{"id":4658,"date":"2013-09-11T13:24:54","date_gmt":"2013-09-11T03:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/?p=4658"},"modified":"2013-09-13T09:52:33","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T23:52:33","slug":"article-never-ending-story-desert-mob-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/article-never-ending-story-desert-mob-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Article – Never ending story: Desert Mob 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Never ending story: Desert Mob 2013
\n<\/b>By Kieran Finnane<\/strong>, 9 September 2013,
\nPublished on: Alice Springs News Online<\/p>\n

At Antara a woman was trying to build a shelter. Things were going wrong.
\nIn her frustration she swore, she spoke of men\u2019s business. A man was watching her\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI was feeling cold,\u201d the singer chants, and continues her story:<\/p>\n

The man killed the woman with a spear to the heart\u2026 He cooked her on a fire.<\/em>
\n He speared her\u2026 I was feeling cold\u2026 he speared her and she fell down\u2026<\/em>
\n He was standing up, he was watching her, he speared her\u2026<\/em>
\n That spear went into her heart and she fell down\u2026<\/em>
\n She was swearing. He chased her and he killed her.<\/em><\/p>\n

This story of transgression and violent retribution and the contrasting impressions of the high, sweet voice as the story was sung, scenes of the sunlit bush, a secluded valley, scenes of the artist Betty Pumani at work, explode my viewing of her striking painting, Antara<\/i><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Its blood-red core is no longer an intriguing aesthetic choice amidst a pale field of finely dotted motifs, but a representation of specific violence \u2013 the upward thrusting, elongated red form no doubt the spear, the red trail to the edge the woman\u2019s blood as she died. It\u2019s also a story of a specific place, a sacred place, Antara, a permanent reminder of a crime and its punishment, more chilling than any clause of our Criminal Code.<\/p>\n

The repeated refrain, \u201cI was feeling cold\u201d, may well be referring to the woman\u2019s need for shelter but it also sent a shiver down my spine as the song\u2019s story unfolded and seemed to suggest something of how the artist might have felt as she laid out the fearful story in paint.<\/p>\n

The lyrics as quoted above may not be a perfect transcription; they are taken from hastily scrawled notes of the subtitles running on a short film shown by Mimili Maku Arts at the Desert Mob symposium last Friday.\u00a0Matching up the film with Pumani\u2019s painting hanging in the exhibition was a revelatory experience and underlines the power that a film like this has in communicating with an Aboriginal artist\u2019s public.<\/p>\n

Desert Mob incorporates hundreds of works and it is no doubt beyond the resources of the art centres, Desart and the Araluen Arts Centre who present the exhibition in partnership, to provide more interpretive materials, though the lack of even one reflective essay in the catalogue is regrettable as was the absence of a meaningful speech on opening night.<\/p>\n

The occasion of Desert Mob is one of the most significant interfaces between Central Australia, particularly its Aboriginal people, and the rest of the world and as such it deserves the moments taken to honour it in a speech. Such a speech doesn\u2019t need to be lengthy but does need to be thoughtful and uplifting. The next night at Raft Artspace curator Dallas Gold was able to strike the right note and received a deserved ovation (his short speech is quoted in full at the end of this article)…[Read more]<\/i><\/b><\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Presented by the Araluen Arts Centre, in conjunction with Desart, Desert Mob 2013 brings together over 300 artworks from approximately 35 Aboriginal art centres across Australia.
\nAn annual event, it is the only exhibition that offers viewers the opportunity to encounter the latest contemporary art produced at Aboriginal owned art centres across the region, all under the one roof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[832,717,720,449,165,716,721],"class_list":["post-4658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-releases","tag-aboriginal-art","tag-alice-springs","tag-araluen-art-centre","tag-contemporary-art","tag-desart","tag-desert-mob-2013","tag-kieran-finnane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4658"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4662,"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658\/revisions\/4662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idaia.com.au\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}