Yan Bani / Always Here

Curating Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia has been a powerful cultural and professional journey for me. My curatorial practice usually sees me focus primarily on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art from Australia. This major exhibition’s tour broadened my focus and expanded my cultural sharing with audiences in the Asia-Pacific region. With the first venue in Australia at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Boorloo/Perth in 2021, I wanted to deepen local understandings of First Peoples’ art and culture. For the National Gallery Singapore in 2022, there was an entry-level requirement to offer new teachings. Now, for audiences in neighbouring Aotearoa, I have worked closely with and learned enormously from Nathan Pōhio, kaitiaki matua, toi Māori, senior curator, Māori art, and Te Arepa Morehu, pouarataki kaupapa Māori, head of kaupapa Māori. As an Aboriginal woman, engaging with, listening to and learning from Māori leaders and representatives in Aotearoa has been critical to the exhibition. Good relationships foster mutual respect and ensure cultural protocols are followed and exchanged.

With Ever Present I share some familiar and perhaps some new stories and artworks. The artists in the exhibition offer personal and communal stories from historical and contemporary expressions, experiences, events and perspectives. Much like Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki’s major exhibition Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art (2020), curated by Nigel Borell, I hope this exhibition opens conversations and also that audiences draw parallels with the Māori experience.

Ever Present reveals that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the world’s oldest living continuous culture.¹ We believe we came from the country now called Australia, not from over land or sea. Our oral histories, stories, art and performance tell of the time before time, before light, before life. We tell of how our Ancestors and immortal creation beings formed all living things, as well as Country,² culture, lore and beliefs,³ the stars, the seasons, animals, plants, landscapes and waterways – all intertwined and coexisting through cultural knowledge and presence. Our Ancestors created the over 300 different cultural language groups in Aboriginal Australia, as well as the distinct culture and languages of the Zenadth Kes/Torres Strait Islands, which lie in the waters between Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Our Ancestors laid down the foundations for who we are, creating an enduring identity and establishing our families, Communities,⁴ complex kinship systems and ways of behaving and interacting with each other. It is this continuity through time, space and place that connects and informs First Peoples today. Our artistic expression in all its forms – art, dance, song, film and writing – conveys and reinforces our identity, which evolves over time through collective experience and individual innovation.

Ever Present is a survey of historical and contemporary works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from different cultural groups across Australia. Drawn from the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and The Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art, the works bridge people and place and are interconnected through story and experience. They are testament to First Peoples’ identity, resilience, pride, diversity and strength, and our ongoing links to Country, family, Community, culture and history.

The artworks in the exhibition are a small sample of the richness and diversity of cultural and artistic expression by the First Peoples of Australia. Works are arranged into six overarching and interlinked themes: Ancestors + Creators; Country + Constellations; Community + Family; Culture + Ceremony;
Trade + Influence; Resistance + Colonisation.

Ancestors + Creators considers the time immemorial connection between First Nations people, our Ancestors and creation beings; how they continue to govern people’s lives, and our role in caring for Country, each other and cultural practice. Anmatyerre artist Emily Kam Kngwarray,⁵ the most significant Aboriginal woman artist to date, paints her Ancestral stories relating to plant life aboveground and below in her desert Country. Her epic work Yam awely, 1995 maps the life cycle of the anooralya yam plant, with the cracked earth above mirroring the growth paths of the fat, ripe yams and the intertwined and complex network of roots below. Knowing where these important food sources are, and when and how to harvest them, is vital to survival for Communities in central Australia.

The works in Country + Constellations focus on artists’ relationships to land and the importance of and connection to waterways and the night sky. For First Nations people – living on or off Country,⁶ or those connected through generational ties – knowing where our Ancestors come from is integral to our identity. Painted from memory after being relocated from her traditional homelands as a young adult, Kaiadilt artist Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori’s work Dibirdibi Country, 2012 is an aerial view of Bentinck Island in the South Wellesley Islands group in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland.

Artists also have a strong connection with the night skies and create works that show how the stars and constellations were formed by Ancestors, and the ways in which they still inform ceremony and cultural and navigation practices today Tiwi artist Timothy Cook’s work Kulama, 2010, represents a coming-of-age initiation ceremony which is performed to coincide with the time that the wild yam is harvested. The ceremony takes place in the late wet season (September to October) when a ring appears around Japarra (the moon). By painting this ceremony, Cook strengthens and reinforces his spirituality and identity.

The theme Community + Family features works that convey artists’ generational relations or newly formed family and Community connections and gives a voice to First Nations people past and present. Representations of family and Community are important for challenging stereotypes about what it means to be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. By reclaiming representation, artists change and direct the conversation about identity. Western Arrarnta artist Albert Namatjira, the most significant Aboriginal male artist, paints his connection to sites out in Country. By using the introduced Western watercolour technique, works like Quarta Tooma – Ormiston Gorge, 1939 are representative of and central to his Community’s identity. Badimaya artist Julie Dowling’s poignant work Self-portrait: in our country, 2002 shows her intergenerational connections to Community and family as she sits out in her Country.

