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No Ordinary Place: The Art Of David Malangi Flinders University Art Museum City Gallery Until Sun 2 Oct Well, another SALA festival has come and gone: time to get back to reality, where many artists will simply get on with the job that is their ongoing practice, while others will return for another year to the woodwork from whence they came. If the plethora of openings and mad rush of trying to cram shows into your busy schedules has taken its toll, but you still require thought provocation and the stimulus of art, why not take some time out and visit - at a leisurely pace - the current exhibition showing at the Flinders University Art Museum's City Gallery 'No Ordinary Place: The Art Of David Malangi'. As part of the National Gallery of Australia's Travelling Exhibition program, 'No Ordinary Place' celebrates the life work of David Malangi Daymirringu (1927-1999) in this exceptional retrospective. Some of you may be familiar with the David Malangi design used on the reverse of the one dollar note (however, as it ceased issue in 1984, you younger ones may not remember). Malangi was also a participant in the landmark exhibition 'Dreamings: The Art Of Aboriginal Australia' in New York as well as a contributor to the extraordinary 'Aboriginal Memorial' of 1988, which consisted of two hundred hollow-log coffins, marking every year since settlement of Australia. These three events each played a role in the development of Indigenous art within this country. Malangi's one dollar note design paved the way for Indigenous artists to be recognised as individual art practitioners while the payment of royalties to Malangi by the Reserve Bank for their use of his design well and truly opened the door to issues of copyright. The 'Dreamings' exhibition in the USA during 1988-89 provided international exposure of Indigenous art as contemporary art, opposed to previously perceived notions of 'primitive' or 'ethnographic' art. Back home, the 'Aboriginal Memorial' was evocative of Indigenous presence both as an underpinning to Australia's settler society, as well as in terms of contemporary culture. Aside from these notable areas of involvement, 'No Ordinary Place' provides a chronological and geographical look at Malangi's life via his bark paintings, quintessential to the art of Arnhem Land, as well as sculpture and several works on canvas and board. Starting within the patrilineally inherited lands and ceremonies of the Mulanga area, Malangi iconically records his east-west journey through the Glyde River country and the Dhamala and Dhabila tracts of land to his mother's land incorporating the freshwater Yathalamarra region. Each of these places includes their own associated ancestral stories. The Great Hunter ancestor figure Gurrmirringu features prominently throughout the first section of the show, at times with his wife as well as images of mortuary rites, totems and the Mulanga land features. In images of the Glyde River country Malangi divides his pictorial space into parts, allowing him to represent geographical sensibilities of the area along with the hive of flora and fauna activity that culminate at the river mouth, conveying complete stories in singular images. Scenes from the Dhamala and Dhabila lands change again, whereby Malangi recounts the ancestors' journey by depicting unique components of their being: specific food they ate or particular sites they created. Malangi spent the last 30 years of his life in his mother's land and the associated artwork depicts images of billabongs, trees and grasses, birds and fish amongst others elements. Stories recollected from this area are generally composed of horizontal picture planes and employ vast sections of black pigment. In addition to the variety of iconography throughout this exhibition, Malangi utilises the stylistic device of rarrk (cross-hatching) that contributes further to his connection with certain clans and moieties. In most cases using natural pigment on eucalyptus bark, Malangi's palette is a consistent array of beige yellows, chocolate browns, ochre reds, black and white, creating extremely distinct designs. 'No Ordinary Place: The Art Of David Malangi' is a significant portrayal of the artist's country, made by the artist. On opening wall text for the show Malangi says, "This is no ordinary place. This is my country. They [the people] are really from the country. They didn't make it, but came from it. Our ancestors - big people, strong people - stuck to it... and then we grew up. And this is our story. And this is our country" (March 1983). I have had the fortune of viewing this retrospective in Brisbane as well as in Adelaide (to my delight it is much more intimate here: well done, curators), but for those of you who will not be following the show to Darwin or Perth, I suggest you have a look, and allow it do some of that thought provoking I mentioned earlier.  |
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