The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

Astronger spring for David– toas for amodern age 1994 (detail: To supersede camp dogs on cold desert nights) Feathers, electrical conduit, metal heater elements, cotton thread, synthetic polymer paint Collection: Queensland Art Gallery ... It appears that for many years David worked the agricultural shows in rural areas. In a sideshow tent, he ·erected a spring upon which a steel ball would fall. The steel ball would bounce back up but not quite as high as the point from whence it came ... David would explain to the audience his theory of perpetual motion and then pass around the hat, suggesting that if people were to give him some money he could then buy a stronger spring-hence the title of my piece. 1 The humour evident in the quote above appeals to Lin Onus, whose own work is charged with a similar wit and confidence. Onus, a descendent of the Yorta Yorta people, is a mid-career artist who lives and works on the outskirts of Melbourne, Victoria. In A stronger spring for David -toas for a modern age 1994 he pays homage to recently acknowledged Aboriginal inventor, David Unaipon, whose image appears on the fifty dollar note. The spring and ball are the focus of this installation. It is surrounded by thirty-four toas or land markers, 120 ART I STS : PACI FI C installed in ten groups which incorporate found objects such as electrical conduit, bicycle pedals, telephone components and a typewriter. Through the construction of toas, Onus also pays homage to the inventiveness and creativity of the traditional Diyari people from the Lake Eyre district in South Australia, who are attributed with the construction of the enigmatic toas (direction markers) collected around the turn of the century. 2 Like a 'cultural mechanic', 3 Lin Onus welds together these disparate elements from Aboriginal and European sources with panache, wit and a gentle irreverence. Aboriginal people are intent on correcting the history of Australia as written by the colonisers, reinserting Aboriginal perspectives and reclaiming identity. Part of this process is to dismantle the belief that Aboriginal people were the passive recipients of introduced concepts and technologies, just as they were believed to be passive victims of the invaders. Such a convenient belief was challenged in the exhibition 'Perpetual Motion: Aboriginal Strategies for Rejigging Art and Technology', mounted by Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute and the South Australian Museum. A stronger spring for David– toas for a modern age was commissioned for this exhibition, becoming the pivotal piece. Simplistic notions about the purity of Aboriginal culture and its perceived contamination by Westernisation is confronted and replaced with the fact that Aboriginal people survived enormous dislocation through an innate ability to adapt to a changing environment and to inventively synthesise two world views. It 'affirms the view that Aboriginal people have always seized opportunities for cultural revitalisation, and creatively and fluently incorporated foreign elements into their cultural milieu'. 4 Onus is able to open new ground and explore the terrritory between the lessons of the past and the realities of the present with humour. To become caught up in too serious a reading of the work would be to deny its real intent as a capricious observation of the new totems of urban life. The elevation of urban artefacts to the status of suburban icons creates a light-hearted dialogue with traditional totemic structures. Viewers can walk through clusters of toas which recall the groups of log coffins in Canberra, known as the Aboriginal Memorial. Both establish sites of memory where an unseen presence from the past intersects with the urban realities of the present. This playfulness is the kind of witty irreverence associated with the surrealists and has become part of Onus's expression of his urban existence. He describes how, 'in flights of fancy', he invented his own stories for some of the toas: 'He ... amused himself with imagining that the fan heater toas (numbers 27, 29) might be used to supersede camp dogs on cold desert nights.' 5 Its placement in the Triennial within the Pacific sphere reveals an essential difference between two indigenous cultures within the same region: one's prime ancestral connection to the sea, the other to the land. It should be noted that Onus is one of a growing number of artists who prefer their work to be viewed as contemporary Australian art, beyond the confines of Aboriginal art. Margo Neale, Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, Queensland Art Gallery 1 Lin Onus, letter to Doreen Mellor, dated Melbourne,20 June 1994, in the possessionof Doreen Mellor, Adelaide. Johann Reuther, aLutheran pastor, collected approximately 400 toas between 1890 and 1905 around the Killalpaninna mission. See Philip Jones and Peter Sutton. ArtandLand: Aboriginal Sculptures of the Lake Eyre Region, University of South Australia Art Museum, Adelaide, 1986.The inventive appearance of the toas raised questions ofauthenticityalso addressed by Onus in his installation. Phrase coined by Michael Eather,Campfire Group, Brisbane. 4 Doreen Mellor, Perpetual Motion. AboriginalStrategies for Rejigging Artand Technology [exhibition catalogue], Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide, 1994 Lin Onus