Roots and remnants

Aboriginal Art belongs to the oldest continuos art-traditions in the world and its history goes back to more than 50000 years, but was ignored until the second half of the 20 century.

Today aboriginal art is often considered as being the world’s last great art movement. While the cross-hatched barks of Arnhem Land and the multi-layered dot paintings of Central Australia have become the most widely known of the aboriginal art forms, they are only two among a range as diverse as the people who create it and the vast Australian landscape itself.

Until the start of this movement in the early 1970s, especially in the Central and Western Desert areas, Aboriginal culture had been in danger of being almost entirely subsumed by European civilisation due to massacres, as well as decimation through introduced diseases and altered way of life. More recently, alcohol and other drugs, and poor European diet have become major health risks.

A few decades earlier, another dangerous seed had been planted. Between 1940 and 1960 under the Australian government’s assimilation policy, the aim of which was to rehabilitate Aboriginal people for inclusion in European society, a number of programs was implanted. One such program consisted in removing Aboriginal children not of full blood from their homes to be brought up in foster homes or orphanages; another was to set up, in the Central desert regions, a number of Aboriginal-only communities to join those already established by missionaries. To form these settlements (many of which later became important art-producing communities) people were literally rounded up from their tribal lands. Little thought or consideration was given to the effects of forcing those of different tribal heritage to live in close proximity, while the imposition of restrictions of movement prevented people from fulfilling important cultural and food-gathering journey’s.

A similar dislocation to that experienced by the Central and Western desert people was imposed upon those of the vast Western Australian region of the Kimberley.
In Australia’s Top End (Arnhem Land, the Tiwi Islands and the Torres Strait Islands), the government and missionary presence was less restrictive, with people often able to continue to live close to their land and maintain their belief systems while at times also incorporating Christianity. This was particularly so in the 150 000-square kilometre Arnhem Land region, which became an Aboriginal reserve in 1931.

The growth towards Aboriginal control of communities has been accompanied by a unique art development, where the practice of new means of visual representation has come to be one of the most constructive aspects of daily life.