Not just dots
Last Update: Wednesday, March 5, 2008. 5:26pm AEDT
Aboriginal art, especially Aboriginal art from East Gippsland, is about more than dots - that's the message the East Gippsland Aboriginal Arts Corporation is hoping to convey in a newly opened exhibition.
Wood-burnings, mono-prints, pastels, pen and ink drawings and contemporary paintings line the walls of an exhibition by artists of the East Gippsland Aboriginal Art Corporation. But one thing you wont see here are dot paintings.
"Everybody walks in and I think they honestly expect to see dots," says East Gippsland Aboriginal Art Corporation executive officer Robyn Evans. "They expect to see bark paintings and ground ochre and they are usually stunned by the contemporary style and medium and also the colour."
Robyn says the art corporation - which is unique among arts organisations in that it is 100 per cent Aboriginal owned and controlled and the only Aboriginal artists' corporation in Victoria - actively dissuades its artists from going for dots.
"We are very big on not appropriating from other places, which is why we dissuade dots unless people have links to places where they are able to do that.
"We also help our artists research their own symbols and markings from their own areas. East Gippsland is a diverse lot of people - they are not all Gunnai Kurnai, they are not all from Gippsland - they come from other places, so you will see a variety of styles based on where people have come from," Robyn says.
She says since the corporation started in the early 1990s it has been an uphill battle to convince the public that dots don't necessarily denote Aboriginal art.
"We are still fighting a common perception that all Aboriginal arts is dots and comes from the territory - the top end.
"We are still trying to show people that we are here and we make art and it is just as beautiful and just as culturally unique and authentic as anywhere else in the country.
Rather than producing typical traditional works, Robyn says the Aboriginal artists of the East Gippsland corporation express their heritage in a variety of ways.
"People are actually depicting what is important to them and that's the common denominator, and they are sharing their culture in a wide variety of mediums. We've got traditional painters, wood burning, pastel work and printmaking. Some of it is very, very contemporary and abstract, and some of it is more realistic. All of it is expressing people's aboriginality in some way, in some form.
Artist Brett Ross, who draws detailed pictures in pen on paper, says he became inspired to start producing art after discovering his Aboriginal heritage.
"I was fostered out, and then I found my natural mother, and then I started learning about my culture, because I didn't know where I was from ... that's my inspiration - finding out who I am."
Brett says for him the process of drawing is almost like being in a trance-like state.
"I wake up out of my drawing mode and I'm like: 'oh, wow, did I do that?'
"That's the reason why I sketch, because I love art. I'm passionate about it."
Jennifer Mullet, who produces abstract symbolic artworks across a range of mediums, says she is influenced by the landscape of the bush.
"I spent a lot of time living in different areas of Australia. I spent the early part of my life in far-East Gippsland, in the bush. It's always been a huge influence on my work, I keep coming back to the landscape," Jennifer explains.
Jennifer says her art is also informed by world events, with one of her pieces in this exhibition a yellow canvas covered with the word 'sorry' written several times in red paint.
She produced the work in 2007, when then Prime Minister John Howard was refusing to issue a formal apology to the Aboriginal stolen generations. But Jennifer says in many ways the painting holds more significance now that new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has apologised.
"It's been acknowledged. It symbolises the recognition of the stolen people."
Nirmba Gidi Quarenook - Blak Swans Gatherin' an exhibition by the East Gippsland Aboriginal Arts Corporation is on display at Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale unitl March 30.
http://www.abc.net.au/gippsland/stories/s2181177.htm?backyard
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