My country, I still call Australia home: Contemporary art from Black Australia

out of a performative responsibility to acknowledge elders as the holders of cultural authority and, by implication, their inextricable relationship with country. The present-day communication mores of reciprocity when visiting other peoples’ country has its origins in practices that are embedded in our society — such as silence, the use of sign language and ceremonial performance. In an era when our people were rounded up and dumped on missions or reserves, sometimes far away from their traditional lands, senior members of the community would sometimes not speak on another person’s country for a period of time. Sign language was employed to communicate — and still today it is common practice for our people to signal to each other — conveying a message as clear as the spoken word. Over the past few decades, right around Australia, our elder artists, such as the desert doyenne, the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, have skillfully navigated the maintenance and translation of sacred cultural protocols in a contemporary, public context. The late and highly esteemed Wik–Mungkan artist Arthur Koo- ekka Pambegan Jr was a member of the Winchanam ceremonial group. Unusually for the time, young Arthur was able to circumvent the Presbyterian mission regime that separated children from their parents and receive tuition in traditional knowledge due to the respect in which his father Arthur Pambegan Sr was held. It was during this time he learned the techniques for creating ceremonial sculptures using materials harvested from his country. The array of stylised flying foxes in Flying Fox Story Place 2002–03 relates to Pambegan Jr’s country and the sacred totemic site, Kalben, in Cape York. A transgression of initiation customs by two ancestral brothers began a series of transformations in the landscape and heavens, and still today the brothers may be seen in the Milky Way. Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Senior summed up the legacy of our pioneering artists when he urged his son and artistic heir: ‘carry it on, so the story will never die . . . They are our clan designs, not to give away, not to die away’. 2 The ‘landscape’ of the celestial realm is a powerful source of creative inspiration. Timothy Cook’s Kulama paintings represent the wet season phase of the moon’s cycle when a glowing halo cast by the ancestor Japara appears. For the Tiwi people, this signals the time of initiation activity and harvest. While the arrival of missionaries greatly affected Tiwi ceremonial life, contemporary art plays a vital role in maintaining their cultural inheritance. Larry Jungarrayi Spencer and Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson’s Yanjilypiri Jukurrpa (Star Dreaming) 1987 also draws on epic deeds in the ancestral past. Employing distinctive Warlpiri iconography, this painting weaves together star motifs with the designs of ceremonial grounds. The inherent role of many of these narrative works is to provide instruction for younger generations, and to warn of the dangers of transgressing traditional protocols. The sentient power of country and the spirits who reside within it is not to be underestimated. Still today, trespassing on another’s country is a reckless and dangerous act. It is customary in many parts of Australia to be formally ‘introduced’ to country by traditional custodians, which can take the form of an exchange of sweat or a baptismal dousing so the land will accept or sense one as a countryman or woman and not make the newcomer sick. Almost invariably, senior community members will walk ahead at a special site, calling to their ancestral spirits so they will recognise and not harm the visitors. It is in this context that the ‘Welcome to country’ has evolved; and it is a culturally appropriate means of brokering a social engagement with another community by formally recognising their ties to their homelands in the contemporary world. It is a matter of no small concern that there has been the inevitable invasion of anti-political correctness creeping in to this profoundly symbolic gesture of respect, particularly in areas where the Western legal criteria used to determine Native Title rights dispossesses the traditional custodians from any other form of public recognition. The criticism of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott that the protocol is merely a ‘genuflection to political correctness’ could be equally applied to singing the national anthem. How many Australians know all the words of the anthem, and how many really believe that we are a nation ‘young and free’? The ‘Welcome’ is an appropriate way of reiterating the message that Australia is home to the oldest continuous cultural tradition in the world, as a counterpoint to the endless parade of men on horses immortalised in bronze that line our city streets. We don’t express our ties to country by parading about on its surface; our connection runs deeper — indelibly and mostly intangibly. It is in art that these connections come to the surface: vividly and undeniably persuasively. Our country speaks through our culture. Continuing forms of cultural inscription, including body painting and ceremonial ground designs, acutely embody the related physiognomy of landscape and the body. Along with painting in modern mediums, these forms of art have been successfully used as evidence in native title hearings. The symbiosis of people and country expressed through culture is brilliantly captured in Judy Watson’s sacred ground beating heart 1989. A nascent human form comprised of a galaxy-like constellation of light Dickie Minyintiri Pitjantjatjara people SA Kanyalakutjina (Euro tracks) (detail) 2011 Synthetic polymer paint on linen Purchased 2011 with funds from Ashby Utting through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation . . . themakingof art is notonlyaway ofcelebratingand rememberingcountry andkin; significantly, itprovidesthemeans tonowreturnto country frequently . . . 26