Ngurrara: The Great Sandy Desert Canvasi
Developed by the South Australian Museum, Ngurrara: The Great Sandy Desert Canvas exhibition has been
touring Australia recently celebrating one of the largest and most spectacular Aboriginal Western Desert
paintings: the great Ngurrara Canvas. Painted by senior traditional owners of the Great Sandy Desert of northern
Western Australia, this painting has spectacular significance for the people of this community, being presented
for the National Native Title Tribunal claim for the Southern Kimberly community in 1997. Aboriginal lawyer and
writer Larissa Behrendt tells the important story behind this canvas.
Figure 1 The Ngurrara Canvas. Painted by Ngurrara artists and claimants, coordinated by Mangkaja Arts, May 1997. 10 metres x 8
metres. Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency.
It has been long understood that the genesis of art within Australian Aboriginal culture was vastly different to that
in the Western tradition. The creativity of creating art was, for pre-invasion Aboriginal communities, solely part of
the cultural practices that showed, connection to country and honoured ancestors. The end result was often
discarded and destroyed, made in non-permanent mediums like sand and not kept for aesthetics or valued as
property.
The recognition of Aboriginal art as aesthetic, not mere artefact, has meant Europeans reconceptualising
ethnographic objects into art. Aboriginal people were encouraged to put their fragile and non-lasting artwork into
permanent forms - on canvas, board and bark (where it was not traditionally done) and with watercolours and
acrylics. This mirrored the process of changing the mediums for Aboriginal artists - turning sand paintings into
acrylic paintings, placing body paint onto canvas, the classification of functional pieces - baskets, boomerangs,
shields - as sculpture. These new mediums were an extension of the traditional motifs, symbols and
representations and remained fundamentally and intrinsically Indigenous. Aboriginal artists were producing and
selling a whole new genre of art specially created to communicate with the outside world.
Ngurrara the Canvas
The evolution of Aboriginal art, its incorporation of European mediums and navigation of European economies
and demands, shows the triteness of making a distinction between "traditional" and "contemporary" Aboriginal
art. The Ngurrara canvas provokes reflection on this false dichotomy. It is the largest work of art from the Great
Sandy Desert. Currently on tour at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, it falls over two stories and can
be viewed from various vantage points. Its colossal
size (measuring eight by ten metres) is the first thing
one notices. The eye sweeps across the vast canvas
like a wind across a landscape, drawn by the thick
horizontal lines. It is then that our focus can rest on
the ten careful, colourful harmonised patchworks,
each denoting a different story, a different place, a
different piece of evidence of connection and
attachment to land.
With a bird's eye view, the canvas makes the viewer
feel as though they are floating across the country.
The waterholes, trees, salt lakes and people are
visible. It shows the path of serpents and ancestors.
It tells a panoramic story of ceremonies being
performed, creation stories, of spirits, of snoring
fathers.
Figure 2. Hiter Pamba and Nada Rawlins completing the Warla section of the Ngurrara Canvas at Pirnini, May 1997. K.
Dayman
"Home... Telling the Court about our Country"
It makes sense that Ngurrara means home, the place that people have attachment to. And it literally became
evidence. In 1997, the canvas was presented to the National Native Title Tribunal as evidence of ancestral,
social, economic and personal connections to land.
The idea of painting the canvas was that of Ngarralja Tommy May's: "... we were wondering how to tell the court
about our country. I said then if kartiya [Europeans] can't believe our word, they can look at our painting. It all
says the same thing. We got the idea of using our paintings in court
as evidence."
The painting is the result of the collaboration of over sixty artists from
the South Kimberley region. They met at Pirnini, an area to the south
west of Fitzroy Crossing, on the northern edge of the Great Sandy
Desert to create this work. It was the second attempt to make such a
canvas. In 1996 a canvas was produced but the artists were
unhappy with it. Artists had worked independently on different parts
of the painting, with different notions of scale and so the panels did
not fit together the way that they should have. Learning from this
experience, a larger canvas was used and there was also a better
understanding of how the different elements of the painting should
work together. The result is breathtaking in its scope. It captured the
extremely strong affiliation to land that people had to the land they
had lived off the land until the 1960s.
Figure 3. Nyirlpirr Spider Snell explaining the
Ngurrara Canvas, 2005. Ngurrara Artists Group
Becoming testimony, communicating Aboriginal Law for the 1997 Ngurrara Native Title Claim
Jilpia Nappaljari Jones is one of the native title holders and is related to Kurntika Jimmy Pike. She says: "Fred
Chaney from the Native Title Tribunal came over ten years ago. I explained to him that these were desert people.
Some couldn't read or write. We'll paint our country."
The dominant legal culture has an emphasis on the written word, on economic rights and is focused on the
individual. By stark contrast, Aboriginal law has an emphasis on oral transmission, the preservation and
maintenance of culture and is communally owned. The Ngurrara canvas, by bringing an embodiment of
Aboriginal law into the court for consideration by the dominant culture, communicated across the divide.
The Ngurrara determination was the largest claim in the Kimberley region and recognised exclusive possession
native title over about 76,000 square kilometres of land.
Jilpia travelled to Pirnini when the determination was delivered. Justice Gilmour said: "... the Court does not give
you native title. Rather, the Court determines that native title already exists. It determines that this is your land.
That it is based upon your traditional laws and customs and it always has been. The law says to all the people in
Australia that this is your land and that it always has been your land."
Of this Jiplia says: "We all knew it was our land. I said to the others that it was now done legally. The Queen
doesn't own it."
The determination was handed down at Pirnini, the same place in which the Ngurrara canvas had been painted.
- Larissa Behrendt
Larissa Behrendt is an Aboriginal lawyer and writer. She is a Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and
the Chair of their Indigenous Advisory Committee. Her novel, "Home", was awarded a Commonwealth Writer's
Prize. Larissa is also the Chair of National Indigenous Television.
Photos: Courtesy South Australian Museum.
i
This article was written by Larissa Behrendt and posted by Aboriginal Art Directory on the 17.06.08.
http://www.aboriginalartdirectory.com/news/feature/ngurrara-the-great-sandy-desert-canvas.php
Figure 4 The Ngurrara Canvas at the Ngurrara Native Title determination proceedings at
Pirnini, 8 November 2007. Ngurrara Artists Group