The Dealer is the Devil

by Adrian Newstead

  Of the many academics who collected and studied Aboriginal material culture at the dawn of the market, Donald Thomson was one of the most swashbuckling. He reputedly carried little more than photographic and scientific equipment, a toothbrush and a Colt 45, as he travelled over vast areas of the Australian continent on foot and on horseback, by yacht and dugout canoe. Having worked among the peoples of Cape York and Eastern Arnhem Land between 1928 and 1943, he was appointed squadron leader in the RAAF24 with the role of organising the northern clans in opposition to the threatened Japanese invasion after the bombing of Darwin.

  Thomson worked under extremely primitive conditions, processing negatives in a bark shelter at night in the bush. A large part of his life’s work, a film on the Aboriginal lifestyle, was destroyed in a fire. Even so, by the time of his death in 1970, his collection of works included more than 20,000 artefacts and images detailing aspects of Aboriginal life. He also collected natural history specimens with the most careful and detailed annotations.

  Pickled snakes, stuffed birds, dried flowers, nuts, seeds, snail shells, every type of creeping, crawling, hopping, swimming or flying creature, every form of plant life [was] included in this all-encompassing collection, along with their botanical and Aboriginal names, and what they were used for and who collected them and where and when.25

  His articles, books, field notes, photographs and collection of material objects from Arnhem Land, Cape York and the desert rate amongst the most important ethnographic collections ever made anywhere in the world. They are now housed at the University of Melbourne and the Melbourne Museum.

  As fast as the academics competed to fill museums and galleries, the objects they coveted attracted private collectors and dealers. The dynamic of the marketplace brought into sharp relief the tension between those who believed that the artworks should remain the province of their creators, the academics who sought to stamp their intellectual ownership over cultural knowledge, and the enlightened amateur collectors who were often treated with disdain.

  Amongst the host of colourful characters at the time, Sandra Le Brun Holmes was considered by some to be the most controversial, territorial and combative in her efforts to protect Aboriginal culture. In the 1960s she began making films about the ceremonial life of the Tiwi with her husband, Cecil Holmes, who had just been sued for defamation by Dorothy Bennett. Quite a trade in Tiwi arts and crafts had already developed amongst both international collectors and the growing band of tribal art dealers. By 1966, a craft warehouse had been established at Snake Bay on Melville Island to service them. Le Brun Holmes collected many of the pieces used in the ceremonies she recorded for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra. Amongst the greatest artists who worked for her were the Mungatopi brothers, Micky Geranium, Albert Corker, Micky Aruni Illortamini and Paddy Henry (Teeampi) Ripijingimpi.

  Together, the Holmeses gathered an extensive collection of Tiwi bark paintings and sculpture, which is now housed in the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. They were amongst a tight band of enthusiasts and sympathisers who watched the commercialisation of Aboriginal art during the 1960s and onward with sincere misgivings. Like Emily Carr, the great Fauvist artist who documented the commodification of Canadian tribal culture, Le Brun Holmes was disgusted by the avarice of the marketplace. She watched the religious records of the Tiwi people being sold to visiting dealers through a ‘so-called craft warehouse’ with horror.26 She believed that the fabric of Aboriginal religious life was being torn to shreds. Important paintings and artefacts, which in their totality related all of the aspects of sacred stories and ceremonies, were being scattered around the world in fragments when sold as individual works. This brought the Holmeses into direct conflict with Dorothy Bennett, whose motives they impugned.

  Today, on those rare occasions when Tiwi carvings created between 1940 and 1970 come up for auction, they are very highly sought, and greatly valued. In the 1980s it was possible to purchase a group of old Tiwi decorated spears for a few hundred dollars. Now each piece is worth no less than $2,000. In July 2007, a bark painting titled Coral by Deaf Tommy Mungatopi sold at Sotheby’s for $96,000. A year earlier an exceptional and highly distinctive sculpture of the creator Purukapali, by the incomparable Enraeld Dulibinyana, which had been collected by Dorothy Bennett in 1955, sold for $60,000. Spirit figures by Mani Luki that are in excellent condition are currently worth no less than $25,000.

