Art in Balgo

Art in Balgo, as in most Aboriginal communities had its origins in the ritual life of the people. In the desert, ceremonial designs on the desert floor were created in the sand for particular ceremonies. As many of these ceremonies were secret to those who participated, they were usually abandoned or destroyed at the end of the event.

Ceremonial objects such as churingas were often carved as were functional objects such as boomerangs, message sticks and didgeridoos. People painted each other's bodies with clay in designs particular to ritual and ceremonial events. Both men and women have separate rituals (Men's business and Women's business) and so each have separate body designs and secret meaning systems. Other rituals were shared across the communities.

At the heart of all ritual was the people's relationship with the land. For Aboriginal people their existence and future as a people is inextricably linked with keeping up a right relationship with their country. Their ancestors dwell in the waterholes, in the hills and under the earth. They were transformed in the Dreamtime (Tjukurrpa) into animals and the landscape, to be reborn again in the people. Keeping faith with the ancestors is the most sacred obligation of each person and each group. This is done ritually, through story, dance and art.

These are the principal source of the designs and symbols in Balgo art that is made in the community and marketed today across Australia and overseas.

Essentially though, Balgo art, like all Aboriginal art is a political statement about the spiritual relationship of the people with the land. It is directed to the Kartiya as a reminder that at the heart of this great land and responsible for it are a people who are descendants of an ancestor people who still dwell in this country and who have left their mark on its surface.

Because they tell the story of the land and those who dwell in it, Balgo paintings (and others) often look like an aerial view of the country, a particular kind of map of the land. That is often the top 'layer' and looks rather like what you see from a small plane as it flies over their part of the landscape. Another layer is the theme or the story which the painting tells. To understand this story beyond its general clues, you need to listen to the artist or read the explanation that often accompanies the work.

But like all good stories, these have many meanings and often shift meaning depending on the teller and what the holder of the story wants to reveal to the listener. Sometimes a part of a story is so deep or sacred that it is never spoken about. In Aboriginal art this is sometimes spoken of as the 'closed' area or layer. Often a small section is 'closed', sometimes the whole work, at other times men's business will be revealed only to men and women's to women.

Reading the works

All great art is layered and reveals itself slowly to the initiated. This is as true for Aboriginal art as it is for the work of artists such as Picasso, Michaelangelo and Frida Kahlo in the Western tradition.

Although Balgo art looks quite abstract and without subject matter, it is important to remember that it is almost always narrative art, i.e. art which tells a story. The marks and designs are like codes - they hold meaning and convey the story to those who can understand the language. Here are some clues to this language, although many of the meanings change from painting to painting and from region to region:

• waterhole, soak, hill, resting place, place where ancestors rested,
• 'string', ancestor journey, route
• people tracks
• bird tracks
• animal tracks
• woman sitting
• man sitting
• people behind a windbreak

View the list of Balgo Artists and their works featured on the Lore of the Land CD-ROM.

Kutjungka

Balgo Artists

Gunditjmara

Andy Alberts
Uncle Banjo Clarke
Brett Clarke
Richard Frankland
Shane Howard
Lee Morgan
Neil Murray
Archie Roach
Tiddas