Legends in paint

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32880, 1 April 1972, Page 10

Legends in paint

This Their Dreaming. By Ann E. Wells. University of Queensland Press. 76 pp., 25 plates. In 1963, a group of Australian Aborigines painted two large panels for a church at Yirrkala in Northeast Arnetai Land, east of Darwin. Eight artists worked on each panel; they were chosen by the rest of their people, and they insisted that no questions be asked about the paintings until both panels were completed. In this way the work was completed without any interference from the European staff of the church, and Mrs WeHs, whose husband was Superintendent of the Aboriginal Mission Stations, began a long series of interviews with the artists about the contents of the panels. The Aboriginal languages are, of course, notoriously complex, and the artists insisted on meticulous accuracy, so that the recording of the legends was a very

long process. Each panel was painted by artists from a different moiety, and contains an independent cycle of legends. These are narrated in Mrs. Wells’s text and most pages are accompanied by a detail of that part of the panel which illustrates the relevant episode in the legend. There are also two colour photographs, and pictures of each panel as a whole; since the panels are 12 feet high, one can get only a very general notion of form from such pictures. The paintings themselves are basically geometric in style; although they do of course still retain a strong expressive element which does make some kind of vague sense even without the commentary. The lay-out of this book is very good, and its organisation is sensible. One's only regret is that, although the text is easy for the general reader to follow, the author has made no allowance for the reader who is interested in mythology but knows nothing about Australian Aboriginal life and culture: if she considered this to be beyond the scope of this book, the author might at least have included a brief bibliography.