Art Activity Can you come up with your own personal symbols and draw these in your sketchbook? Examplebecause I am an artist and art teacher.

Aboriginal Culture Native People of Australia

Storytelling through Dance Acting out the movement of people and animals from the Dreamtime stories ers1-LCMA-2005.jpg

Storytelling through Music Didgeridoo Made from bamboo Used in ceremonies, sunsets and funerals er_fuzz_R_350W.jpg

Storytelling through Art Aboriginal people tell stories through their art using symbols

Aboriginal Paintings Australian Art The symbols or icons used in contemporary Aboriginal paintings are the same as those found on cave paintings and rock engravings that were executed tens of thousands of years ago. The designs are traditionally used as body paint decorations for corroborees and as sand paintings for ceremonial purposes.

Aboriginal Paintings Australian Art The art designs vary greatly in style from one area to another, from the art of Far North Queensland with it’s ‘x- ray’ style or ‘crosshatching’ seen on bark paintings, to the ‘dot’ or ‘sand’ paintings of the deserts of Central Australia. Australian Aboriginal culture encompasses a belief in the ‘creation’ or ‘dreaming’ (Jukurrpa) when ancestors roamed the countryside forming rivers, rock formations, waterholes and hills.The ‘stories’ of these times are still celebrated today, using sacred objects, song and dance.

Aboriginal Paintings Australian Art NOTES:The Dreamtime is often reference to the 'time before time', or 'the time of the creation of all things', while 'Dreaming' is often used to refer to an individual's or group's set of beliefs or spirituality. The 'Ancestor Spirits' came to Earth in human and other forms and the land, the plants and animals were given their form as we know them today. These Spirits established relationships between groups and individuals, (whether people or animals) and where they traveled across the land, or came to a halt, they created rivers, hills, etc., and there are often stories attached to these places.

Aboriginal Paintings Australian Art

Aboriginal Paintings Australian Art The Aborigines of Australia have a deep and spiritual association with the land, the sea and the cosmos, as their stories will attest.

Aboriginal Paintings Australian Art

Evidence has shown that the Australian Aboriginals have been in Australia for at least 60,000 years. Over these many thousands of years Australian Aboriginals have used sticks and Echidna quills or spikes to paint their traditional "dreamtime stories".

Australian Art Water Animals

Australian Art

Aboriginal Paintings Australian Art Dot painting is a traditional desert aboriginal art technique. The technique finds its way to many surfaces. Canvas and art board are the major media. But pottery also gets the technique and, in this case, emu eggs. The eggs are punctured on one end and the contents withdrawn. The hollow egg is then painted in dot patterns.

Aboriginal Dot Paintings Australian Art Once their work was done, the Ancestor Spirits changed again; into animals or stars or hills or other objects. For Indigenous Australians, the past is still alive and vital today and will remain so into the future. The Ancestor Spirits and their powers have not gone, they are present in the forms into which they changed at the end of the 'Dreamtime' or 'Dreaming', as the stories tell. The stories have been handed down through the ages and are an integral part of an Indigenous person's 'Dreaming'. e.asp

Why is this artist/culture’s art important? Now go back and write why you think this cultures art is important.

Aboriginal Dot Paintings Australian Art Clifford Possum's Emu Corroboree Man. Photo: Lisa Wiltse

Aboriginal Inspired Paintings

D) Art Detective Question Write a story that is 5 or more sentences that is based off of a piece of Aboriginal art work. (think of the symbols in the art piece)