Aboriginal art Aussie blog

Aboriginal art was redefined at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin, Australia on Friday night, the 14^th of August. This shift in cultural attitudes was expressed at the awards ceremony for Australian Indigenous art known as the 26th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA).  

Announcement of the winner of this prestigious prize was like a decree that has broadened the definition of Aboriginal art. Albert Namatjira’s landscape painting ushered in a new era in which the use of European art styles in Aboriginal art was sanctioned in Western (European) society. The latest Telstra Art Award ceremony announced a new attitudinal shift towards Aboriginal art being accepted in its own right as an art style and an art movement that can include European art styles in combination with social commentary.

 

What we are observing with this year’s decision by the judges of the Telstra Art Award could be objectively referred to as a dialectic or watershed synthesis of the past developments in the Aboriginal art movement involving Albert Namatjira and Richard Bell.

 

However, Danie Mellor’s stylistically Expressionist sophistication has converted what is Richard Bell’s front-line “social activism” into “social commentary” that is digestible to the art mainstream or “art establishment”, for want of a more-focused term.

 

Wax crayon, pencil and glitter pen on paper were employed to create the winning drawing of the interior of a Freemason's lodge complete with Aboriginal dancers, native Australian animals and Masonic iconic ornaments and ceremonial objects. Sadly, the Indigenous elements seem to be contained, confined and constrained by the European architecture and institutional structure. The composition and structural juxtapositioning of this content in the drawing tends to transmit a sense of the tension between the built-environment and European culture, on the one hand, and the natural environment and Indigenous culture, on the other.

 

The “Australian art establishment”, in awarding the major prize to Danie Mellor’s drawing on paper, has sanctioned a new, expanded definition of Aboriginal art which incorporates Expressionism. The juxtapositioning element of Surrealism and the social and political commentary of Social Realism are clearly evident in the oeuvre of Danie Mellor and certainly in “From Rite to Ritual”. In fact, this drawing combines these two Modernist styles with European and Aboriginal / Antipodean content to produce a defining moment in Aboriginal Art, the world’s greatest contemporary art movement.

 

The defining moment is the birth of the Magic Realist strand within Aboriginal Art. “From Rite to Ritual” is the first major work in this style. Magic Realism has also been common in the latter-twentieth century Post-Modernist literature of settler societies where the Indigenous peoples are repopulating the cultural landscapes, their landscapes with their spirits and their rituals.

Danie Mellor’s Aboriginal mother’s country is the Atherton Tableland area west of Cairns in Far North Queensland. The 38-year-old artist is from the Mamu and Ngagan language groups and was born in the Queensland coastal sugar city of Mackay.

 

He is now in the process of serving both his people and his country – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Danie Mellor is re-colonising our cultural landscape with art that subtly, though directly addresses the conflict between European culture and Indigenous culture, as well as social and political issues of race, colour, creed and Australia’s institutionalised power structure. His Magic Realism is part-conjuring trick and part-miracle, which, I daresay, is partly performed from a place deeply beyond his self-consciousness.

If you wish to view some surprisingly affordable and collectable artworks by other great Australian Aboriginal artists, such as Gloria Petyarre , Mitjili Naparrula , Caroline Numina and Margaret Turner , visit Aboriginal Art Paintings @ Australia Gifts Online ( an online art gallery and shop ) at www.aboriginalartpaintings.com.au .

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Bibliography

 

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2009/08/15/75591_ntnews.html : Northern Territory News – Clash of culture wins 

 

http://blogs.abc.net.au/articulate/2009/08/a-look-at-the-years-best-indigenous-art.html : ABC News - A look at the year’s best Indigenous art

 

http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/exhibitions/natsiaa/ : Northern Territory Government – 26th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA)

 

http://www.janmurphygallery.com.au/artists.php?aid=86 : Jan Murphy Gallery – Artist Profiles / Danie Mellor  

 

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Aboriginal art auction sales and prices are back on the rise after being understandably subdued for the last 18 months as a result of the Global Financial Crisis.

 

Sales of Aboriginal artworks were impressively brisk at Sotheby’s recent Australian auction in Melbourne. At this auction last Monday night (20^th July), sales totalled over 70% of the estimated value of the items on offer. This certainly stands in jubilant contrast to the 45% success rate of Sotheby’s Aboriginal art auction in October, 2008.  Last October was an all-time low in percentage of sales by value. However, that auction nine months ago proved to be the bottoming-out of the market.

 

So the current positive trend in Aboriginal art sales is displaying a decidedly upward trajectory with the important note that sales and prices will continue to increase to what may very well prove to be new record highs within the next two to five years. Click the following link if you would like to peruse our updated list of the 45 Top Aboriginal Artists.

 

What this also means is that if you’re considering making an Aboriginal art investment, the next 12 months would be an ideal time from a pragmatically financial standpoint.

 

 

Three works in particular that sold at Sotheby’s recent Aboriginal art auction were clear indicators of the re-emergence of a new upward trend in the Aboriginal art market. They are the works listed below:

1.      William Barak’s "Corroboree", which is a 60 X 75cm drawing made in 1895 on linen that (significantly) was the back of a poster advertising Christian gospel readings in the Yarra Valley near Melbourne in Australia.  It sold for $504,000 AUD, which was more than double its auction estimate.  This places the artist, also known as King Billy, in the top four Aboriginal artists ranked according to highest selling price for a single work.

2.      Two Aboriginal sisters from Western Australia painted "Wayampajarti Area" with synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Jukuna Mona Chuguna and Ngarta Jinny Bent produced this work at the Biennale de Lyon in France in 2000 to illustrate 10 waterholes in the Great Sandy Desert relating to the Ngurrara native land title case which was successful (after 10 years of legal struggle) in 2007. The five-metre-wide painting sold for $88,800 AUD.

3.      "The Milky Way" by Mawalan Marika  went under the hammer for $43,200 AUD. The artist is of the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land in the Top End (of Australia’s Northern Territory) and produced the artwork of natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark around 1965. It is almost two metres high.

 

Checking images and information about major Aboriginal artists online is easily done by typing the Aboriginal artist’s name into a Google Image Search at http://images.google.com/ or http://images.google.com.au .  You will find pictures of the artist as well as plenty of examples of their work.

 

Visit Aboriginal Art Paintings @ Australia Gifts Online ( an Australian online gallery and shop ) at www.aboriginalartpaintings.com.au to view some surprisingly affordable and collectable artworks by great Australian Aboriginal artists, such as Gloria Petyarre , Mitjili Naparrula , Caroline Numina and Margaret Turner .