Traditional symbols are an essential part of much contemporary Aboriginal art. Aboriginal peoples have long artistic traditions within which they use conventional designs and symbols. These designs when applied to any surface, whether it is on the body of a person taking part in a ceremony or on a shield, have the power to transform the object to one with religious significance and power. Through the use of ancestrally inherited designs, artists continue their connections to country. Body decoration using ancestral designs is an important part of many ceremonies. In central Australia inherited designs are painted onto the face and body using ochres ground to a paste with water and applied in stripes or circles. The modern paintings of the Central and Western Desert are based on these designs.While the most commonly used symbols are relatively simple, they can be used in elaborate combinations to tell more complex stories.
As well as its essential spiritual and symbolic character, Aboriginal art increasingly has a social and political dimension. Galarrwuy Yunupingu, leader of the Gumatj people, has clearly expressed the importance of art to contemporary Aboriginal culture: “We are painting, as we have always done, to demonstrate our continuing link with our country and the rights and responsibilities we have to it.... Our painting is a political act.”
References:
www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/ hutchinson/m0039821.html
is a term used to describe the spiritual, natural and moral order of the cosmos in Aboriginal culture. The Dreaming provides the ideological framework by which Aboriginal society retains a harmonious equilibrium with the universe. The is not a concept which relates to a period of a 'golden age' of the past. Time is not understood in terms of a continuum in Aboriginal culture; rather life is understood as a series of interrelated cycles through which the creatures of the Dreaming are still present. The Dreaming tells of the journey and the actions of Ancestral Beings who created the natural world. The Dreaming is infinite and links the past with the present to determine the future. It is the natural world, especially the land or county to which a person belongs, which provides the link between the people and The Dreaming. Dreaming stories carry the truth from the past, together with the code for the Law, which operates in the present. Each story belongs to a long complex story. Some Dreaming stories discuss consequences and our future being.
Aboriginal art was made for purely cultural reasons and was only able to be created or viewed by people initiated to the proper level of knowledge or understanding. More recently, there has emerged work that has been made consciously to be seen by the non-initiated or for commercial purposes. However, irrespective of whether the art is for private ceremonial purposes or is for the public, it remains inspired by the traditional marks and symbols from the . The materials used are varied and have ranged from rock engravings and paintings through works on bark, wooden sculpture to ephemeral paintings on sand, on human bodies and on headdresses or other materials.
Contemporary Aboriginal art is informed by a seemingly elusive concept. The Dreaming is both the creation epoch in which the world was formed, the Aboriginal equivalent of Genesis, as well as the spiritual dimension of contemporary Aboriginal life, which is accessed through ceremonial performance meant to reinvest the world with creative energy, renewing plants and animals, and bringing the rains.
The Dreaming is the underpinning of all Aboriginal culture, from ritual to contemporary art. No matter how seemingly abstract Aboriginal paintings may appear, they all have an underlying narrative based on mythological creation stories referred to as Dreamings.
References:
www.aboriginalartonline.com/culture/land.html
