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A Mythological Place
…“art” that is falsely promoted as “traditional”…
Alice Springs is truly a place of mythological significance. It is a place where myths are blatantly perpetuated, usually in the name of profit.
Even the name of Lasseter bedecks a casino, with many forgetting that Lasseter was a doomed gold prospector who allegedly left his bones in the desert while pursuing a mythical Eldorado. Suburban-ites from Australia’s southern cities establish themselves in the Alice – e.g., Ted Egan, the late Mark Bunting (singers) – and promote themselves to a gullible tourist market as “bushmen” and “outback personalities”, etc. Their philosophy seems to be: tell the people the same story often enough and it becomes a surrogate fact. But most of Alice’s folk heroes are, in fact, transplanted city blokes out to exploit a fictitious persona.
Inherent in the mythological rubbish purveyed to unknowing foreigners is the matter of “Aboriginal Art.”
Ignorant visitors, bloated with propaganda, often pay out huge sums of money for “art” that is falsely promoted as “traditional” or of “tribal significance.”
More often than not, the art (?) is executed with acrylic paints (not ochres), and the subjects are often imaginary, not factual, while the artists themselves are frequently not Aboriginal.
Many European backpackers earn a dollar or two decorating didgeridoos, etc., for shops to sell to gullible tourists. Even the didgeridoos themselves do not belong to Central Australia or were ever traditionally utilised by tribal folk of Central Australia.
“The Aboriginal Industry,” as it has become known to cynics, is rife with falsehood, misrepresentation, outright lies, and the whole mess is unwittingly subsidised by the government with taxpayer’s dollars, all conducted under the guise of preparing Aboriginal people for “economic independence.”
`In reality, most of the Aboriginal enterprises are supervised by highly-paid European employees who are kept well out of sight.
If a Central Australian Aboriginal artist becomes a celebrity in southern art markets (usually more the result of deft promotion than abounding talent), the famous one puts his/her name on the paintings of all sorts of dross and expects a generous fee for his/her contribution to the general befuddlement.
According to old-timers with unfailing memories, even the renowned Aboriginal water colourist, Albert Namatjira, in his hey-day, used to put his signature on relative’s paintings to flog off to unsuspecting retail outlets. In some camps, it is remembered, a painting was handed around from one artist to the other – one painting the sky, another the hills, someone else the trees, and Big Albert finished it off with characteristic touches and his well-known signature. We will never know how many of these fraudulent efforts are today cherished in private collections around the world.
At the general art world, mediocrity usually reigns supreme. Every second person met in Alice Springs is an “artist” of one calibre or another. It has become a convenient tag to apply to a wide variety of pretenders, misfits and charlatans. Amateurism is the norm in Australia’s desert-land.
Lording it above all the others are the abstractionists who concoct all sorts of eccentric installations and these are inflicted on the naïve, often with a feminist bias, and most finish up perpetuated in the grime of the Alice Springs rubbish dump – where, quite rightfully, they belong.
One such an exhibition consisted of a female “artist” lighting up hundreds of oil lamp candles on the floor of the gallery with strips of newspaper suspended above on string, wavering in the updraught of warm air. This, she assured us, was symbolic of her discordant relationship with her father, or some such twaddle.
Into this vast desert wilderness. this womb of Australasia, congregate all the species and hybrids of man/womankind in search of elusive philosophies that might lend meaning to their futile existences. Some of the most directionless types gravitate automatically to the “poor” Aboriginal communities where they pledge their do-good, feel-good efforts towards the uplifting and enlightenment of their poor fellows. Ultimately, they land back in Alice Springs (or the place from whence they originated) to lick their wounds and go on wondering for the remainder of their days why they were not needed after all, and why their charges were so ungrateful.
One time a group of art students were collecting oddments dumped in the bush around an Aboriginal camp, preparing for an exhibition. One student complained to the teacher about the number of abandoned wrecks of vehicles left to rot in the scrub. The teacher responded: “That isn’t rubbish. It’s a form of social sculpture.”
In season, the desert can be an empty place. So can be the heads of some of its inhabitants, unfortunately.
© Cynthia Albright.