Larrakia artist Gary Lee re-creates colonial photographs of Aboriginal people taken by white photographers documenting a ‘dying race’. In Shaba, 2006 (from the series Nice Coloured Boys), he uses his nephew as a model, photographing him in a contemporary outdoor setting to reclaim the way Aboriginal people have been historically captured and to reaffirm Aboriginal identity.

Culture + Ceremony reflects the ongoing connection to cultural practice that some artists have and also of those Communities who through colonisation had their culture and ceremony taken, denied and destroyed. Artists are actively reconnecting with, reclaiming and reviving culture, and creating new ceremonies that reflect their identities and life’s journeys. The significant 19th century artist Wurundjeri/Woiwurung man William Barak drew and painted from memory with many of his works depicting life before colonisation, as seen in Corroboree, 1895. Historical works like these become visual time stamps – a crucial record of a time and place, and documentation of ceremonies no longer performed and cultural objects that nearly disappeared. Possum skin cloaks seen in the drawing have been revived by artists today because of these early references. Pakana senior practitioner Lola Greeno’s shell-stringing practice, which has a continuity going back hundreds of generations on her mother’s side, reinforces her identity and culture. Her work Blue Ceremonial King Maireener necklace, 2020 also talks about climate change and its effects on the availability and growth of the shells she uses in her works – the rare king and queen pink-tipped Maireener shells are now found in only one place.

A number of works in the exhibition were created by different Community Ancestors whose names were not recorded or who are not specifically identified. These artists have been reclaimed and renamed ‘Ancestor’ to reflect their connection and importance to a known Community today. They continue to be a powerful representation of the old people and the old ways. Displaying the Zenadth Kes/Torres Strait Islander 19th-century Mask – ‘collected’ and hidden away for over a century – enables Communities today to reconnect and be inspired. Kala Lagaw Ya artist Alick Tipoti is actively engaging with and being influenced by old works in museums and galleries, remaking works in innovative ways. As the turtle is a protected species and cannot now be sold, Tipoti has ingeniously used fibreglass and paint to replicate the look of the shell, thereby continuing and creating anew a cultural and ceremonial practice.

The Trade + Influence section of Ever Present considers artists and Communities whose works reflect traditional trade routes and influences throughout the Australian continent, as well as the inspiration from outsiders through international trade and exchange. Young Yawuru artist Sebastian Arrow’s carved pearl shell Jalinyi – Lacepede Shell Patches, 2017 is an ongoing record of a cultural object that was traded across Country into the desert areas. As these objects travelled from the west to the east coast, their importance and use changed from public to ceremonial wear. Although no longer traded in the traditional way, their carved and ochred inlaid designs of concentric geometric patterns can still be seen in contemporary art today. Likewise, the centuries long trade and influence of the seafaring Makassan people of Indonesia can be seen in Tiwi artist Andrina Kantilla’s Batik textile, 1989, which demonstrates the uptake of making batik textiles by women in northern and central Communities over a century later.

Finally, the works in Resistance + Colonisation reclaim, reveal, retell, contest and rewrite the colonial history and nation-building narrative of Australia from a First Peoples’ perspective. Kudjla/Gangalu/Kuku Yalanji/Jagara/Wangerriburra/Bandjalung artist Daniel Boyd’s iconic painting Treasure Island, 2005 highlights the 300-plus language groups throughout Australia prior to colonisation and also signifies how the British considered Australia a treasure to capture and exploit. This painting is both a reminder of history and loss, and a proud statement about cultural resilience. Kamilaroi/Gummaroi artist Reko Rennie’s symbolic painting Message Stick (Green), 2011 shows not only the connections of his cultural designs considered to have been traded from the west, but also the influence graffiti had on him. His clever tongue-in-cheek reference to the spray can is a representation of a new type of message stick, which traditionally was a small carved wooden object used like a passport by messengers to safely travel through other people’s Country. This physically and symbolically enables him to resist and subvert, and to spread his cultural message another way.

First Peoples’ art and culture is old, rich, dynamic, diverse and engaging in all its facets and different forms of expression. It reflects the individuals and the societies we associate and identify with, and embodies the strength, resilience and pride of artists and their Communities. It demonstrates that despite colonisation’s ongoing generational effects on First Peoples, we still have many stories to tell. Our art reflects intertwined historical and contemporary narratives and experiences in Australia today.

Ever Present is a celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art which does not shy away from referencing Australia’s complex histories. The artworks you will experience could be homed in one, many or all of the exhibition’s themes, and reflect cultural and historical interconnections. They challenge stereotypes about First Nations people and what and who defines our art. The artists contest populist views of Australian history, using art as a tool of resistance and replacing physical weaponry with wit, satire and juxtaposition to confront viewers and encourage conversations that are essential in dispelling dangerous myths and ideologies. Just as our Ancestors forged paths for future generations to express our culture and stories confidently and creatively through art, these artists leave a legacy for all.

To understand the richness, diversity and depth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and culture would take many generations, many lifetimes, but to appreciate it only takes a moment. Together, the artists and their works powerfully reinforce that we always have been and always will be ever present.

This essay was first published in Auckland Art Gallery's Art Toi Magazine, July 2023.

Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia is on display at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand 29 July to 29 October 2023.

Presented by the National Gallery of Australia and Wesfarmers Arts in partnership with Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and supported by the Australian Government.