The wonders of Aboriginal Australian art | Rebecca Hossack | TEDxOxford

Rebecca Hossack is the director of art galleries which champion non-Western artistic traditions, especially Aboriginal Australian art. She has previously served as the Australian cultural attaché in London. She writes regularly in the national press and lectures internationally on Aboriginal art. Her talk focuses on bringing this fascinating and ancient artistic tradition to a wider audience.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Over 30 years ago, in 1987,

I set up a small art gallery in London.

It was a modest affair
in a little shop space in Fitzrovia -

at then, at that time, a bohemian
and rather rundown quarter of London.

The inspiration and impetus
behind this venture

was my desire to show
Aboriginal art in London.

It was at the time relatively unknown.

Astonishingly to say,

and shockingly to say,

when I was born in Melbourne in 1955,

Aboriginal people were not full citizens
of their own country.

They were wards of the state,

and as wards of the state,

they were not able to marry
or to travel without permission.

They were not allowed to own property,

and they were not even legally responsible
for their own children.

And it was not until I was 12

that in 1967, a referendum was held,

and the Australian people voted

that aboriginals could be counted
amongst its citizens.

And yet despite this,

people living in the white -

the white Europeans
living in these coastal cities

were still not interested
in Aboriginal people.

And to them,

they remained largely invisible.

They had no voice,

and they had no one willing to listen.

So, standing in front
of these paintings in Alice Springs,

I was full of a sense of wonder:

How had this happened?

They were postcards from another world.

And although Aboriginal art
was certainly new at that time to me -

and new to many Australians -

it was also old.

Very old.

In fact, it's the oldest continuous
artistic tradition in the world,

stretching back in an unbroken line
some 50,000 years -

far longer than Stonehenge,

than the pyramids of ancient Egypt

or of the caves of Lascaux -

but also, at the same time,
it was very new.

These paintings, the traditional designs,

had been painted on bodies in ceremonies,

using natural ochre.

They had been made
as huge, grand mosaics in the sand

and carved into trees
and painted on rocks.

But they were ephemeral and fugitive.

And, as I realized in Alice Springs,
a huge change had taken place.

In a great act of generosity,

Aboriginal people had set down their art
in a permanent and portable form -

on paper, on canvas.

And what's more,

they had allowed us, uninitiated people,

to see it.

And this was a great
and extraordinary development

that had happened
since I had left the country.

And it had begun in a little place
called Papunya in 1971.

In the '60s, the Australian government,

in an effort to assimilate
the Aboriginals,

had built settlements in the desert,

and they had rounded
up the Aboriginal people

and forced them into
these barbed wire encampments.

Papunya was built for 500 people,

but a thousand Aboriginals
were put in there,

often people from different
language groups

who for millennia had perhaps been at war

and didn't want to live
in close proximity.

People deprived of their right
to roam across the land

and follow their songlines

sat in despair in the sand.

Into this depressing scene of despair,

in 1971,

a young schoolteacher
from New South Wales,

Geoffrey Bardon,

came to take up a post
at the Papunya school.

Geoffrey was entranced by the countryside
that he saw around Papunya

and the beautiful rock formations.

And he was also intrigued

as he watched the schoolchildren
drawing in the sand in their break

and telling stories to one another
using their fingers.

The old men watched his interest,
and they were delighted.

It has to be said

that at that time in Australia
it was almost apartheid.

The European people
working at the settlements -

the health workers, the garage mechanics
and the shopkeepers -

had no truck with the Aboriginals

and no interest
in engaging with them at all.

So Geoffrey's interest was something
really special to the old men.

And encouraged by it,
they started talking to him.

And you see them -

you will see him sitting here
with old Long Tom Onion.

And the men explained to him

how the land had been created
by ancestors in the past.

And Geoffrey suddenly thought,

'This is astonishing.

Why is it that I am teaching
the children Western things

when we're not even acknowledging
this extraordinary culture

of which they are a part?'

And so, in consultation with the old men,

it was decided to paint a mural
on the school wall at Papunya.

