The Visual Indigenous Language that Communicates Cultural Life.

First published on Medium.

I published this on the blog platform, Medium, but only subscribers can read there (it’s worth the small subscription, by the way, as there is a huge variety of good quality work on there), so I decided I’d also post it here for my reguklar visitors.

I’m resident in the UK, but my daughter went to work in Australia after finishing uni, to gain some world and career experience. There, she met, fell in love with, and married a great Aussie guy. Last Xmas, they visited us, bringing Chris, his mother, with them. They gave us a present of a piece of original artwork by the Aboriginal artist, Linda Huddleston, who now lives in Canberra. She’s connected to the Ngardi language group in the Roper River region of East Arnhem Land on her father’s side and the Wiradjuri people of NSW are connected through her mother’s people from Talbragar, Dubbo. Linda also has a connection to her grandmother, who, when still a baby, was taken from her birthplace in the Tanami desert of Central Australia and adopted into the Ngardi way of life.

After the bombing of Darwin 1941, her grandparents and father had to move from Groote Eylandt to Mulgoa, near Warragamba Dam, as part of a government policy aimed at forcing Aboriginal people to assimilate into mainstream society.

Chris also made me a present of a book she’d brought with her, ‘Spirits of the Ghan’ by Judy Nunn, a novel set against the background of the construction of the last part of the Ghan railway, a line joining Adelaide with Darwin. Among other threads, the story deals empathetically with the often-difficult topic of the more recent Australian population’s relationship with and attitudes to the indigenous Aboriginal people, who’ve occupied the land for at least 40,000 years (the first European immigrants arrived mostly as convicts in 1788). The story also reveals aspects of the Aboriginal culture that enlighten the reader.

As a result, I became curious about the meanings of the symbols painted on the artwork from Linda Huddleston. Amongst other elements, the painting above shows references to a campsite, connected waterholes, water, smoke or fire, and a star. That’s a simplistic interpretation, however, as the symbols are often used in elaborate combinations to tell a complex story. There’s no written language, but the aboriginal symbols form a visual language which communicates information relating to cultural life.

Today’s artists usually depict a ‘story’ that non-indigenous viewers can enjoy as decoration, whist those with the appropriate level of knowledge will more fully understand the story actually being told. Certain information was deliberately presented in the form of dots in order to obscure the meanings of some symbols from those not aware of the actual sense they convey.

Apparently, there’s also an ‘etiquette’ surrounding the reproduction of art produced by Aboriginal painters, restricting presentation to reduce concerns about theft of images. For that reason I’ve reproduced only part of the original work here. I needed to strike a balance between potentially causing the artist a problem and displaying her work to show others the beauty of it. But I think viewers will gain a good idea of the whole work.

For those who’d like to explore this topic more fully, you’ll find these links useful: 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, and 4 here.