Art celebrates NAIDOC week
EXHIBITIONS celebrating NAIDOC week and a textile installation that makes tenuous links to family history through felted costumes and wearable art offer very different visual experiences. However, each in their own way alludes to genealogy, tribal solidarity, social politics, and symbolism in the establishment of identity.
NAIDOC Week is held in the first week of July each year and celebrates the achievements, culture, and history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Each year there is a theme to explore and for 2017 that theme is “Our Languages Matter.” Indigenous languages, often passed on in an oral tradition, are more than a means of communication. They are fundamental to the history and spirituality of different groups, they are about caring for country, learning to survive, living in harmony, and respect for Elders. Art is also a language expressed in visual terms and it too, is a means of sharing and preserving a cultural heritage.
St Vincent’s Hospital (Entrance 2 Scott St) is hosting a NAIDOC art exhibition that draws on traditional themes as seen in paintings by Anthony “Boy” Turnbull and Daniel Blades as well as showing work by artists like Charlie Waters whose digital photography translates Indigenous imagery into contemporary terms. Other artists such as Davina Kelly, Mayrah Yarraga Dreise, and Marianne Wobcke combine stories, experiences, and family histories with social issues and cultural politics to create personal statements within the broader scope of current arts practice. The exhibition continues until October.
The Arts Gallery at the University of Southern Queensland is also showing an exhibition in conjunction with NAIDOC Week. This body of work profiles emerging Indigenous artists for whom traditional mark making is the scaffolding on which they have built individual responses to historical association, cultural difference, lore and a sense of renewed identity. Key works include Angelina Parfitt’s jewel-like paintings and traditional beads, an eagle in flight by Anthony “Boy” Turnbull, a “Bush Bag” by Tracey Bunda Ngugi, and the signpost, a symbolic self portrait by Robert Waites.
The Rosalie Gallery in Goombungee is presenting “Through the Looking Glass,” an exhibition by Barbara Scott. Knitting, felting, lace adornments, brooches, and embellishments shape hats, scarves, shawls, wraps, jackets and ensembles. The exhibition’s title alludes to Alice’s search for identity, which Scott relates to having explored some of the ancestral roots that have shaped her own identity. The fashions nod to the mid to late 1800s, although some of the cloche style hats lean to the 1920s, while the store window mannequins are very “now.” A booklet detailing some of Scott’s family history accompanies the exhibition. The installation is elegant and thoughtfully spaced allowing the viewer to appreciate each item, however, the back story linking concept and resolution becomes almost intrusive, detracting from the clever intricacies of artwork itself.