ABORIGINAL ART By: Michael Frye

ROCK PAINTING Australian Indigenous art is the oldest unbroken tradition of art in the world. The oldest firmly dated rock art painting in Australia is a charcoal drawing on a rock fragment found during the excavation of the Narwala Gabarnmang rock shelter in south western Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Dated at 28,000 years, it is one of the oldest known pieces of rock art on Earth with a confirmed date. Narwala Gabarnmang is considered to have one of the most extensive collections of rock art in the world and predates both Lascaux and Chauvet cave art, the earliest known art in Europe by at least 10,000 year. Rock art, including painting and engraving or carving, can be found at sites throughout Australia. Rock paintings appear on caves in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, known as Bradshaws. They are named after the European, Joseph Bradshaw, who first reported them in 1891; to Aboriginal people of the region they are known as Gwion Gwion or Giro. Other painted rock art sites include Laura, Queensland, Ubirr, in the Kakadu National Park, Uluru, and Carnarvon Gorge.

FACTS Aboriginal art is based on important ancient stories: even contemporary Aboriginal art, is based on stories (Jukurrpa) and symbols centred on 'the Dreamtime' – the period in which Indigenous people believe the world was created. The Dreamtime stories are up to and possibly even exceeding 50,000 years old, and have been handed down through the generations virtually unchanged for all those years.

LANGUAGE OF THE ART Aboriginal art also stands as a written language: Aboriginal art is a major part of the unwritten 'encyclopedia' of being an Aboriginal person and as such it may have many layers of meaning. Australian Aboriginal people have no written language of their own, and so the important stories central to the people's culture are based on the traditional icons (symbols) and information in the artwork, which go hand in hand with recounted stories, dance or song, helping to pass on vital information and preserve their culture

PAINTING STORY Paintings are also used for teaching: A painting (in effect a visual story) is often used by the aboriginal people for different purposes, and the interpretations of the iconography (symbols) in the artwork can vary according to the audience. So the story may take one form when told to children, and a very different and higher level form when speaking to initiated elders. The stories behind many of the artworks when related to children have a strong educational and behavioural aspect – a bit like a combination of western encyclopedias and Aesops Fables where there can be information and/or a moral to the story where good or bad behaviour and consequences are highlighted

DOT PAINTING Dot paintings vary from the finest of minute marks neatly arranged on the canvas to the wild multi-coloured large dotting of some of the desert women. Some artists merge their dots into lines, or even into wide areas of connecting dots which have more of a stippled effect than a 'dotted' appearance. The defining criterion for a dot painting is the technique used - that it is produced by repeated imprints of a paint covered brush, dotting stick or other implement onto the surface of the painting and that in doing so, there are recognisable 'dot' marks on the canvas.