Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

<Lajamanu

The Lajamanu Aboriginal Community is situated on the edge of the Tamani Desert, midway between Alice Springs and Darwin, in the traditional country of the Gurindji people.

These paintings are unlike any other aboriginal paintings ever created. They have an unselfconscious fluency of line and are essays in pure colour. Pigment is applied loosely; tight symmetry is absent and space has a positive value.

The paintings are created by men and women from Lajamanu. It is important to realise that Waripiri womens' designs differ in mythological content and visual thrust from those of the men. In "Yawalyu" (womens' rituals) principles of fertility and growth, and activities at a specific locality are stressed, whereas in mens' ceremonies, the routes taken by ancestors linking significant places are of primary importance. Womens' Kurawarri ancestral designs tend to be curvilinear, circular and formed of smaller, separate units in abundant clusters, while straight or meandering track-lines dominate mens' designs.

All paintings made by the Lajamanu artists are organic in rhythm. They have a striking beauty and formal intensity. No other aboriginal community produces work with, such powerful use of ancient symbolism and magical use of colour in unexpected combinations. This is all the more extraordinary when one realises that painting on canvas and board only began at Lajamanu in 1986. It began with a chaotic enthusiasm, as with bold vigour these artists confirmed their charters to particular tracts of land and re-enacted the paths that Warna (snake), Mala (wallaby) or Ngapa (water) ancestors followed through their country.

These paintings preserve the knowledge of the Dreamtime. It is done by those who still have the "healing stones" inside their bodies. For many aborigines, white civilisation has brought a sense of disempowerment and loss. It is hoped that the artists' painting will provide a bridge between white and aboriginal culture. As Maurice Jupurrula Luther says:

''I not only learned the white man's way, but I also learned my corroborees. I got to know that part of my life, my religion, my dances and my songs ... where my country was and where my Dreaming starts and ends".