Preserving ancestral knowledge with painting on body and bark

JOANNA BOSSE

This exhibition, Transformations, Early Bark Paintings from Arnhem Land, draws upon two key cultural collections, the first of which is the Donald Thomson collection, under the joint custodianship of the University of Melbourne and Museum Victoria. The second is the Leonard Adam collection of international Indigenous culture which is one of the University’s very treasured cultural collections.

Many of the Yolngu paintings in this exhibition are sacred clan body painting designs. The significance of these particular works, aside obviously from their staggering aesthetic presence, is due to the fact that these are the earliest in existence that depict these sacred Madayin minytji designs from clans in north-eastern and central Arnhem Land.

They were made by clan leaders and others with ritual authority for the anthropologist Professor Donald Thomson in 1935 to 1937 and again in 1942, and they were made specifically for the purposes of educating European Australians about the relevance and complexity of Yolngu culture. So engagement was really a very clear objective producing these works, and I think it’s fair to say that this remains true for the Yolngu contemporary art that’s made today.

HOWARD MORPHY

It’s very interesting, because people often have assumed that bark paintings were somehow done for Europeans, and when you read many works about Aboriginal art it’s as though a European arrived, a missionary or something like that, and said let’s think of something to sell. How about you doing some paintings on bark?

But nothing could be further from the truth. Bark has been a medium used by Indigenous Australians obviously for many thousands of years. We know about the use of bark in Victoria from very early on because the earliest bark works, engravings, in fact do come from this part of Australia. Bark paintings were used in many different contexts in Arnhem Land and bark was used in many different ways. So the paintings on the inside of wet season huts were something that was done for generation after generation after generation. That’s one of the contexts in which bark paintings are quite familiar.

WANYUBI MARIKA

Bark painting is a message of education, a message that Yolngu have been here before Europeans landed in Australia.

Madayin minytji is a pattern that holds inside our soul, that links to the land, and that identifies every clan and tribe that belongs to their country. Without this minytji, we’re nobody. We’d be changing colour, we’d be talking English, but lucky we have all these minytii that is still existing strongly inside us and it can be conveyed by showing you the patterns of the design of the tribe.

The main message that comes from the paintings is about respect and manners, a tribe-to-tribe respecting of each other; they have to come in by a good manner and ask whatever they want to take from the land, they ask for permission. 

The imagery shows respect for Yolngu law, – to good governance, peace and harmony in that area. We have to do that in respect for the clan, what clan we’re entering into and to their law. It’s like going into a parliament, to Federal Parliament or Northern Territory Government, whatever government we have, but in a Yolngu way to understand how you want to bring people into your unity, one mind, one heart. 

During the cleansing ceremony, the pattern is put on our body. It means respecting good governance and the law of Yolngu, to have a good manner, respecting each other like that.

JOANNA BOSSE

Wanyubi, when you saw these works [on show] for the first time, you said we should write down the country on the label that each of these paintings refers to. You were really particular about that and we went and looked at Google Earth zooming so that I could make a note of all of these places, this is a really key point, that they refer to country and then the ancestors that made that land and then all of the people and those relationships. But you also said something really fascinating yesterday, in talking about your own work and the way that you paint designs today, that your innovations and your slight changes were like twisting the arm of your father. I’d like to know more about that and what you mean.

WANYUBI MARIKA

Well, my tribe clan design is not meant to be changed. But the way the original artists see the sea and the land is different from the way I see it. I see country that is movable, the wind is moving and the water is moving, and the sand is moved by wind. They’re moving, that’s how I see it and put it into my painting. My vision is different, but still links to the story, to the information that is given to us. Then it becomes a twist in the hand … I am twisting my father’s hand, like just a little bit, not too much. His name has been recognised but somewhere in the line I had to make my hand a little bit recognised.

HOWARD MORPHY

So all of these paintings are connected to land and place and they’re used in a different ceremonial context for different kinds of reasons – including a dhapi or circumcision ceremony, when it will be used on body painting on the chest of a young boy, who will be lying there for maybe four or five hours having that painting put on their chest. It’s an incredibly important occasion in that child’s life.

Then maybe if someone has an injury or something like that, theer could be a painting done on them recovering. So when people are sick, maybe their spirit is a little bit weak, but when they’re recovered, then they will get back that identity, that strength from that ancestor.

JOANNA BOSSE

Can I also just ask you, Howard, to talk about this idea that this information, these designs are sacred and they appear in different contexts, but their meaning doesn’t change in itself. The meaning stays the same but the knowledge of the person looking at the design is what activates different aspects of the meaning. Because I think there’s an understanding that particular designs can be too sacred to be seen, but in Yolngu context it seems to be that’s not the case.

HOWARD MORPHY

A Yolngu person connected to this country could tell you much about each of these paintings. It’s a very interesting thing. Yolngu have worked with anthropologists for a long time, they know what anthropologists study. 

So there’s lots of information, if you really want to know more about these paintings, those resources, in a way, have been made available, both by Yolngu themselves, but also through working with people like me. One of the reasons they do work with people like me is to go out there and tell people about these kinds of things. My Yolngu name means Kingfish Tail, because a kingfish flicks its tail from side to side, and in dances is throwing spears from side to side, not to kill people, but sending information. So they say, you’re going out there like the kingfish tail, sending information to the people. So events like this are something that Yolngu people want to participate in.

Transformations: early bark paintings from Arnhem Land is on show until 23 February.