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Installation view of “Sung into Being: Aboriginal Masterworks 1984–94” at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2017. Courtesy Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.
Sung into Being: Aboriginal Masterworks 1984–94
“Sung into Being: Aboriginal Masterworks 1984–94” at Brisbane’s Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) was an important and timely show. Curated by Diane Moon, QAGOMA’s curator of Indigenous fiber art, the exhibition consisted of more than 100 artworks, drawn predominantly from the renowned Janet Holmes à Court Collection with additional loans provided by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and QAGOMA. The exhibition’s success lay in its focused representation of a historic period when Aboriginal art had first begun to gain important recognition as fine art within Australia, as well as increasing global appreciation. Featured were eight major artists from the Maningrida region of central Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory and the Kimberley region in the west, many of international standing. Highlights included works on bark and canvas by the innovative artist Jack Wunuwun (1930–91), who was featured at the Centre Pompidou exhibition “Magiciens de la Terre” in 1989; and the series of paintings Murrukundja Manikay (Song Cycle) (1993–94) by Wunuwun’s brother-in-law John Bulunbulun (1946–2010). Bulunbulun himself was shown in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen exhibition “Aratjara: Art of the First Australians” in 1993. The art and legacy of East Kimberley artist Rover Thomas Joolama (c.1926–98), on the other hand, was the basis for the show’s powerful conclusion. The opportunity to reflect on an iconic period in Indigenous Australian art was both pertinent and rewarding.
JOHN BULUNBULUN, Murrukundja Manikay (Song Cycle), 1993–94, ochre pigments and gum on canvas, 116 × 226 cm. Courtesy Janet Holmes à Court Collection and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.
Installation view of JACK WUNUWUN’s “Barnumbirr Manikay – (Morning Star Song Cycle)” series (1988), at “Sung into Being: Aboriginal Masterworks 1984–94,” Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2017. Courtesy Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.
The brevity in the list of artists presented allowed the exhibition’s curator to continue her trademark sensitivity to spacing and arrangement. Moon was generous in her inclusions for each of the artists who were represented by a number of key pieces alongside contextual surprises, and the exhibition provided a great sense of depth. The first gallery was predominantly dedicated to the work of Wunuwun and Bulunbulun, both represented by larger-scale paintings, as well as series of smaller, finely-detailed drawings on bark. Wunuwun’s Barnumbirr Manikay (Morning Star Song Cycle) (1988) is a remarkable canvas composed with natural pigments and acrylic and describes the natural elements central to the origins and culture of the Murrungun clan, for whom Wunuwun was an important ceremonial leader. The accompanying smaller drawings show with beautiful focus each of these elements, including djarrka (goanna) and wardawarda (Spear tree), among others. The large painting was also supplemented thoughtfully with Wunuwun’s two framed working sketches executed in biro. Bulunbulun’s Murrukundja Manikay (Song Cycle) hangs on the same wall as Wunuwun’s canvas and is as impressive in size and detail. The story of the impact of the annual trade visits of Macassan fisherman (from southern Sulawesi, now Indonesia) to the north coast of Australia around the 1700s unfolds throughout Bulunbulun’s canvas and its accompanying 20 individual barks. Based on knowledge passed down through the generations via mediums such as oral accounts and ceremonies, the work pictorially depicts an event that took place before the existence of written historical records.
Installation view of JACK WUNUWUN‘s In the Beginning of Time (1990), and The Japanese Boats (1989) next to MARGARET RINYBUMA’s Mindirr (Conical Basket) (2004) at “Sung into Being: Aboriginal Masterworks 1984–94,” Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2017. Courtesy Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.
The central space presented the work of Rembarrnga brothers Jack Kalakala (c.1925–87) and Les Mirrikkuriya (c.1938–96), as well as England Banggala (c.1925–2001) and Terry Ngamandara Wilson (1950–2011). Ngamandara’s legacy is particularly interesting, with a distinct shift in his work from more natural subject matter towards starker, abstract geometries. This transition is captured in the dual composition of Namangorongorr at Bopalinmarr (1987). A year later, Water Plant Dreaming (1988) shows the artist devoting an entire work to a field of interlocking triangles bordered by dark charcoal, the interior of each filled with precise rarrk (crosshatching). There is deeper cultural importance here to the triangle, beyond its visual dynamism, in its representation of gulach (the spike rush plant); the same pattern is also painted on the bodies of deceased clan members during funeral ceremonies. These works offered some of the exhibition’s most striking moments.
The final space was devoted entirely to the work of Joolama, who remains one of Australia’s greatest painters of the last half-century. Moon’s presentation of eight canvases by the artist on walls painted midnight blue offered a contemplative, arresting finale. As the first Aboriginal artist to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale (in 1990, alongside the late figurative painter Trevor Nickolls), the spotlight is well deserved. Bedford Downs Massacre (1985) is perhaps the finest painting exhibited and embodies the artist’s distinctive abstract style of concentric fields of ochres and brown oxides delineated with dots of white paint. The work also stands as acknowledgement of a number of violent massacres of Aboriginal people by white farmers at the Texas Downs cattle station in western Australia in the early 20th century. Such atrocities remain largely undocumented in Australia’s written history. “Sung into Being” attested to the importance of representing these narratives, as well as art’s capacity to sustain and protect Indigenous cultural knowledge.
ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS, Texas Downs Massacre, 1985, earth pigments and natural binders on canvas. Courtesy Janet Holmes à Court Collection and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.
“Sung into Being: Aboriginal Masterworks 1984–94” is on view at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, until October 22, 2017.
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