Art great window to culture
By Poppy Ulm, Year 4, Trinity Anglican School
IN early February, Year 4 students from Trinity Anglican School went to the Cairns Art Gallery.
We went there to learn about Aboriginal culture and life before colonisation.
We were lucky to have a few local Aboriginal people from the Tjapukai Cultural Park come to talk to us about their cultures and stories.
We learnt about totems (like taipan snakes) and how you can’t eat them or hurt them, as well as how they were passed down from fathers to their children.
We heard about a Dreamtime story about the willy wagtail which showed that the willy wagtail is a very important bird in our environment.
During the talk we also heard stories about the didgeridoo and learned that only men can play them and they are only played on special occasions.
We were lucky to hear one played during the talk.
After the talks, my group went to the Andrea Huelin exhibit. She is an artist who lives in Cairns and paints stilllife paintings.
Some of the themes that we saw were “Builders at Work” and “Rusty’s Markets”.
I really enjoyed the paintings of Rusty’s because it is a place I go every weekend with my family, and there were cool paintings of fruit.
The second exhibition we visited was by Dick Roughsey. He was a Lardil man from Mornington Island, and his language name was Goobalathaldin (Goo-bal-athal-din).
He was famous for pioneering a new style of bark paintings in the 1960s with his brother showing special places from Mornington Island.
We saw paintings of the Rainbow Serpent and Aboriginal people catching their food.
My favourite things about the excursion were listening to the didgeridoo being played and the Rainbow Serpent paintings because they were colourful and I liked the stories that inspired them.
I really liked this excursion, I think it is the best one yet and everyone should go to the Cairns Art Gallery and get involved in local art.