Dreamings an art form from down under

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In the struggles of Indigenous people all over the world, we perceive one startling similarity, the sacredness of the earth. In the creation of ritual art for public viewing, the Australian Aborigines continually reaffirm this connection. They declare their unity with the Dreamtime ancestors who created the land and who now dwell within it.

In Aboriginal society, women keep or reenact Dreamings or the Dreamtime stories that have to do with "women's business," traditionally the collection and preparation of plants and roots for sustenance and healing. Contemporary women artists generally paint these Dreamings. Women also celebrate other Dreamings, which can be identical to men's, since dreamings are associated with the site of conception, as well as inherited through patrilineal and matrilineal lines.

Generally speaking, Dreamings inherited patrilineally are said to be "direct", and artists "own" these Dreamings and the designs connected to them, the equivalent of having a copyright. Rights to paint Dreamings not owned directly are negotiated. It is a breach of Aboriginal law to paint another person's Dreaming without permission.

Some knowledge of the ancestor and its journey is secret and gender-specific, but there are shared versions of Dreaming stories that both men and women reenact in ceremony together. During the Dreamtime, the same ancestors passed through the land of different groups of Aborigines and these groups conduct similar ceremonies.

Each Aboriginal group - related by language, Dreamings, and in many other ways - possesses an intimate knowledge of its ancestral terrain. Aboriginal artists illustrate this knowledge through their aerial views of the landscape, and through views from inside the earth, from the ancestor's perspective.

Contemporary Aboriginal art-paintings on bark, batiks, wood sculptures, block printing and acrylic on canvas, contain designs found in the ancient rock art that dots the Australian continent, art that's 43,000 years older than the oldest rock art found anywhere else. While we think of it as art, Aboriginal acrylic paintings on canvas, as well as the other art forms, are all based on ritual creations painted on the body, in the sand and on bark during ceremonies that evoke the Dreamtime ancestor.

For the Aborigine, the Dreamtime is not an event of the past. It is happening right at this moment, and can be witnessed in all natural phenomena, in the earth's fertility, and in their own dreams about the ancestors, all of which continue to inform their ritual life.

Ceremonial designs were transferred to another medium by women when, encouraged by white teachers and art agents, they began doing silk batiks in the late 1970s. Women had previously helped male relatives paint on canvas but had not received credit or recognition for their work.

Batik proved a difficult enterprise for the desert where water is scarce and gusting sand is plentiful, so women soon turned to quick-drying acrylic paints. In some areas, such as Utopia (a former cattle station), women are senior artists, and they create the majority of the "public" art, the art for sale or display.

There is much debate in Australia and elsewhere about how to judge the quality of Aboriginal paintings. Many artists, like Ada Bird Petyarre and the late Emily Kngwarreye are in the pantheon of Aboriginal artists, along with their male counterparts, but new artists appear every year.

Djon Mundine, a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, and an Aborigine, says that "shimmering," an attribute that seems to animate the painting, is a good way to judge quality, but critics and people interested in Aboriginal art must look at hundreds of paintings and study the art before they're able to recognize that attribute.

One of only 20 Aborigines in curatorial positions in Australia, he points out a subtle form of racism in the white critic's approach to Aboriginal art.

"They don't want to look stupid, so people are cautios. They could be a little bit less cautious by doing a bit more research, just as they do when they approach the new work of a white artist."

In painting the land, Aborigines are reclaiming what has always been theirs in spirit, what they have always cared for. Women artists, like those featured here, are an important part of that tradition in contemporary Australian Aboriginal art.