  Deaf Tommy Mungutopi, Coral, 1965. Natural earth pigments on composition board, 122 x 62.2 cm.

  Fortunately the National Museum of Australia and other institutions have many of the works that Dorothy Bennett kept in her own private collection. These complement other important pieces created during the 1960s, which were documented by Dr Helen Groger-Wurm; however, in what is one of the great tragedies in the history of Aboriginal art, much of the early documentation appears to have been lost, as Bennett died without ever publishing her valuable field notes and diaries.

  THE PASSPORT TO ARNHEM LAND

  Since I acquired my first computer in the mid 1990s, I have bought and sold over 20,000 Aboriginal prints, paintings and sculptures. While I have always been interested in their content, to be honest I’ve never been overly obsessed with authentication based on some perfunctory story. Bark paintings have always appealed to me principally on an aesthetic level. Yet divorcing the work from its content, so that it could gain acceptance as contemporary art, has come at a price.

  The myths and legends that permeate Aboriginal paintings, ceremonies and rituals take a lifetime to accumulate. The Aboriginal people I’ve spent most of my time with in the bush still had their culture and their languages intact, but I’ve noticed that the stories they are willing to share with a strange white person are roughly equivalent to the narratives which are passed on to 12-year-olds before their first initiation. Consequently, the descriptions that accompany most Aboriginal paintings are a bit like window dressing. Aboriginal culture is as big as an onion the size of Uluru. You can peel off one layer, but profound insight is the preserve of people of high degree who have earned the right to that knowledge. That’s why I find it so depressing to see the old people, who are vast storehouses of knowledge, unable to pass on what amounts to 40,000–60,000 years of culture to their children; too often it dies with them.

  What excites me personally, however, is the artwork itself and the people and culture to which it connects me. Of the tens of thousands of paintings that have passed through my hands, the few that have stuck, and adorn the walls of my home, are those by artists with whom I have shared a personal connection. Most of the biggest collectors of Aboriginal art in the world know even less about the content than I do, but to all intents and purposes they love and appreciate it just the same.

  Take Pat Corrigan, the freight transport supremo who was awarded an Order of Australia medal in 2007. Pat has bought 750 paintings since first being enthralled by the Colour Power exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2004. His enthusiasm about the paintings appears boundless, yet he is not really interested in the stories. What is important to him is that the works are seen. He wants Australians to be exposed to them, and he wants the people who painted them to be respected. None of his paintings are in storage. Every single painting is on loan to a university, school, hospital, council or regional gallery.

  I suppose that’s why I get so frustrated when people say they don’t buy Aboriginal art because they don’t ‘understand’ it. What on earth do they mean? Isn’t this similar to the initial reaction to the Impressionists, the Fauvists and the Cubists in Europe at the end of the 19th century? Paintings that today are perceived as mainstream were shocking then, but gradually the vocabulary of European art changed and opened up new radical ways of seeing. Now we think nothing of it. Looking at a Picasso is no longer a revolutionary challenge to most people, because Picasso changed the way Europeans look at the world. Similarly, Aboriginal art has profoundly influenced non-Indigenous Australian art, an
d Aboriginal culture has influenced the way the world views Australia.

  My own home is full of art. You can hardly see the walls. Every painting exerts a subtle influence. Gradually this art has changed the way I look at it, and the way I look at everything else. It was just after I left university that I saw an Aboriginal painting for the first time. It was a bark made for tourists. As I loved camping in the bush, I was fascinated to see something made entirely from bush materials. Even today, I still feel the same way. I love the ochre, the texture of the bark carefully cured by fire and water, and the richness of the designs.

  The untrained eye may view bark paintings as quite simple. They often show figurative images interspersed with decorative crosshatching. But there is so much more to them than that. Like cells in a cartoon strip, each one is but a frame in a vast narrative, informed by a far more epic cosmology than is evident in any single example. Across the Australian continent every clan and language group participates in this greater narrative, each with its own particular designs that connect tens of thousands of significant sites.

