The Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

rubber, also follows practices dating from the 1930s, when the Yolngu began to recover steel and iron from shipwrecks to create spear blades. In the exhibition, a group of sculptural larrakitj (memorial poles), painted with traditional rarrk patterning, frame Ganambarr’s etched steel and corrugated iron wall works. The poles, with their undulating surfaces and uneven shapes, shift and move to offer flashes of the shimmering works beyond. Gunybi Ganambarr’s use of metal, with its reflective potential, extends upon the tradition of rarrk on objects and bodies to communicate the importance of places and animate the stories of their creation. Installed alongside are three works using discarded conveyor belt rubber from the bauxite mine. The positioning of these works recalls the conveyor belts used to transport minerals from Yolngu land over the past 50 years. Painted with precise patterns in ochres and sand, and incised with designs signifying important places and objects, they are reminiscent of the historic, intricately painted Yirrkala bark petitions illustrating Yolngu law and connections to land, which were tabled in the Australian Parliament in 1963. 13 In a recent conversation, Ganambarr, a young man cognisant of how the hard-won rights of his people have been eroded over the past half century, shared with QAGOMA curator Diane Moon his intention that his works carry the fragments and colours of his earth to APT8’s international audience, to tell this history. 14 Created by Bougainville artist Taloi Havini and photographer Stuart Miller, the large-scale portraits from the ‘Blood Generation’ series 2009–11 are crystalline in the depiction of their young protagonists and the environment around Bougainville. Significantly, this includes the devastated landscape of the now dormant Panguna mine, the heart of the bloody conflict between the peoples of Bougainville, the Papua New Guinean government, and its Australian-backed mining interests (1988–2000). 15 ‘Blood 98—99 WHERE DOWE COME FROM? WHAT ARE WE? WHERE ARE WE GOING?