FREE LECTURE: Tracking the Dream: bark paintings as mnemonics of culture

Ochre paintings on stringybark as we know them today are a direct response to the demand for portable art from missionaries and anthropologists in the 1930s and 1940s. It was not until 1947 that the first systematic collection of bark paintings was made, by Ronald M. Berndt, who was working with his wife Dr. Catherine Berndt at Yirrkala in the Northern Territory. Ron Berndt collected the paintings, and an associated assemblage of crayon drawings on brown paper, both as examples of Aboriginal art, and as visual aides in the transmission and interpretation of oral cultural traditions. Dr. Stanton will discuss the implications of this research on the commercial production of Top End art, and ways in which it continues to underpin local Yolngu knowledge of country and place. He will draw on examples from the collections of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, and counterpoint items from 'No ordinary place: the art of David Malangi'.

Dr Stanton is Curator/Director of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology at UWA.

'No ordinary place: the art of David Malangi' is on display at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery until 6 June and is a National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition.