Aborigins illustrate cosmology with art

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In the beginning there was darkness. The earth was flat and unknown life-forms were asleep below the surface. Then supernatural beings broke through the crust of the earth with tumultuous force, the sun rose out of the ground and the land received light for the first time.

This was the Dreamtime, the Australian Aborigine understanding of the universe, its creation and its great stories. Knowledge of the Dreamtime was handed down through generations of Aborigine tribes, through word of mouth, dances, crafts and paintings.

Away in West Arnhem Land, on the northernmost end of Australia's Northern Territory, a group of people calling themselves the Kunwinjku recorded these mystical happenings when the world was young on bark, on rocks and inside caves.

"For approximately 50,000 years the Kunwinjku people have employed the stylistic techniques and images expressed in ocher and earth pigments," Ashton Calvert, secretary to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said in the foreword of the catalog from the exhibition Seasons of the Kunwinjku, being held in conjunction with the JakArt@2003 festival.

Aboriginal art, then, is intricately linked with their religion and cultural traditions. "The Aboriginal's view of the world is profoundly conditioned by his beliefs. To him, a water- hole is not just a water-hole, it is the scene of the death of a tribal ancestor or the drinking-place of his totemic animal or bird, and his pictorial view of it reflects this beliefs," anthropologist Robert Edwards once wrote.

The famous X-ray paintings originated in West Arnhem Land. The artist not only portrays the external features of the animal, human or spirit, but also the internal -- such as the spinal column, heart, lungs and other organs -- which is the conventional way of showing that there is more to a living thing than external appearances, Edwards wrote.

In Seasons of the Kunwinjku, organized by the Australian Embassy and the Australia-Indonesia Institute, visitors are treated to 13 X-ray paintings created by artists from a number of Kunwinjku clans.

The exhibition was purchased by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 1994 from the Hogarth Galleries Aboriginal Art Centre in Sydney, and has traveled across the world, according to Australian Ambassador to Jakarta David Ritchie, who opened the exposition.

The paintings are arranged to reflect the seasonal cycle of West Arnhem Land and its dramatic contrasts, from the monsoon rains and electrical storms of the wet season, to the stillness of parched and dusty earth in the dry, he said.

"Their deep connection to the land can be seen today," Ritchie said, adding that the paintings were complemented by photographs of scenes of West Arnhem Land to give an idea to visitors of what it was like during a particular season.

The six seasons of the Kunwinjku are Kudjewk (January to March), Bangkerreng (April to May), Yekke (June to July), Wurrkeng (August to September), Kurrung (October to November), and Kurnumeleng (December).

Kangaroos and brolgas are prominent in the paintings exhibited, showing their significance to the culture and tradition of the Kunwinjku.

"The exhibition demonstrates how accessible some Aboriginal communities are prepared to make their art in the 1990s -- without compromising their traditional beliefs and values," Roni Ellis from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in the introduction she wrote for the exhibition.

A painting by Lawrence Nganjmirra titled Brolga and Kangaroo was created to reflect the month of June during the Yekke season. The artist has painted a female red kangaroo (karndayh) eating berries (mandjaburldjaburl) and a brolga (ngalkordow) eating red berries (mandjodmong).

The exhibition catalog describes Yekke as "an excellent time to hunt kangaroos as they often nap during the cold afternoons".

These paintings are not created on the traditional bark medium, though, but on thick watercolor paper now preferred by Kunwinjku artists for its sturdiness.

"In telling their clans' ancestral stories, the Kunwinjku artists have cleverly adapted ancient artforms to modern formats: from rock, to bark, to paper," Ellis wrote.

Seasons of the Kunwinjku will run through June 10 in the lobby of the Shangri-La Hotel in Central Jakarta.