The minute the idea
of painting the mural was mooted,

the whole mood of the community changed.

No longer did people sit in despair.

They started excitedly talking
about what would be an appropriate story

to paint on the wall.

Something that could be seen by everybody,

not just the initiated.

And eventually, it was decided
to paint the Honey Ant Mural.

And you see it here, painted in 1971,
on the school wall at Papunya.

Geoffrey had unleashed this torrent.

And all across the desert,
news of it spread like wildfire.

The next community
to take up the paintbrushes

was Yuendumu.

The Warlpiri people there

had been forced to live
in little, hot, tin Porsche cabins

sent up by the government
in an effort to civilize them.

And so their first act
of cultural resurgence

was to paint the doors
of these little hot tin cabins,

although why it was deemed
a civilizing influence

to live in a hot tin box
when it's regularly 40 degrees

I don't know.

But one thing united
these disparate artists,

and that was that the genesis
of all their painting came from the land.

This was something very different
for the white settlers.

The interior of Australia
was regarded as something hostile

and something very, very frightening.

And you can see here

a Western cartographer's view
of the Great Sandy Desert,

a vast, featureless plain:

no distinguishing features,

no mountains, no rocks, no rivers,
no streams and no lakes.

And this is an Aboriginal vision
of exactly the same piece of country.

But it is important also to realise

that Aboriginal culture
is not a single, homogeneous entity.

This is Australia as it was
when first encountered by the European.

And all these different colours
represent different language groups.

Of course, some of them have gone,

but many have remained.

And the art from these different places

is quite as distinctive

as the different languages
and different physical appearances

of the people that live in them.

One of the first exhibitions
I did in my little gallery in Fitzrovia

was by the great Anmatyerre artist
from Papunya, Clifford Possum.

I had met Clifford in a creek bed
on my visit to Alice Springs.

And he was sitting under a tree,

and I said to him,

'Clifford, would you like to have
an exhibition in London?'

He looked at me for a long time,

and then he went, 'Queen.'

And I went, 'Yes, of course.

Of course, you can meet the Queen
if you come to London.'

So he looked at me for a long time,

and then he went, 'Okay.'

I sent him the money for an airfare,

and a year later,

I went to pick him up at Heathrow.

And he arrived in his cowboy hat
and cowboy shirt.

When no sooner had we got in the car
to go back to the gallery,

then he said, 'Queen.'

And of course, I had forgotten my promise
that he could meet the Queen.

But thinking that it would be so exciting
for him to be in London

and if we drove past Buckingham Palace
that would be enough,

so we did.

And as we drove past,

I said, ‘Clifford,
that is where the Queen lives’,

and he went, 'In. In.'

(Laughter)

And then the penny dropped

that I, like generations
of Europeans before me,

had promised something

that I had no intention and no ability
to deliver to an Aboriginal person,

and that he, on the strength
of my promise, had trusted me.

And as an elder of the Anmatyerre people,

he was going to come to Britain
to meet the leader of the British people.

And I realised

he would lose tremendous face
if that was not the case.

That night was the opening
of his exhibition.

It was an astonishing affair.

These extraordinary, beautiful,
mythopoetic canvases

with strange, seemingly abstract designs

coming from the middle of the desert.

People were entranced and intrigued,

and everyone was happy except me.

And my unhappiness
must have shown on my face

because a very nice man
came up to me, and he said,

'What's the matter, Rebecca?

I mean this is a wonderful exhibition.

You should be so happy.'

And I explained to him what I had done.

And he then understood.

The next morning, I was just about to go
and wake up Clifford.

I had not had much sleep,
and I felt so sad about what I had done.

And just before I did so, the phone rang:

‘Good morning, Rebecca.'

It was the nice man
from the evening before.

‘It's George Harwood here,

and I've spoken to my cousin the Queen,

and she would be delighted

(Laughter)

to see you and Clifford at the palace
at two o'clock this afternoon.'

The paintings -

in order for you to understand
the aboriginal paintings,

it's important to know

that although they seem abstract to us

they're not.

