Public Art
PROJECTS
Design to Installation
Painting with a feather
You need the feathers from the tip of the wing
2
Indigenous
Studies activities for the classroom
today
Ochre Hair/face/Emu feather/ beeswax decorations part of the Indigenous school ochre painting workshop
or maybe in the future.....????...
Here's some background information ...Indigenous shelter, ochre paint..
OCHRE PAINTING
Brushes were made from tufts of fur or bark, feathers and sticks
.
To make these ancient pigmnts stick to a surface honey or fig tree sap was used, or
sometimes just water and it was touched up regularly at ceremonies..........
Ochres have a long history with the human race still have very traditional associations with Aborigine people going back hundreds
of centuries in Australia.
Ochre is very important for body painting to this very day.
Aboriginal dancers and performers in the bush or in the city still re
enact ancient adventures of the dream time in their dances
.
Stencil art form was once practiced all over the world
Australia would have the most extensive stencil art sites.
Boomerangs, stone axes, hand signals, even animals were sprayed over as
stencils.
These paintings on cave walls in ochre told stories, recorded history
and declared ownership.
Simple line and dot paintings were used to record the many myths and legends
of the tribe.They could be interpreted but only the fully
initiated elders knew the full story......
Figures and symbols were carved into rocks and cave walls by patiently
tapping with a harder rock.......
And we still wear ancient traditional ochre designs painted on our bodies
for ceremony and paint with ochres.
THE
ABORIGINAL
COLOURS
BLACK
Black stands for the Aborigine people
& the Night
YELLOW
Yellow is the sacred colour. The colour of the Sun
RED
is for the colour of the land and for blood.
We are all of the one blood, from the land we come and to it we will
all return.
WHITE
White is the spirit colour.
Humpies are Indigenous shelters made from natural materials..
Aboriginal tribes have specialised traditional humpies according to the locality
and materials available.
Bark was used to make humpies to last a couple of days,
months or years.
Often they would be decorated on the inside of the bark with ochres.
Those old people would use the same campsites over generations where there was
a reliable food supply.
Tribes travelled with their most basic of necessities often leaving heavier items behind.. equipment not needed for the next camp etc.
Sometimes nets or stone tools were too heavy to carry and anyway the next camp had its own supplies so some things would be left in the old humpies till next season...
Bark was used by the non Indigenous people living in the bush well into
the 20th cntury for walls and roofing and were the basis for many incidents...the taking of bark from Aboriginal
huts and
stealing their hunting tools... ..for a Nomad these stockpiles
had accumulated in legends and song over generations and were priceless.
Humpybong near Redcliffe QLD. Australia is so
called because when the British abandoned the area in favour of Brisbane
they left behind their empty huts. Aborigines called it Humpybong meaning
dead humpies...(Bong - dead) Little did they know it would soon be their
humpies that would be gone.
Aboriginal people lived and thrived on the land for 60,
90, 120 thousand years, older and older sites are continually being found
and acknowledged as
Australians embrace their heritage.
Shelter
Protocol
It is usual today to have welcome to country formalities for official occasions.
Often in schools an elder from the area is invited for the opening of a function for example and they will acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional owners of the land.....
. Traditional Owners have inherited responsibilities which have been handed down through the generations for thousands of years, to maintain and continue the dreaming cycles through the traditional laws and customs of the specific clan of an area. Clan rights are stronger than tribal rights which are stronger than societal rights for a particular area. It is not like this governance, where Commonwealth rights are stronger than State rights and State rights are stronger than Local Governments rights..........
