Olodoodi Tjungurrayi, Pija Peter Tinker, Helicopter Joey Tjungurrayi, Richard Yukenbarri Tjakamarra, Clifford Brooks, and the youngest among them, Putuparri Tom Lawford. (The story of how Helicopter got his name is also shared in another work in this show. It's to do with a childhood experience, when he had to be transported via helicopter to get medical aid.)
Made in brown, blue and white lines and dots, 'Kunawarritji to Wajaparni' depicts seven wells, as well as "dreaming tracks that include important stories which, under Aboriginal law, are restricted to initiated men. Working under the guidance of senior men, Jeffrey James and Patrick Tjungurrayi, each artist painted that part of country with which he has close family ties." The collaborative work carries another note, identifying it as "Men's story", which "covers geography similar to that in the adjacent (emphasis mine) women's painting, it illuminates the family relationships, which are ground in country."
Though the note says adjacent, you really have to go all the way back to the first painting in the show to see the "Women's story". This arrangement forms a sort of loop. You travel from one story to another, from one place on the route to another, from one set of stories to another set that makes sense of the world around and transmits intergenerationally. It offers a key or a legend to do something one of the artists' notes explicitly asks of the visitors: "When you look at this painting, don't read it like a whitefella map... this is how we see the country, this is how we use a painting to tell stories about our country." (The quote is attributed to Ngalangka Nola Taylor, Parnngurr, 2009.)
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