'Hot Wax' features shared cultures
'Hot Wax' features shared cultures
By Barbara Healy
JAKARTA (JP): "Hot Wax, an Exhibition of Australian Aboriginal and Indonesian Batik", opened Friday at the Gedung Pameran Seni Rupa on Jl. Merdeka Timur 14, Central Jakarta.
As the title suggests, this event represents a significant culmination of artistic talent and cross-cultural communication through batik imagery.
"The exhibit marks the first time an Aboriginal language group has completed a batik project alongside other Australian and Indonesian artists in preparation for a specific exhibition such as this," said James Bennett, the curator of Southeast Asian and Oceanic Art Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Australia.
All of the work in the exhibit was completed at a September 1994 workshop at Brahma Tirta Sari Batik Studio in Yogyakarta. The combination of talent signifies a sharing of spiritual philosophies and technical ideas between Indonesia and its close neighbors in Australia.
The exhibition features work by the women of the Anmatyerr language in Utopia in northeastern central Australia. For the past decade, these people have been known for their acrylic paintings which are derived from their spiritual tradition of ceremonial body painting. During the outstation movement of the late 1970s, when Aboriginals returned to their land after European colonization had uprooted them, the universal craft movement also occurred and people regained appreciation for handmade works. These factors contributed to batik becoming the preferred medium for the particular Utopia clan in this exhibition.
Batik lends itself well to the isolated living environment of these people. In the book Utopia, A Picture Story by Anne Marie Brody, their method of making batik is described as "highly sociable, domestic and informal, taking place near people's homes, subject to interruption by children, hunting trips, and weather extremes." In the midst of the remote outback dessert this remains a most creative and practical outlet for expression.
The artists who joined with the Anmatyerr women at Brahma Tirta Sari have worked with and supported the group, exchanging and incorporating ideas toward enhancement of the clan's technique as well as their own.
In 1988, Brahma Tirta Sari Batik Studio facilitated a cap (batik stamp) workshop for Australian textile artists which has activated a vibrant, ongoing program of exchange with the batik makers from "Down Under". Agus Ismoyo and Nia Fliam, seasoned batik artists at Brahma Tirta Sari, are catalysts in the exploration of batik cap as a fine art textile form in Indonesia.
In "Hot Wax" these newly introduced techniques are used by the Utopia artists for an enhanced expression of traditional designs and their accompanying symbolic meanings within the Aboriginal society. Nia has described working with these people in both Indonesia and Australia as a primary example of the "transmission of knowledge between one people and another through a shared source of energy and traditional ties."
During the September workshop that led to this exhibition, the Aboriginal women used traditional Javanese methods in their work and adapted them to their own style and motifs. This is seen in "Hot Wax" where Utopia batik depicts wayang kulit figures alongside traditional ancestral goannas.
"In turn, Brahma Tirta Sari has integrated stylistic features to their work which were inspired by the more relaxed and spontaneous Aboriginal approach to design," said Bennett, a consummate batik artist who has worked for years with Utopia and other Aboriginal textile artists across Australia.
The inclusion of another white Australian batik artist, Jenny Green, alongside the Aboriginal and Indonesian exhibitors, reflects her contributions of the past 20 years in linguistics and anthropology of the Utopia region as well as her creativity in batik art. Her rapport is attributed in particular to the significant role she has played in assisting Aboriginal people in regaining their own traditional hunting and ceremonial lands through Australian government indigenous land rights legislation.
Green has observed the incorporation of external styles and influences of the Utopia artists which represents "a particular genius and capacity to appropriate the exotic" without misplacing local tradition.
In this exhibition the concern for carrying forward the spiritual significance of art continues to be drawn from the artists' own traditions, according to Green, whether it be Javanese kejawen -- a Hindu-Javanese philosophy in which all aspects of existence, seen and unseen, can be experienced directly -- or Aboriginal "dreaming" which is the definition of the creative era when all aspects of earth originated.
The particular cross section of creative energy generated in the production of "Hot Wax" has proven the devotion of these artists to the common goal of presenting batik with a dynamism drawn from what Green has described as "traditional aesthetic wisdom". The wisdom is translated through the medium of brilliantly colored batik silks into a "contemporary visual language".
The exhibition runs through Jan. 7 and is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.