ARTISTS
Indigenous Australian art includes works in a wide range of media, telling stories and history through painting on leaves, wood carving, rock carving, sculpting, ceremonial clothing and sand painting. Their music stems from the culture of story telling and ceremony.
Australian stories are take a range of formats. Ceremonial performances are the core of cultural life bringing together all aspects of their culture from song to dance and body decoration to sculpture, carving and painting.
Music, song, ceremony, performance and dance are as integral today as they were hundreds and thousands of years ago and remain a very important part of Aboriginal life and customs.
Great gatherings occurred across the land, at a time and place where food and songs were plentiful. The gatherings were places where Indiginous communities exchanged and traded goods, were songs dance and their arts and crafts were exchanged.
Many ceremonies contain significant elements, some depicting specific Dreaming stories and contain expressions of music, art, song, dance and performance. In todays world these are seen as separate commodities in a world where everything has a price and is a saleable commodity.
From an Aboriginal perspective they are all part of a complex and complete entity, intertwine to embrace a completeness. Starting with song, the elements of a sharing culture combine to complete a whole story.
Just like every design or painting, each song, contributes part of a moment in a larger story. Songs make up a series or chapter, a 'songline' is a map of the country based on the travels of the Dreaming ancestors.
A painting or a design will call to mind a song, one that knowledgeable Aboriginal people call seeing. Painters often sing as they paint the story of the song, a practice raely witnessed in todays commercial world.
Todays Indigenous musicians generally write about subjects important to their communities, land, community issues and often protest songs. Songs of love generally relate to their love of their land and identification with country, loss of land and attempts to return to one's country.