MoCA of the Month
The new opening of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Galleries
The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, founded in 1982, launched a new era by opening 11 new galleries, which were designed for the exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, in September 2010. The new galleries will show –to quote from the press-release– over 600 works, selected from a collection of over 7500 works of art, “the largest collection of Australian Indigenous art in the world”. The collection “spans generations, from the 19th century to works created this year. Each gallery is specifically designed for a different geographic region or aspect of Indigenous art”. The National Gallery also launched a 5-year ground breaking initiative “for training and professional development of Indigenous Australians in the visual arts”. The Gallery’s “first major purchase of Aboriginal art was made in 1972 and consisted of a series of eight bark paintings from Groote Eylandt”. Franchesca Cubillo, Senior Curator, speaks of an art “which has been created for over 40000 years (and) continues to evolve and change”.
The Collection
“The galleries cover key art regions in Australia, including the Torres Strait Islands, from remote, regional and urban areas. Galleries include dedicated spaces for: The Aboriginal Memorial (1987–88), one of the most important works in the national art collection; 19th-century objects; early Western Desert paintings; desert paintings after 1975; paintings from the Kimberley; bark paintings and sculpture before 1980; textiles; prints and drawings; works from north Queensland and the Top End after 1980; art from the Torres Strait Islands; and works by artists working in urban areas.”
The collection also includes, among its earliest artists, examples of a kind of prehistory of current Aboriginal art such as „watercolours from the Hermannsburg School, an art movement that became characterised by western-style landscapes“ in the 1930s.
There are also newly created works such as a spherical aluminium sculpture, entitled Eran (River) by Thanakupi, a tribal elder from Weipa in north Queensland (Art Newspaper, November 2010, p. 26). This extension, which parallels Western and Aboriginal art, also has a political message, which doesn’t need to be elaborated here, since it is so obvious.
The Aboriginal Memorial
A prominent place is held by the so called Aboriginal Memorial, consisting of 200 „painted wooden poles“ commissioned by the National Gallery in 1988 for the Bicentennial of white occupation in Australia and was first shown at the 1988 Sydney Biennale. In north-eastern Arnhemland, Aboriginal people carry on the Hollow Log or Bone Coffin Ceremony. The bones of the deceased are handed over to ceremonial leaders. The bones are cleaned, painted with red okra and placed in the log, which is found hollowed out by termites. “Full-size versions minus the bones are made and sold today as sculptures. Originally being living trees, the installation is like a forest. In the original ceremony each Pole would contain the bones, embodying the soul. Each hollowed log is symbolically a bone coffin, so in essence the forest is like a large cemetery of dead Aboriginals, a War Memorial to those Aboriginals who died defending their country. Two hundred poles were commissioned to represent the two hundred years of white contact and black agony.” Against the boycott of the ceremony by many artists, the compromise was “to present Aboriginal culture without celebrating, to make a true statement”. (Sydney Biennial, Catalogue, 1988, p. 230.)
A Vision for the National Gallery of Australia
Ron Radford, director of the National Gallery, in August 2005 presented a vision statement for the Gallery to the National Gallery Council, in which he stresses the difference to National Museums in Europe and the US. The National Gallery in Canberra should be “unlike” all other National Galleries, as a result of “our geography, our recent past and Indigenous past”, thus in the need of “refocusing” the collections. Radford describes his statement as a “reaffirmation of past Council policies” to emphasize a focus on “Australian (i.e. Pacific) art”. Beyond Australia, the Asia Pacific Region, as it was defined by the First Triennial in 1993, should “mirror the strategic importance of our geographic neighbours and our special allies. While “Brisbane concentrates on contemporary Asia Pacific Art”, Canberra also includes the past.
The report also includes a map which is meant to show “the art centre of Paris, most important for avant-garde Western art from the early 1800s to the 1940s. It also shows New York, an important centre of Western art from the l940s to about 1980. They are the centres for Canberra’s international collection as distinct from the art of our own region. If one were to do a similar map for Australia’s state galleries, London would be the epicentre. Melbourne and Adelaide’s state galleries would have a smaller centre at Rome. Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney’s would also have a centre at Tokyo and Melbourne, and Sydney’s would have another at Beijing.“
National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
Parkes Place, Parkes
Canberra ACT 2600
AUSTRALIA
Tel. +61 2 6240 6411
E-mail information@nga.gov.au
