Our Mob 2011: a statewide celebration of South Australian indigenous art is in its 6th year at the Festival Centre but has but four days to run. Upfront, let me stress, get along to have a look before this weekend ends.
This year the focus is on four very different communities being the Arrabanna peoples of Lake Eyre, the desert art centre Tjungu Palya and those at Indulkana and Oodnadatta. Of these, especially with the lake in flood, the work of the Arrabanna is the stand out.
Colleen Strangways presents 10 stunning photographs in the Festival Theatre foyer. Waters of Lake Eyre Are Sacred and Magic Law Man are particularly strong. The former has an older woman
Colleen Raven Strangways - 'Arrabunna woman' 2011 Photograph
almost rising out of the water and sand cupping water from the lake in her hands with a striking cloud stream behind her. The Magic Law Man (pictured left) is like an indigenous minataur, here half man, half river gum root system, seemingly striding along the banks of the lake in a tone that it both energetic but also eerie.
Strangways works also give us cause to reconsider the importance and magic of Lake Eyre in flood, especially from the indigenous viewpoint. Her images were captured on the same weekend as the ill-fated ABC helicopter crash of earlier this year. They also give us a little more perspective on the debate that raged about whether the Lake Eyre Yacht Squadron should be allowed hold regattas on the floods.
Reg Dodd keeps the Lake Eyre photography theme going with two works of which Jo at Lake Eyre is much the more successful where a woman lies flat and partly submerged in the still water.
From Ceduna, Christine Tschuna’s Seven Sisters in the Milky Way is a stunner. Here the Milky Way is lit up as only a desert viewing can deliver, the perspective of the artist the same as many indigenous works – flat, aerial, non specific – only this time looking up.
Last year’s winner (in a competition involving acquisition of work by the AFC, sadly not repeated this exhibition), Beaver Lennon presents another emotive sun rise over a water pool in Beginning of a New Day which is also the exhibition’s most expensive work for those on the acquisition trail.
Colleen Raven Stragways 'Arrcia-ya (magic law man)' 2011 Photograph
Finally, Christina Gollan presents two impressive ceramics, the larger, brilliantly pink Pomegranate and the more quirky Pine cone.
For the less initiated in Aboriginal art, Our Mob also serves as a great place to start exploring for while there are, as usual, a lot of dots to take in, many of the artists do us the courtesy of leaving useful notes that help explain their work and as noted above there is more to these works than just acrylic on canvas.
You may also get inspired to buy.
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