Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-06-29)

60

TRAVEL BloombergPursuits June 29, 2020

dreamscapeandinterpretedformillenniumsbyartistsinboth

songandimagery.Inmusicit’saccompaniedbyinstruments

suchasthedidgeridooandbullroarer.

Whenrenderingthesestoriesvisually,Aboriginalscarved

petroglyphsandgroundpaintbyhandfromrocks,berries,and

othernaturalmaterialstocreatecavepaintings.(Nowartists

haveswitchedtostore-boughtpaintandcanvasorboard.)The

basicpalette—ocher,white,black,indigo,mustard—remainsthe

sameandstillechoestheartist’sparticularbirthplace.Images

appearoutofswirls,ripples,blobs,dots.A certainvertical

shiftinperspectiverevealsthisis anuncannilyaccurateaerial

interpretation,capturedbypainterswhomayneveractually

flyoverthelandscapesthey’verendered.I firstheardofthese

DreamtimeartistswhilelivinginAustraliafora briefperiod

duringthe1980s,whentheywerefinallygainingrecognition

fromthemainstreamartworld.Butit wouldbedecadesbefore

I hadtheopportunitytomeetany.

ThecommunityofWarmun(population210)sitsbesidethe

GreatNorthernHighway,themainsupplyroutethatpasses

througha million-square-milesavannaofbottleflies,black-

enedstumps,andsearinglightinWesternAustralia.It takes

forevertogetthere.Povertyis rampant,chronicrespiratory

diseasescommon,foodinsecurityhigh.Thetruckstopis the

onlyplacetobuybasicgroceries,fillupongas,andspend

thenightina shabbyroomwitha tepidshower.Downthe

A night with Aboriginal

artists leads to creative rebirth

By Shane Mitchell

Photograph by James Fisher

T

onightyoudream,”saidPeggyPatrick,stabbing

herfingeratme.

Thefirewasdyingasthecircleofsenior

lawwomen(Aboriginalelders)putawaytheir

carvedrhythmsticks.Mybackhurtfromsitting

onthecoldgroundtoolong,listeningforhours

totheDaiyulLirlmimsongcycleaboutabarramundi fish that

swam through a mountain range. The red dust made everyone

cough. In the Gija language, these fluid narrative performances

are called joonba, an intrinsic expression of Aboriginal art that

incorporates song, dance, body painting, and theatrics. The

custodians of each story are obligated to teach it to the younger

generation, who on that night wanted only to escape, laugh-

ing in the darkness to kick a ball around, paint still marking

their faces. I wiped off my jeans and walked back across the

highway to my room at a roadhouse on the edge of Warmun,

an outback town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Both my grandfather and father were artists, and I grew up

in a New York household where creative expression was para-

mount. Dad started out as a classicist; it would take decades for

him to fully adopt abstractionism, his true métier, but observ-

ing him rebel over time gave me a taste for the same. That led

to an appreciation for Outsider Art, perhaps because it exists

beyond the boundaries of official culture, often in realms of the

self-taught artists’ own making. Henry Darger, Howard Finster,

Maud Lewis, Butch Anthony. Peggy Patrick.

A love for that art eventually led me to a night terror in the

back of beyond.

Australia’s Aboriginal artists have a complex worldview

based on genesis myths describing the Ngarrangarni, or

Dreamtime, during which totemic ancestors traveled the

nascent landscape, scattering a trail of musical notes that grew

into mountain ranges, rivers, forests, deserts.

These places have metaphysical resonance, and every crea-

ture—human or otherwise—is eternally connected to a specific

aspect of this sacred geography. The Ngarrangarni is both scrip-

ture and navigational tool, a moral compass tied to a freaky

Patrick outside Warmun

DREAMTIME IN

A

U

S

T

R

A

L

I

A

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are warned that the following

story may contain images and voices of deceased persons.