“We believe we came from this place, now known as Australia, not from over land or sea. Our oral histories, stories, art and performance tell of the time before time, before light, before life. We tell of how our Ancestors and immortal creation beings formed all living things, as well as Country, culture, lore and beliefs, the stars, the seasons, animals, plants, landscapes and waterways – all intertwined and coexisting through cultural knowledge and presence.”
That’s a pretty bold statement to open an art exhibition, which is presumably intended to justify the words through the art. But National Gallery of Australia (NGA) Indigenous curator Tina Baum (of the Gulumirrgin/Larrakia/Wardaman/Karajarri peoples) is determined that Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia, comprising 156 historical and contemporary artworks by 161 artists, is an exhibition intended to “celebrate the central place that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art occupies in defining the contemporary face of Australia, both at home and in the world.” Oddly, those aren’t Baum’s words but those of Rob Scott, managing director of Wesfarmers, whose Collection supplied many artworks and whose role as the NGA’s Indigenous Arts Partner in training First Nations arts leaders has just been renewed for a further six years.
Raymond Zada, Barkindji people, At Face Value, 2013. National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra. © Raymond Zada
This “world” that Scott refers to has seen Ever Present before Australia. Indeed, it can be argued that it’s as much a promotional as an aesthetic exercise, supported by the Federal Arts Ministry and DFAT to tour New Zealand and Singapore – where a fine catalogue was published. But could Ever Present actually be more political than either of those options?
For, right from the start in the catalogue, Baum takes the art’s Ancestral connections beyond the deeply lore-abiding barks of Arnhem Land and the ceremonial representations by Papunya Tula’s acrylic pioneers, to the political works of contemporary urban artists (the late) Destiny Deacon and Daniel Boyd. And at a conference accompanying the exhibition in New Zealand, Baum insisted, “For me, it was important to start with resistance, to show that there was that fight from the very beginning, and not to start from a deficit. Yes, there was colonisation, but there was always resistance – art is a form of resistance.” And so the exhibition there opened with Barkindji man Raymond Zada’s 2013 At Face Value video showing an assortment of First Nations faces ranging from dark to light, morphing insistently into each other and offering “a statement of proud identity and self-determination, a current that runs across this exhibition.” That’s before we arrive at a magnificent Clifford Possum canvas, Warlugulong, 1977, telling of a terrible pyro-punishment meted out to siblings who ate food without sharing – plus seven more Ancestral moralities.
There are five more themes in the show after ‘Ancestors + Creators’: ‘Country + Constellations’, ‘Community + Family’, ‘Culture + Ceremony’, and ‘Trade+Influence’ before culminating in ‘Resistance + Colonisation’; which allows for some marvellous art by all the greats from Emily Kngwarreye’s canvases through to Jonathan Jones’ sounded grinding stones, via William Barak’s nineteenth century drawings and a somewhat under-represented Torres Strait in the larger-than-life creations of Alick Tipoti.
While the NGA exhibition is not accompanied by the customary, enticing catalogue, there is no question, the art on display deserves to be seen, as it should be, in person.
Jeremy Eccles is a specialist arts commentator with a long-term engagement with First Nations culture.
National Gallery of Australia
14 September 2024 to 24 August 2025
Australian Capital Territory
