Gracie Greene It’s Time!
Birrundudu Drawings
Some of this is tarruku (sacred and restricted). But tarruku is safe beneath (the drawings). People can’t see that.
Artist Gracie Greene experienced enormous social change over the course of her life and developed a unique visual language that incorporated desert cultural knowledge and Christian narratives. A major figure in the development of the Balgo art movement, Gracie resolved a distinct style that fulfilled her responsibility to impart knowledge that she gained from both her Balgo Hills Mission upbringing and the traditional stories that related to Country on which she lived in Balgo Hills and her parent’s Country. While living in communities including Balgo, Wangkajanka and Fitzroy Crossing, Gracie Greene worked to enhance cross-cultural understandings via her multiple roles – as parent, teacher, author, Elder and artist. She was not only an innovator herself, but through her use of the dotting practice she enabled the development of so many other innovations in Balgo art that would come in the years ahead. By the mid to late-1980s, she was recognised as an important artist and teacher within the community. She was a member of the steering group that established the new Culture Centre at Balgo, which was the foundation upon which Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation was later established. Balgo is located on the path of the Luurnpa, which terminates at Uluru, and
in late 1985, men from the Balgo community selected Gracie’s painting of the Luurnpa (Kingfisher) Dreaming to mark the Australian Federal Government’s historic return of Uluru-Kata Tjuta to Anangu. Painting was one of the ways that the artist consistently represented herself via affiliations at a cultural cross-over point. Through word and image, Gracie Greene asserted her agency in her distinctive presentation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal stories. Hers is a highly sophisticated and contemporary artistic practice and she is generous in providing points of access into her paintings that utilise Desert iconography and Catholic narratives to resonate in contemporary society for community, for non-Kukatja speakers and younger generations. Lynley Nargoodah , Mangkaja Arts Lee Kinsella , Cruthers Collection of Women ’ s Art Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue essay
This intensified production entailed significant cultural exchange between the men involved, including senior men who informed the drawing process, as they negotiated protocols across age, experience, language and custodial responsibilities, and shared their stories with each other as they experimented in a new medium. Ronald Berndt’s neat annotations on each work, attempt to understand and translate fractions of this knowledge for outsiders. The re-emergence of the Birrundudu Drawings followed four years of collaborative research involving more than 40 cultural authorities, descendants, academics, researchers, advisors and museum workers. The research team visited the communities of Balgo, Billiluna, Halls Creek, Kalkarindji (Wave Hill), Lajamanu, Yuendumu and Mparntwe (Alice Springs) to share the collection with the artists’ descendants and others connected to its cultural content. Birrundudu Drawings showcases over 100 works on paper, none of which have been exhibited before, as well as a contemporary response by artist Jimmy Tchooga. The scale and complexity of the exhibition is transformative to understandings of Aboriginal art and Australian social history, but is most importantly, part of unfolding cultural legacies.
We only share the top story, for kids, women, everyone.
– Jerry Jangala
The Birrundudu Drawings represent a monumental body of Aboriginal knowledge and creativity, emerging from desert communities that had converged at a remote cattle station. In 1945, anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt were engaged to investigate labour conditions at Birrundudu, a large station owned by Vestey Brothers, which held a lease spanning the Northern Territory-Western Australian border. As the Berndts began to run out of the notepads and photographic film they were using to record the knowledge of Aboriginal men and women, some of the men who had observed Ronald sketching offered to produce their own representations, utilising a cache of brown paper and lumber crayons. Over a three-month period, amid starvation-level rations and horrific exploitation, a staggering 810 drawings were created by 16 men, depicting their extensive knowledge of Country, ancestral narratives, history, sites and ceremonies.
Presented with The Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery with support from Mangkaja Arts and The Berndt Museum
Presented with The Berndt Museum at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery with support from The Berndt Research Foundation and Warlayirti Artists
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