by Rod Moss
XAVIER
1986
103CMX133CM
COLLECTION OF ADAM KNIGHT, MELBOURNE
I worked up a drawing of Xavier Neil from a photo taken by my fence. He proudly displayed his ‘sorry cuts’, a sign of his connection to family and country. The image of Xavier in the painting is close to his actual size. In the history of Australian art, Aborigines are incorporated into the landscape as part of the natural scene. I wanted to challenge the domesticated scale of images of Indigenous figures. I was motivated by this notion of scale-setting for several years, which often led to two- to three-metre-wide works of cinematic scale. This work no longer presents as we see it here, but is the version Petrina initially encountered.
STONE SLINGERS 1
1987
116CMX205CM
COLLECTION OF ELLIS EYRE, NEW SOUTH WALES
Stone Slingers was the first work I made that was fully committed to pointillism and narrative. It shows the kids loading their slings and letting them fly at my neighbour’s roof. My flat is the prominent building. I have squeezed Mt Gillen’s peak towards the building, as it helps identify I re-staged the event, using photos of Sean Johnson (left), Denis Neil (middle) and his half-brother, Ricky Ryder.
BIG HOUSE
1988
110CMX160CM
REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION, THE COLLECTION OF THE QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY, BRISBANE
Big House features Xavier Neil who, no sooner than I had started the work, was back in jail. He was permitted a couple of weekend visitors and I waited my turn. The guards looked smart and well fed in their khaki uniforms. Xavier had on his prison-issue green t-shirt and blue denims, and looked fitter from his workouts in the prison gym. The ambience of the place was good. At least it was in the low-security section, where minor offenders like Xavier were detained. I rhymed the groups of threes: the Aboriginal inmates, the anonymous white guards, and the flags, adding an Aboriginal one, which did not actually grace the prison.
Other relatives were also doing time. I found Xavier sitting with Arranye Edward Neil, his older brother, who was jailed for the manslaughter of a young man. There seemed to be only Aboriginal inmates, and I later confirmed that they made up 85–95 per cent of the prisoners. When the jail had been situated in town, it was easy for family to maintain contact. Subsequently the prison moved 20 or so kilometres south of town, creating transport complications.
We joked in camp about Xavier being ‘permanently’ in Big House now that he was fixed in the painting. His younger brother Christopher (left) is depicted playing checkers with Joe Cleary. Neither of them had ever been to jail and both joked about being on the ‘inside’.
GREGORY AND JANET WITH DOGS
1990
122CMX304CM
COLLECTION OF JANE LLOYD AND DAVE ALEXANDER, ALICE SPRINGS
I placed Gregory and Janet Johnson on the track running adjacent to Pepperill Creek. It’s a morning light with the dogs on their usual trail, variously attentive to fresh sights and sounds. This was a usual arrangement, with Gregory always some 10 to 15 paces ahead of his wife, head down, ever vigilant for lizard tracks and other tucker.
RAFT
1990
130CMX217CM
COLLECTION OF JOHN WAKERMAN, ALICE SPRINGS
The title alludes to Theodore Gericault’s great painting The Raft of the Medusa (1819). Gericault depicted the epic maritime tragedy of the frigate Medusa off the coast of West Africa. I used some of the painting’s gestures to construct a comparative image of grog abuse.
In the hard light of day, the humpy stood for the raft of the Medusa with the same meagre sense of protection. There is a menacing lick to the white and blue-violet caps migrating across the sand. A blue hue runs throughout as a reference to the Virgin Mary, worshipped by the families. Petrina Johnson nurtures Xavier Neil, just as the old man holds his dead son in the Gericault work. Marcus Driffen took the position of the mariner pointing to the rescue ship, perched on the horizon. Melita Johnson is looking at Marcus.
For five years I had wondered how to say something about alcoholism in camps. The cheap white wine dispensed in 2-litre casks was the chief corrosive that debilitated so many Aboriginal lives. They pooled their social security cheques to buy casks at the bottle shop, then decanted the stuff into old tins to pass around.
Halfway into the painting, Eric Neil, Xavier’s brother, had slept a freezing night in the back seat of my car. I discovered him in the morning curled around a small pool of vomit. At dusk, the day I completed the painting, I heard Petrina calling my name from the driveway. She was alone, on all fours, pathetically drunk, inching along the paving beside the Commodore. Petrina groped towards me with her outstretched right hand and collapsed in a blubbering heap. I dragged her to the car, and drove her to camp.
‘Them mob at Hidden Valley been call me dog, I not dog!’ she wept.
I helped her from the car to the ground in front of Xavier’s fire. Two days later she visited with Xavier, sober and reflective about the ‘grog sickness’ painting, which, she said, made her think of their alcoholism. Having suffered alcoholic dementia and diseases associated with alcoholism, Petrina passed away during October 2009.
HISTORY ROLLING II
1991
100CMX268CM
COLLECTION OF THE MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY OF THE NORTHERN TERRITORY, DARWIN
The initial version of History Rolling was stolen in transit from the freight company that was given the consignment to transport it to a Melbourne gallery. According to Jude, there was a problem in the first version – the young Arrernte men in sacred dance formation. This was redressed to his satisfaction by the depiction of young men in free formation. As with all the paintings that depicted deceased persons, there would not have been a problem exhibiting this outside of Alice Springs.