  In the earliest Arnhem Land barks on record, there are two distinct styles that can be divided along geographic lines. In Western and Central Arnhem Land simple figurative images of totemic creatures predominate. In the northern islands and the northeast, figurative elements are either absent or separated by descriptive crosshatching, referred to as rarrk. This crosshatching may look like decorative infill but is absolutely specific to each totemic group, and relates directly to the stories and places that inform the artist’s life and place in the world. Custodial responsibility for these designs is earned and deepened at every important stage in the artist’s life journey. When rarrk is used to infill the bodies of animals and humans, the designs represent the subtle energy fields that emanate from all living things. When used to interconnect living creatures, rarrk evokes the numinous country in which they live. If there was such a thing as a Book of Rarrk, and you were given the right to use each clan pattern within it by the appropriate elders from each clan group, you would have a passport into every ‘country’ in Australia. Once carved and painted throughout the continent, rarrk only survives in a few regions today.

  Stylistic differences in bark painting: Western, Central and Eastern Arnhem Land.

  In Eastern and Western Arnhem Land this elaborate system of designs continues to demarcate one place from another, and one clan group from another. In Western Arnhem Land it is less formalised, but each group uses the geometry of rarrk to link it to the epic creation stories of ancestral beings, like the Djang’kawu sisters in the east, and Luma Luma in the west. These, and many other creator beings, connect the different clans along the routes of their ancient journeys. Traditionally these designs are painted on the bodies of young initiates during their induction into adulthood, onto ritual objects such as boomerangs and dilly bags, and at specific locations including tree trunks and cave walls for use during ceremony. Regardless of their style, each picture and its rarrk design embodies clan myth, and each myth conveys a lesson or moral that guides human behaviour, thereby empowering the person who invokes it.

  Despite the difficulty of interpreting so many creation stories amongst 50 different language groups in Arnhem Land alone, common threads can be discerned. The Wagilak (Wawilag) sisters and the Rainbow Serpent myths describe how the world began. They are performed at birth, initiation, death and during age-grading ceremonies. The myths of natural forces such as fire, wind or how the Milky Way was created form a calendar based on natural time cycles: the changing winds before a monsoon, or the position of stars during the season when, for instance, tubers might ripen. Others, such as the Mimi myth, serve to delineate the roles of men and women, and standards of behaviour. Myths of everyday life, such as that of Luma Luma, teach how and where to fish, how to leach poisons from tubers, the behaviour of animals, and how to divide up game for relatives. And funeral myths, such as that of the Morning Star and the Purukupali legend, help to relieve sorrow and fear, and draw the survivors together, reaffirming that the customs and laws of the Dreamtime are still in force.

  The Rainbow Serpent is considered the primary creator being throughout much of the country, although its sex varies. Only the Tiwi people have no Rainbow Serpent myth, and instead describe the natural world as being created by an old woman called Mudungkala. In the western region of Arnhem Land the snake, called Ngalyod, changes itself into a woman to give birth to people. In the central and northeast regions it is called Julunggul and it has the eggs, and the phallus to fertilise them. These serpent creator beings are also responsible for marking out territories, and revealing the songs and laws to help people live peacefully together.

  Of the dozens of spirit beings that inhabit the mythology of Arnhem Land I will outline just three briefly: the giant creator Luma Luma, the Mimi and Namorodo.

  Yirawala, Luma Luma and Wind Mimi, 1971. Natural earth pigment on stringybark, 70 x 30.5 cm.

