Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic

Below is an extended version of a piece that was published in Crikey this week.

Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic
Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne

Last Wednesday, amidst relatively little fanfare, the Ian Potter Museum at the University of Melbourne launched Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic: the first ever exhibition of barks paintings from the Donald Thomson Collection. Thomson was a pioneering anthropologist, who amassed over 4500 objects during his expeditions into Australia’s north in the 1930s and 1940s. At the opening of the exhibition, a former trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria was overheard to say that perhaps Ancestral Power should have been the NGV’s ‘Winter Masterpieces’ exhibition. Certainly, in my experience, I have never seen anything quite like the twenty bark paintings on display. Put simply, they are some of the finest examples of Australian Indigenous art in existence. The fact that they have never been exhibited before, and remain relatively unheralded and unknown is quite staggering.

If the works in Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic were not so momentous, so profoundly moving and so visually dynamic, it would be easy for them to be overshadowed by the story of their creation and collection. It is Thomson’s name that echoes through the exhibition, particularly as several of the major works are unattributed. Nor are Thomson’s achievements without cause for celebration. A maverick young anthropologist, he entered Arnhem Land at a bloody crossroads in the Territory’s history. The Caledon Bay Crisis had seen the local Yolngu people clash with Japanese poachers, in a series of violent episodes that escalated to include attacks upon the local constabulary. In Canberra, there were fears of an Indigenous uprising in the North, and Thomson’s mission was intended as much as conciliatory and anthropological.

Arriving in central Arnhem Land in 1935, Thomson immersed himself in Yolngu culture, quickly befriending the important elder and Yolngu statesman Wonggu. Wonggu would later paint two monumental barks for Thomson, which remain some of the jewels in the collection, and form the centrepoint of Ancestral Power.

Thomson’s association with men like Wonggu, enabled him to amass one of the finest collections of Indigenous treasures in the world. Amongst literally thousands of objects, he amassed a body of around 70 bark paintings, of whose quality is unsurpassed in any other collection. Following his death in 1970, Thomson’s widow Dorita bequeathed the collection to the University of Melbourne; a bequest that, according to Mrs Thomson, was considered by the University to be “a bit of a nuisance.” The collection eventually found a home at the Melbourne Museum, where it remains of permanent loan.

Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic brings together 20 masterpieces from the Thomson collection. They have been carefully selected by Melbourne Museum curator Lindy Allen to represent the differing regional, clan and aesthetic varieties within the collection. Allen’s passion has been one of the driving forces in the preservation, documentation and exhibition of the Thomson collection.

When Allen arrived at the Museum in 1989, the Thomson collection was sadly neglected, in poor storage and with limited documentation. It took nearly five years before every item in the collection was properly photographed and catalogued. Armed with a hefty folder of photographic reproductions, in 1994 Allen began the complicated process of community consultation and fieldwork. At first, her folders were met with caution – for the local Yolngu were unaware of what dangerous or powerful images their predecessors may have depicted. But over time, Allen built trust. Every evening, she would have a knock on the door, and be greeted by a different Yolngu family asking to borrow the folder. Eventually, she began to assemble information on each work, and more importantly, consent to exhibit these prized pieces.

According to Allen, “It has taken until now for us to have the confidence that every one of these works could be shown.” Whilst she laments certain pieces that could not be exhibited due to an inability to locate the relevant family member, it is this deep integrity and respect that has endeared Allen to the communities in which she works, in much the same way as Thomson before her. Although it is difficult to assess, one suspects that this mutual respect has given the Yolngu confidence in Allen’s intentions, and in turn allowed her certain levels of accommodation. The curator notes, “It is often not about what can or cannot be shown, but about what can be said about the objects. It is about negotiating the grounds for engagement.”

In a broad sense, engagement is at the core of Ancestral Power. By the 1930s, the Yolgnu elders were faced with the difficult realisation that their survival depended upon defending their culture against the encroaching tide of modernity. According to Allen, the elders “had an understanding that they must engage with the outside world. They were thinking about how to tell the outside world about who they were; that this was their country. The works became like deeds to their land.”

The paintings produced for Thomson by Wonggu and the other elders were created to show the complexity, value and relevance of Yolngu culture. This lends them an urgent intensity, but at the same time, the barks included in Ancestral Power are works of meticulous grace and refined elegance. Each bark has been fastidiously prepared; perfectly cured and flattened, so that after seventy years they have not curled nor cracked: faults that plague bark paintings that have been hastily prepared for the contemporary commercial market.

But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of these bark paintings is that they represent the very genesis of two-dimensional painting in Yolngu culture. For whilst the Yolngu had long painted their sacred clan designs (or minytji) on the body and ceremonial objects, the barks collected by Thomson were the first time when these designs had been removed from their ceremonial ‘use’ context and applied for a purely aesthetic purpose.

This transferral required a considerable aesthetic inventiveness, for although the Yolngu had a wealth of traditional designs, these required modification to the new media. New motifs were introduced, particularly those figurative devices necessary for the depiction of grand narratives. This is particularly evident in the monumental depiction of the Djan’kawu Sisters Story by Mawunpuy Mununggurr, which is one of the highlights of the exhibition and an indisputable masterpiece of Australian painting. In attempting to depict the Djan’kawu Sister in her half-ancestral, half-Yolngu form, Mawunpuy’s work shows the dawn of Yolngu figurative painting and the introduction of several important techniques – such as the use of footprints to indicate land travel, and the use of contrasting sections of cross hatching and block colours in his figures. These techniques continue to reverberate through the lively contemporary schools of Yolngu painting at Yirrkala, Milingimbi and Ramingining.

The forms, content and images that emerge in these works define the history of Yolngu painting. With the benefit of retrospect, these early masterpieces reveal an evolving history, whose sparkle illuminates not only the past, but also the present and the future. But beyond their art historical or anthropological significance, the works included in Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic are visually astounding. Allen’s entire body lights up when she speaks of the ‘shine’ or bir’yun of these barks. According to Allen, this ‘brilliance’ was “intended to capture the essence of the wangarr [ancestors] an harness its strength and power or marr.” These are paintings that speak of a distant time, in an ancient language; and yet, by their brilliance they seek to transcend time: to be simultaneously ancient and modern. It is perhaps this reason, that despite their age, these works bristle with an urgency and power that is as striking for its formal and conceptual relevance as for the ancient cosmology which it evokes.

Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic: Arnhem Land Painting and Objects from the Donald Thomson Collection
Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne
2 June – 23 August 2009