This second version retains a sunset afterglow. The sky has a graded glazing of pinks overpainted with circles of pale yellow, each circle intersecting with one below to give a spiralling vibrancy.
Arranye, centrally located, is much the same as in the original. Jude (left) and Noelly Johnson (right) are close in. Marcus Driffen and Xavier Neil wander out of left frame.
CAPRICE: BIG ROOSTER
1992
136CMX108CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Big Rooster is a metaphorical image of the conundrums that tourists face in town when they meet with Aboriginal culture. Fed by images in brochures promoting traditional Aboriginal lifestyles as signifiers of the Centre, tourists are alarmed to discover the polarity between Arrernte and themselves.
Edward Neil stands in the main street holding a white rooster. He gestures to the bemused tourists (the nearest being my mother and father), inviting them to attend to the fowl. The gap in communication, though, remains. It is a display of Edward’s anarchic effrontery. A stormy sky carries metallic blues. It was in fact Edward’s idea to set the scene in front of the fast food outlet (since replaced by Red Rooster).
MYRA’S PAINTING
1992
95CMX128CM
COLLECTION OF LAURIE BERRYMAN, ALICE SPRINGS
Myra Hayes, the ‘Queen’ of Whitegate, was an enormous instigator for improved conditions throughout the 1990s and up into the twenty-first century until her husband died. I based the composition on Manet’s Gare St Lazare (1877), changing Victorine eurand’s book for the painting, giving Charmaine Neil the puppy to hold and situating them before the smoking fire in place of Manet’s plumes of steam. Hopefully, the hermeneutics of contemplation in the Manet have not been sacrificed. Adrian Hayes junior looks on.
SIDESHOW ALLEY
1993
110CMX318CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
I was captivated by the gaudy little stalls, boasting their wares and cheap prizes in loud primary colours. The shadow-written signage
was from an era pre-dating my childhood. I was fascinated by the toothless, tattooed touts accosting passers-by in tones loud enough to compete with the hectic tunes of the numerous rides. The alley thrust the two cultures into unusually close proximity as both blackfellas and whitefellas shuffled its dusty length.
Noelly Johnson is holding Raffi, Devon Neil is the boy in the foreground and Xavier Neil is seen on the extreme right.
FUNERAL AT SANTA TERESA
1993
123CMX264CM
COLLECTION OF ARALUEN ARTS CENTRE, ALICE SPRINGS
Several months elapsed before I asked Arranye if it was okay to make a painting of Lizzie Gorey’s funeral. We staged the poses in camp and, in spite of the cold air, Arranye removed his shirt and put on his red headband, as this was how he wanted to be represented in the painting.
‘I been have big book in my akaperte [head]. I be look behind and in front and know where I going. That knowledge, young fella. That dangerous, might be. Red headband show me be law man.’
I needed to set the scene in the appropriate tableau and drove to Santa Teresa one evening with Ronja to photograph the graveyard at dawn. We made camp in the scrub. The long, table-topped mountain to the west of the community was pivotal in setting the location.
Joany McCormack, Arranye’s sister, is facing the viewer on the left; Arranye is in the middle, Michael Stewart wears the beanie and Jude Johnson is standing beside Ronja in the dress.
THE SORRY BUSINESS OF EILEEN AND WHEELCHAIR ROSS
1993
116CMX277CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
When I lobbed in at Whitegate one day a group of people were crowded around the old man in the wheelchair, sobbing. His daughter had died. Big Rosey Johnson whispered that she’d died from mixing her medication with grog. People had come to touch hands and express condolences. The camp atmosphere had stilled. Few people moved and, when they did, they walked slowly. Radios were turned off. I was aware for the first time of how all the adults suppressed flamboyant behaviour in respect. The kids, along the wall of the humpy, were eating ice creams bought from the Mr Nippy van that visited camp each week. Its theme jingle, the ‘Greensleeves’ lament, complemented the wailing and sobbing. I too found myself crying, for somebody I had never met.
The hair cutting and body lacerating occurred later. Wheelchair said he would have to stab himself and burn his daughter’s clothes. It was totally inappropriate to hand down possessions of the deceased. Eileen, the bereaved mother, showed me where she slashed above her clavicl, dangerously close to her throat.
Wheelchair is easily recognised in the immediate foreground. Kneeling on the ground are Janet and Magdaline Johnson and, on the right, touching hands, are Eileen Sweet/Ross and Gregory Johnson.
PUSHING UP RIVER
1993
114CMX220CM
COLLECTION OF JOHN HUTTON, BRISBANE
Pushing Up River recreated a common scene in the Todd River. I pictured three men struggling to push a paddy wagon bogged in the sandy riverbed. The central man, Edward Neil, pushes his back to the vehicle. Joe Cleary and Gregory Johnson assist. The police are concentrating on the ground for the moment when the vehicle frees up. Sitting to the right at some distance are Joany McCormack, Janet Johnson and her sister, Eileen Sweet.