  The giant Luma Luma, whose story underpins the law against adultery, originally set out as a whale accompanied by a barramundi from the land of the mists. He turned into a giant and came to teach the Kunwinjku people of the west about ceremonies that would promote a healthy social life, and abundant flora and fauna. When he lay with one of the Yawk Yawk mermaid sisters he spilt so much seed that it flowed into rivers and waterholes, making them important fertility sites. While the men were out hunting, Luma Luma seduced their women and devoured their children. Seeking revenge, the men gathered together, called upon the spirits of the mackerel, barramundi and goanna to help them, and threw so many spears that Luma Luma was weakened. In return for his life, he offered the men sacred knowledge and gave them the Rainbow Snake totem, so that their numbers would increase and prosper. He then returned to the sea once more in the form of a whale. Western Arnhem Land’s greatest artist Yirawala famously depicted Luma Luma as he died and disintegrated, his internal organs turning into sacred objects, and his bones dividing into two separate groups, some of which are of the Dhuwa moiety, and others Yirritja.

  The Mimi are tall wispy spirits who live in the rocky escarpments of Arnhem Land where the winds rarely penetrate. Their necks are very short, but they are likely to snap in a breeze, and their arms may blow off if they stray. Shy but friendly spirits, they inhabited the Stone Country prior to the present day Aboriginal people, and passed on their knowledge about hunting, and the laws concerning the proper dissection and distribution of game and the preparation of food.

  According to stories related by the late Kunwinjku bark painter Robin Nganjmirra, the Namorodo spirits also live in the same rocky escarpments as the Mimi but they have long hair that whistles in the wind as they run or fly through the night. They are unfriendly and will flick their long detachable fingernails into the heart of anyone who comes into their caves at night, or kills one of their totems such as a file snake, echidna or rock wallaby.

  The most important recurring feature of all of these creator beings and their mythical adventures is the glistening light of sunrise and sunset. These are the times of day that Aboriginal people believe are best for contacting the spirits of the land. The shimmer produced in an artwork through the delicate application of rarrk also evokes the glistening of the initiates’ body painting that enables them to share characteristics with the ancestral beings.

  This is but a glimpse into the myriad myths that underpin and inform the bark painting tradition of Arnhem Land.

  EARLY BARK PAINTERS OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL ARNHEM LAND

  It was one of those beautiful winter days in Central Arnhem Land. The intense build-up, heat and humidity of the wet was no more than a distant memory. The night before I’d been lulled to sleep in my swag on the Bula Bula art centre verandah by the evangelist songs and country music that crackled through the community PA. Below the art centre was the ‘bullocky’, where fresh killed meat was cut up and sold two days per week. The Ramingining community slowly stirred to life as I took an early morning walk past the h
ouses and along the road to the rubbish dump, which we euphemistically referred to as ‘the hardware store’. Excitement and expectation hung in the air.

  By midday the day’s guest of honour had arrived. Alongside the art centre, dignified, and resplendent in white, 76-year-old David Malangi sat perfectly erect, surrounded by his large and extended family. In the distance, the first tiny figures appeared as the long parade of schoolchildren and villagers wearing red headbands and loincloths wended their way toward the ceremonial ground cleared in honour of Malangi’s retirement. During the hours that followed each clan group danced in turn. There were many speeches, but it was left to me to represent all of David’s friends who lived in the outside world.

  The ceremony took place in 1997, a year before his death. David had already declared that he had painted his last work. In a manner reminiscent of Henri Matisse and Constantin Brancusi, he had distilled everything he had ever wanted to say into the most iconic imagery. Two of his final works remain, for me personally, the most indelible and powerful statements about the connection between Aboriginal people and their land. The first, Luku, meaning foot but also root, depicted the footprint of Malangi’s ancestor Gurrmirringu. The other, in my own personal collection, depicts the dried-up mud at Dhamala, in black and white with a yellow ochre outline. I cannot look at this stark image of the artist’s sacred homeland without feeling that, as he was painting, his life was ebbing away, like the water from his land. Both works denote Malangi’s connection to the spiritual source of all worldly beings in the subterranean domain, and the country that holds them. David played a vital role in the development of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement, and during his lifetime he became one of the great inspirational figures of Arnhem Land art. Like a number of his contemporaries he began painting during the 1960s when barks were attributed to particular artists for the very first time.