Published: Tuesday, 21 January 2025

Dreaming. It is universal; it inspires children and sustains adults. Dreaming is part of our personal story, capable of evolution while connecting us to others and the world. Dreams can motivate, inspire, and guide us to our true selves. (Note that I'm talking about hopeful daydreams here, not the (potentially scary!) night-time dreams.... Think of Chagall's The Birthday or Sky Above Clouds IV by Georgia O'Keefe... not, like Goya, Bosch or Munch's The Scream!). Dreams are synonymous with hope: without dreams, we lose our sense of purpose and identity.

Dreaming is at the core of Australian Aboriginal culture, representing the ‘Everywhen’. The Everywhen conceives of time as non-linear, where past, future and present are interwoven. It is a cultural worldview and comprehensive framework that structures and narrates relationships among individuals, families, ancestral history, future descendants, and the land and spirits. For Aboriginal Australians, dreaming is a sacred, living force that permeates every aspect of their lives. It is so sacred that Aboriginal artists must receive permission to depict dreaming in any aspect of their work.

Australia is a special place with a dreamlike quality, and its art reflects that. The country has produced an outstanding array of artists and niche artistic genres that deserve greater global recognition. There is nowhere else like it, and it is a treasure for anyone lucky enough to visit.

Aboriginal Dot Painting

Dot painting as an art form emerged in the 1970s from the Papunya Tula art movement, founded by a group of Aboriginal men in the remote Papunya community of the Northern Territory. This style evolved from traditional sand paintings and body art practices, which had long been used in sacred ceremonies and rituals. As Aboriginal culture faced threats from European settler colonisation, in order to protect their sacred and private knowledge, dots (or 'over-dotting') were used to obscure the secret iconography.

Each dot pattern and arrangement holds deep meaning, representing specific elements of the Aboriginal worldview. The dots can signify sacred sites, ancestral beings, or important aspects of the natural environment. The intricate overlapping of dots obscures or "veils" the most sacred iconography from the uninitiated. This layering of meaning and symbolism is a key part of dot painting's visual language, inviting the viewer to uncover the deeper spiritual significance.

Dot painting is a way for artists to share their stories and spiritual beliefs on a broader and global platform, while protecting the most sacred and unseen elements of their heritage. This has morphed into the classical style, typified by Pintupi tribe artworks. It has evolved as an artistic medium that tells stories and enlivens the culture.

​Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996) is Australia’s most successful and critically acclaimed female artist by sales (one piece sold for $2.1 million) and is famous for her large-scale dot paintings. She truly was a prolific artist: she only began painting in her late 70s, but in eight years she executed approximately three thousand paintings. As an Elder of the Anmatyerre people of Australia’s Northern Territory, and a custodian of sacred land, she developed a complex and potent visual language, which translated across her vibrant batiks and later paintings on canvas with dreaming resonating at the source of her inspiration. Her timeless art encapsulates the wisdom, experience, and authority she acquired throughout her life.

I am not going to decipher hidden messages (primarily because I can't, lol!), so I implore you to spend 20 minutes of observation to fully ‘see’ what's in front of you. Remember, we are not the intended audience for these works, nor are you meant to fully decipher their hidden meanings. Yet we can appreciate and admire the beauty of what is sacred and not meant to be understood. Which is an incredibly poetic way to engage with the rich cultural heritage of Australia.

Unfortunately, Emily’s work has been exploited by western artists and audiences [Editor's Note: please say "arguably"!]. In 2018, the Gagosian gallery unveiled Damien Hirst’s series, The Veil Paintings, at their Los Angeles gallery, sparking uproar due to its uncanny similarity to the work of Emily Kame Kngwarray and other female Aboriginal artists. You can read more about the controversy here and here.

In response to the accusation, Hirst claimed to be “completely unaware” of this art practice and was inspired by Pointillism and Post-Impressionists like George Seurat and Pierre Bonnard.

I'm not going to take sides [Editor's Note: Phew!], however [Editor's Note: Uh-oh], I find this somewhat unlikely. To test this theory, I showed a statistically-invalid sample of friends and family side-by-side work by Damien and Emily and asked if they were by the same artist. There was a unanimous yes that the works could have been done by the same person. See for yourself and decide.

Humorously, Hirst is quoted on Gagosian’s exhibition page saying “a veil is a barrier, a curtain between two things, something that you can look at and pass through. It’s solid yet invisible and reveals and yet obscures the truth, the thing that we are searching for.” Sounds like what dot painting was intended to do if you ask me… In 2022, Gagosian exhibited work by Emily Kame Kngwarray at their Paris gallery which they titled, ‘Emily: Desert Painter of Australia’...