The river is usually dry and is a conduit to regeneration after rains. A law prohibiting the consumption of alcohol in public places within 2 kilometres of a liquor outlet empowers police to clean up the river of its Aboriginal drinkers and confiscate the casks. One week in August 1998, 540 litres of wine were emptied into the river. Often novice police, unfamiliar with the rigours of deep sand driving, are assigned to the river patrol. The drunks are temporarily released from the cage to help rescue the vehicle, before continuing on to the sobering-up shelter.
WIGLEYS WATERHOLE
1994
112CMX200CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Long-awaited rain that refreshed waterholes gave urgency to a swimming outing. Given the rarity of the Todd River flowing, and that waterholes would soon foul in the heat, it was an opportunity provided by nature that was not to be passed up. We nearly always drove via camp to pick up anybody wanting to join us.
The most recognisable are Raffi and Malcolm Hayes in the bottom right corner. Ricky Ryder leaps from the far bank, while Adrian Hayes prepares to flip a hat into the water with Noelly and ‘Amulte’ Johnson either side of him.
KIDS DIGGING FOR YALKE
1994
112CMX210CM
COLLECTION OF RONJA MOSS
Ronja spent a day with the Whitegate kids in camp. In the late afternoon I took them over to Pepperill Creek to fossick for yalke, the bush onion. Yalke was Arranye’s dreaming. It is a small, nutty-flavoured bulb growing on the creek banks. The kids rooted it out and usually ate it raw, though it was occasionally thrown for a quick turn in the embers.
Regrettably, yalke, like many bushfoods and native grasses, is threatened by the dominance of introduced buffel grass, which can be seen running through the centre of the creek in the painting.
NIGREDO
1994
140CMX322CM
PRIVATE COLLECTION, GOLD COAST
The drawing shows the final hours of initiation into manhood. Women and children participate in this communal part of the proceedings. Arrernte women have no shared ceremony like the young men’s initiation. Women’s law regarding love songs, fertility and childbirth is passed on exclusively by the mothers. The Arrernte men hold the women’s law in great respect.
Arranye had urged me for several years to make a record of this special occasion, but I didn’t feel confident until now. It took repeated experiences of these nights to digest and transform the pattern of events into a rhythmic composition.
Re-staging the parts of the event needed for the drawing was quite an effort, as most of the participants had dispersed around town. Jude Johnson was the final participant and couldn’t understand why I hadn’t photographed the event at the time. I explained how the camera put a wedge between the experience and me. I had to absorb the event and then make the art.
The concept followed the sequential framing of time seen on church walls, say with illustrations of the Stations of the Cross. I combined actions that condensed perhaps twenty minutes into a single image. The same characters appear several times in different stages of the ceremonial composition. Arranye was familiar with the sequencing, from a church mural in town, and enthusiastically endorsed my approach.
I spent several mornings lighting small fires south of Whitegate to observe the light filtering through the smoke. I had driven out in the evening to tell Bernard Neil and Arranye not to be alarmed at my presence in the early mornings and that I was only arerte/mad for painting. They waved and smiled as I cruised past their breakfast fires.
It took a further three weeks to do the drawing on the 3-metre sheet. Now I had finished my most important assignment, I Whitegate and collect Arranye and Bernard. I became anxious as I led them into the lounge room where it was pinned on the wall. Both men moved close to take in the details. There were mutterings and small puffs of approval. Then they sat down, studied it in silence and wept. It was a very special moment. The mood of ceremony had been successfully made into art, as far as they were concerned. What better kind of reception could I have asked for?
‘You show it how we make man,’ said Bernard. ‘We don’t know how you make your young fellas into man. Might make it man with rock’n’roll. Or, today, rap. We always been do it same way. You mob tie young fellas up in house an’ fence line. Our young Can go anywhere.’
Bernard is depicted in the far left sitting next to Arranye. Joseph Hayes is staged as the initiate seen repeatedly through the composition, escorted by Jude Johnson.
HUNTING AT EMILY GAP
1994
140CMX23
6CM
COLLECTION OF CAMERON JACKSON, MELBOURNE
The painting of Edward Neil with the gun, standing behind Stephan and Malcolm Hayes near Emily Gap, evokes some of the casual feel of such trips. Adrian Hayes and Dominic Gorey handle ammunition over by the station wagon with young Adrian. I centralised the attractive rusty hoop of the redundant water tank, which matched the car and the oxide-coloured ranges.
ANTHWERRKE
1995
140CMX210CM
COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Anthwerrke is the Arrernte word for Emily Gap, though it was popularly corrupted from English back into Arrernte as Imerle. Its proximity to Alice Springs, hence its use by the non-Indigenous for touristy adventure and recreational swimming, and the establishment of nearby Mengkwernele/Amoonguna settlement, disturbed its use as an important ceremonial site. Though no ceremonies have occurred here for several generations, it remains central in the stories of the country, the significant site for ayepe-arenye/caterpillars to reproduce. All the young men at Whitegate received the caterpillar story during initiation as a basis for their own relationship to the Alice Springs region. The partly submerged rock with the hooped watermarks is the king grub. Paintings of the caterpillar Dreaming are visible about halfway through the gap on the eastern flank.