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Koori Fruit Salad Terrance Allen Junior Art And Soul Studio and Gallery 1 Sussex Street Glenelg Art And Soul is an arts and craft shop incorporating a commercial gallery space devoted to temporary exhibitions - somewhat in the mould of Urban Cow Studio. What's unique about this art space is that it specialises in Aboriginal art from regional and remote South Australia. There's no shortage of dealers exploiting the billion-dollar market that exists for Northern Territory indigenous art. And there is a small but well-established trade in art from communities in Western Australia and Queensland. But remote South Australian Aborigines have often missed out on the spoils of this international interest in Aboriginal art. In the 1970s it was through the measured, multi-layered narratives of Western Desert dot painting that we seem to have realised how insignificant and narrow European traditions of art may be. In the 1990s the exuberant abstract gestures of Emily Kame Kngwarreye and art from Utopia made the world collectively gasp. Incredibly likeable and decorative - seemingly destined for commercial success and private ownership - but so bloody deep and apparently genuine. One reason people buy regional and remote Aboriginal art is because it appears deep and untainted by the seedy realities of contemporary life. In touch with something ancient. Yet too much commercial success and any art-form begins to appear kitsch, wooden and shallow as it is mass produced for financial gain. It happened to dot painting and now it has happened to the Emily Kngwarreye school. Oh, a genuine Emily borders on being priceless but a painting done in her manner is seen as an imitation. So where's this market going to look to next? Chances are it will be South Australia, where a lack of commerce thus far has meant that our remote aboriginal artists aren't just working to formulas that sell successfully, but are developing their own forms and styles. All this is to say that Art and Soul might just be on to the next big thing. However, their current exhibition, as a part of the Fringe program, deviates from their South Australian agenda to show the work of an Aboriginal artist from Tamworth. Taj (Terrance Allen Junior) has done stuff that superficially appears to be "traditional" dot painting (if there is such a thing as traditional dot painting). Like so much Aboriginal painting, the work features images of fruit. But this isn't bush tucker, it is all pineapples and strawberries. And the titles - things like strawberries with mint chocolate - suggest the universe of dots these fruits are painted in actually don't represent landscapes but sauces and custards. It wittily plays with how dot painting has come to appear kitsch. Moreover, bringing up issues about what it has come to represent in terms of aboriginality - we know that many aboriginal artefacts are manufactured elsewhere in the world. As Jared Thomas, indigenous project officer with Arts SA, explained to me: it is not necessarily that this is dot painting that makes it Aboriginal work. Nor is it that it represents tucker - it is the way in which the artist looks at those fruits that makes this the work of an Aboriginal man. Perhaps this was best illustrated in a series of paintings of figs. Taj said he painted the figs because there was a fig tree in his grandmother's back yard when he grew up. The paintings show the figs as they ripen - it's a bit of a life-cycle thing; attaching significance to each stage of the fig's ripening by identifying it with a colour, and combining this with personal memory and family history. |
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