The Art of George Milpurrurru

Aboriginal art today has many 'looks'. Yet people often ask how a work can be truly Aboriginal if it is not in traditional media. Why is a painting in acrylics on canvas — a Iino print, or a piece of screenprinted fabric — Aboriginal art and not just Australian art? Is a bark painting more 'Aboriginal' than a work in more 'modern' media?

The ease with which most Gallery visitors accept as Aboriginal the bark paintings in George Milpurrurru's exhibition can obscure the fact that his reasons for painting have much in common with those of artists whose work looks quite different, such as Karen Casey, Fiona Foley, Tracey Moffatt and many others working in contemporary media.

George Milpurrurru is one of the group that conceived the idea of the Aboriginal Memorial, displayed in the Gallery. The 200 replicas of hollow log coffins are of traditional media, yet refer to contemporary as well as age-old concerns. The work honours all Aborigines who died fighting for their country during 200 years since white settlement — without benefit of funeral rites. It is clearly a political statement as much as an aesthetic or a religious one.

A sense of anger and loss pervades also in Karen Casey's Feral cat. A feral creature is one that has ceased to be domesticated or safe. Either of the two figures in the painting may have reverted to the wild. A pale, unclothed woman, almost a doll shape, seems to float in an environment that could be the sea. There are red streaks or wounds on her body and on the teeth and paws of the dark creature that emerges from shadow at her side. Her mouth is open, screaming — in fear, rage, or pain.

Soul fish by Fiona Foley shows what could be a hand stencil on a cave wall — the gracile shape suggesting a woman's hand. Its placement near the remains of a fish suggests that she is reaching out for something that once was there but is now a fossil, and a damaged one too. The fossil and stencil relate to rock and therefore to land — an enduring concern for all Aboriginal people whose spiritual bond with a particular area or region of Australia is their essential characteristic.

Tracey Moffatt's photograph from the series Something more shows people in a landscape. The artist is the central character — a young woman. The scene appears as a painted stage where events have occurred or are about to occur. We are left wondering what the story is about. The young woman seems to be wondering too — does life hold something more than the unexplained things going on around her?

Tracey Moffatt prefers to be thought of simply as an artist, without any other label. A similar view is growing among some Aborigines that the labels 'Aboriginal Australian' and 'European Australian' should be dropped — that, in a multicultural Australia, 'this is how an Australian looks' whether one is of indigenous background or a migrant. Similarly, with art made by Australians of whatever cultural or geographical background — 'this is how Australian art looks'.

The Gallery displays art produced by Aborigines which can be regarded as endorsing the latter statement — throughout the chronological display in the Fred Williams Galleries of Australian Art, and honoured in the first gallery as an appropriate introduction to the National Gallery of Australia.

Aboriginal artists, like artists everywhere, have always used materials that are around them in order to make their statements. In Arnhem Land today bark is still readily available, while in a city studio canvas and acrylics, or a camera or a printing press, are more readily available than bark. We can enjoy the superb bark paintings of George Milpurrurru for many reasons, and one of them is that they have messages and meanings that are of contemporary and age-old concern as relevant to living in Arnhem Land today as are the messages in works that look totally different. In Aboriginal art, at least, the medium is not the message.

Margaret Brandl
Former Head of Education