100 years old...

photo by Dey

Being my second time to the State gallery this morning, it was actually a quite different experience. Rather than looking at everything at a glance, this time I actually took the time to really look and read the details of the artworks, especially focusing on those depicting Aboriginal people and those made by them. There were various artworks, ranging from paintings, silver work to sculptures made by the past European settlers to those made by Aboriginal people, such as bark paintings, baskets, shields, grave poles to shell necklaces. When I was standing in the gallery in front of one of the bark paintings, it suddenly strike me that I was actually standing in front of something that has been made some 100 years ago. It almost seemed surreal. Seeing Aboriginal artworks firsthand is really a different experience than just looking at photographs of them in books or on the Internet. Sometimes when learning this subject, it almost feels that it's in the past or untouchable but the Aboriginal culture actually still a living culture today and by looking at these art works it really made me realize that.

Another thing that I found interesting were the paintings made by some of the settlers. It was as if you were looking at Aboriginal people through their point of view and you actually get a glimpse of how it was in the past, especially in some paintings where the images just look like a photograph. On the other hand, some of the paintings also looked observatory, which I guess links to how many of the artworks depicting Aboriginal people were considered as ethnographic memento of what they thought was a disappearing race. Also following how Aboriginal work were considered more as artifacts rather than artworks, I realized that most of Aboriginal artworks in the gallery were unknown. However, there were some that were named too, such as one artwork made by Albert Namatjira, the famous Aboriginal artist who paints the beautiful watercolor inspired landscapes we saw in the lecture. This time, instead of a canvas he actually painted a small picture of a landscape on a wooden object called a woomera, which is said to be a spear thrower or used to make fire. Pretty interesting indeed.

Getting around the whole gallery this time definitely took longer that I almost lost track of time but overall I thought it was quite fun - like a little gallery exploration. I think going to a gallery really allows you to focus on the art work and gives you a different perspective of it and considering my lack of gallery visits...I should really catch up during this study break!