They are paradoxically rich
in significant meaning.

And so, a lot of these images are created
as though from an aerial perspective -

as though you were a bird
flying over the land, looking down.

And so, if we were going to have,

or if we were having this talk
in the desert in Australia -

which would be really fun -

you would all be sitting
cross-legged in the sand,

and the imprint of your buttocks
would make a U-shape as seen from above.

So whenever you see
that shape in a painting,

it represents a human presence.

So these paintings, also,

are not just maps
of where to find food and water,

which is incredibly important
for a nomadic people,

but also they are tales
of the creation of the land

and how to live in it.

And that was the subject matter
of the exhibition of Clifford's work.

Now I…

Because of what was
happening in Australia,

it was being observed

that Aboriginal people
were getting a new voice,

a new pride in their work
and in themselves.

And this was not unacknowledged

by other indigenous countries
across the world.

And I was in a very privileged position
to witness this at firsthand.

Because I had worked
an exhibited Aboriginal art,

I started getting requests
from all over the world

to show indigenous groups.

And in the early '90s,
it was a group of Kalahari Bushmen,

from the San people, from Botswana.

They, like the Aboriginals, had started
transferring their ancient designs

into a permanent and portable manner.

So no longer painting on rocks or caves,

but they were painting
on canvas and prints.

And their exhibition in London
was really wonderful.

They had this extraordinary
vision of negative space.

So, often you thought you were looking
at a particular creature,

but it was the space in the background
that really was the important thing.

Now,

in Western art -
art in our Western culture -

art has a special status,

and, indeed, it has a special place.

But it can sometimes seem
like an aesthetic add-on -

something that's not really as important
as the business of living.

But in tribal indigenous cultures,

art is absolutely at the heart of things.

It is central

to the political, the personal,
the social and the sacred.

It is indivisible from society.

This is the painting I wanted to show you.

In indigenous society,

art is indivisible from life.

And some of these paintings now

are not just beautiful,
extraordinary objects;

they are also legal documents.

And on this painting,

you see the artists from Fitzroy Crossing.

When they came to visit me,

I said, 'What would you like to do?'

And they said,

'We would like to go and see
where the trouble started.'

I said, 'What do you mean
where the trouble started?'

And they said,

'We would like to go and see
where Captain Cook came from.'

And so we went to Whitby on the train,
and it was an extraordinary journey.

And when they saw Captain Cook's
simple, little wooden chair

and his little, simple house,

they went, 'Okay, now we understand.

He was just like us.'

And it was an amazing visit.

But here they are,

sitting on a vast painting in the sand.

And I used to be a lawyer,

and many of the people
that went through law school with me

are now judges and barristers.

And they sometimes go out to the desert,

and they sit in their wigs and gowns
around the peripheries of vast paintings

like this.

And one by one,

the artists will stand up
on their bit of the painting,

and they will say,

'I know this is my land.

I can prove it was my land
because it was my grandmother's land,

my great-great grandmother's land,

my great-great-great grandmother's land.

And I know where the water holes are.'

And you can see that there are
many, many circles in this painting,

which represent the water holes.

Now, you'll recall

the Western cartographers’ view
of the Great Sandy Desert,

where the Walmajarri people live.

And there was nothing.

There were no water holes.

But they know how to find them.

Having lived there for millennia,

they know how to find them
and how to look after them.

And, indeed, when the British Parliament
declared Australia 'terra nullius',

uninhabited land,

one of the tenets by which they did so

was the fact that the indigenous people
had no system of land management

or agriculture,

whereas, of course, we know now

that they had a really sophisticated
and extraordinary way of living

in the remarkable and rare
continent that is Australia.

And I think that there's such a -

I love this painting,
and I love the people sitting on it

because you just see their generosity
and their desire to share -

despite the vicissitudes
that we have visited upon them -

their extraordinary culture.

And I do think that through art,

knowledge and power
of indigenous people can be unbound.

But I also think

that as a means of communication,

of sharing knowledge and understanding,

it also can serve to bind us together.

Thank you.

(Applause)