Aboriginal Art
NGV |
Mid-week is my favourite time to visit a gallery. Not because there are fewer people, which is the reason most would suggest, but because there’s usually a school excursion. For some, that might be cause to rush in the opposite direction but I like the take-em-or-leave-em lessons. I stand close enough so I can listen to their guide, who is always enthusiastic and brimming with information, and taking things back to the glorious basics. Bringing works to life and answering many of the questions I was too shy or intimidated to ask.
And so it was this afternoon when, with a couple of hours to spare in the city, I went with a flow that led me to the National Gallery of Victoria’s Australian collection at the Ian Potter Centre. And found a gold-speckled painting that captures the pouring of sand into the hands of Vincent Lingiari, a tale immortalised in Paul Kelly’s ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’. This painting by [X] captures the moment from the Aboriginal perspective, and in itself brought to life all Aboriginal art for me, a genre that before felt like an unbreakable code of abstracts.
I loosely tagged along with the group, dipping in and out of the guide’s tour, moving on for good when the students started asking the teacher who was the strange girl that was answering all the questions. And so I sauntered off to explore the rest of the Indigenous art collection solo, seeing actual symbols and stories where before there were only abstract dots and lines, browns and reds.
Stories jumped from the walls and I lost track of time, appropriately enough I suppose. Someone once told me there was no time in Aboriginal Dreaming, or at least no linear measurements of time in this spiritual world. I don’t know how true that is, but between the time I walked into that room to the moment I left, I was lost for time and words. It was a sort of reverie, a spell only broken when I noticed the sound of another’s conversation. They were saying they didn’t get aboriginal art. I might have said the same thing before I entered, before my glimpse through the keyhole through the eyes of a child.
It was then that i saw The Illawarra flame tree. I've since seen a print of it and i can firmly say nothing beats the real thing. It blinded the paintings beside it with its brilliant foliage and quickly became the highlight of my visit. Although the gallery had free entrance, I would have paid to see it.
So I still have no idea how long I spent in the layers of the gallery. But at least I know if I ever feel the need for time to rush by or slow down completely, (which i think i will) I can head down the busiest street in Melbourne and make a right.
By guest John Swan.