The Hermannsburg School

According to the Hermannsburg School of Modern Art website, the movement was created by “young Western Arrernte men, pioneered by Albert Namatjira (1902-1959), in their tribal area of Ntaria, also known as the Hermannsburg mission located in Central Australia west of Alice Springs. They produced watercolour landscapes on paper in the romantic style capturing the Outback’s rugged beauty. The founding of this watercolour movement represents the culmination of the unique long term interactions between the Western Arrernte people with the German Lutheran community. Together they evolved into a relatively idiosyncratic isolated community over a period of more than fifty years after the original missionary arrival in 1877.”

The Hermannsburg School's emergence represents a complex interplay between Aboriginal and European artistic traditions. On one hand, the movement was spearheaded by young Western Arrernte men who sought to adapt their cultural knowledge and connection to the land into a new visual language. On the other, the school's reliance on European-style watercolour painting and its development within the Hermannsburg mission suggest the influence of assimilation policies and the power dynamics between the colonisers and the colonised through European pictorial idioms.

While Albert Namatjira's landscapes capture the Australian Outback with keen naturalistic detail, other Hermannsburg School artists tended towards a more idealised, Romantic interpretation of the landscape. Their renderings often imbued the environment with a sense of ethereal ‘otherness,’ reflecting a desire to represent the land through a spiritual, almost mystical lens. This divergence in styles speaks to the range of artistic approaches within the movement, and the varying degrees to which the artists sought to reconcile their Aboriginal heritage within European artistic traditions.

Other artists include Otto Pareroultja (1914-1973), Henoch Raberaba (1914-1975), Enos Namatjira (1920-1966), and Arnulf Ebatarinja (1931-1998).

The Hermannsburg School's lasting impact lies in its ability to bridge Aboriginal and European artistic practices, creating a unique visual language that reflects the complex cultural dynamics of colonial and post-war Australia. While the movement's reliance on European techniques is debated, its artists nonetheless succeeded in conveying their deep connection to the land and their cultural worldview through a new medium. The Hermannsburg School's popularity and influence paved the way for future generations of Aboriginal artists to assert their creative voices nationally and internationally.

The Heidelberg School

Just outside Melbourne, in a town called Heidelberg, emerged a different kind of art school. They were inspired by the European Impressionists, adopting the popular en plein air painting style.

Like the European Impressionists, the Heidelberg School artists were captivated by the interplay of light and colour, and sought to capture the fleeting, atmospheric qualities of the natural world. They were influenced by external cultures like Japan and other artistic modes like literature. Despite comments of their work carrying heavy notes of French style and influence, Arthur Streeton defended the art by saying it “is purely and absolutely Australian, not only as regards colour, but in idea and expression”. Their goal was to filter these Impressionist techniques and traditions through a distinctly Australian lens, reflecting their desire to depict the land “through Australian eyes”. This synthesis of European and local influences was key to the Heidelberg School's artistic identity, as they strove to develop a credible, vital style that could stand alongside the great landscape painting traditions of the Old World.

Other notable artists include Frederick McCubbin (1855-1917), John Russell (1858-1930), and Sir John Longstaff (1861-1941), and Louis Buvelot (1814-1888), a Swiss-born artist, coined ‘the father of Australian landscape painting’.

Technically, the art is very impressive and beautifully rendered, reminiscent of James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Claude Monet. However, the Australian light, flora, and fauna they are so keen to capture I feel is amiss compared to the Hermannsburg School's landscape paintings. This contrasted sharply with the Hermannsburg School's focus on the land itself as a living, sacred entity, untouched by colonial influence.

While the Heidelberg School's landscape paintings may not have fully captured the essence of the Australian environment, their influence on developing a distinct Australian artistic identity cannot be overstated. By adapting European Impressionist techniques to depict their local surroundings, these artists paved the way for future generations to explore and celebrate the unique visual character of the Australian landscape. The Heidelberg School's popularity and critical acclaim helped establish Australia as a vibrant centre of artistic innovation, laying the foundation for the emergence of even more distinctive national art movements.

Conclusion

Capturing the Australian spirit in art is a very difficult thing to do, requiring an essential awareness and understanding of the natural environment that is integral to depictions of people, places, or things. Perhaps this is why ‘dreaming’ - that sacred, living force at the core of Aboriginal culture - is so central to the art we've explored.

Just as dreaming is the wellspring of personal and cultural identity for Aboriginal Australians, it also serves as the driving force behind the diverse artistic movements we've examined. Whether it is in the layered symbolism of dot painting, the spiritual connection to the land expressed by the Hermannsburg School, or the Heidelberg artists' longing for a distinctly Australian vision, the power of dreaming envelopes these works, guiding the creative process and moulding the artistic expressions.

I think, to an extent, you can see this in the art, as you can see how it has evolved in response to the changing multicultural landscape of Australia. It offers endless inspiration for artists. You can see a longing for a foreign European landscape in Australian depictions in the Heidelberg School where you lose the authenticity in an effort to idealise the surroundings. While for the artists of the Hermannsburg School and those practicing dot painting, there is an Australian identity void of human intervention and presence. Dreaming is an artistic opportunity.

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