Alice Guiness Burndud Ground
Mervyn Street Stolen Wages
The Burndud ceremony is a special and unique cultural obligation where each member of Yindjibarndi must attend and participate. The song circle teaches us the dances (women only) about our roles and responsibilities as women. It also reminds us that there is a harmony within our lives that incorporates all living things on Ngurra (Country). Old people say by the beat and rhythm of the songs it rejuvenates balance and purpose that we of the Ngurra are collectively responsible for and that there is no life without balance. We also find a personal happiness that is hard to describe, where it is both a fulfillment and validation that tells us that we have worth and standing. As we see Mum Alice paint the Burndud, we are reminded of her personal ability and the everyday challenges she faces to communicate her feelings, and what drives her to make the Burndud her main piece and focus when doing her artwork. I have learnt over the years that her Burndud depictions are deep messages of what she sees as important things in our lives – Ceremony, Family, Galharra, Ngurra and the Songs. She teaches me to remember these things
and always hold each equal to the other and remember our roles and responsibilities and never losing the true meaning of the Burndud and why it remains. Everyone knows of Mum Alice's disability; where she can't communicate as other people can. This has affected her ability to build a relationship with others. Through art she is teaching us the true meaning of balancing our two worlds. Art is her nourishment; she communicates through it. Art is a human creativity. And it matters when we want to make sense of life. Mum Alice is desperately helping us to make sense of her life, she is telling us her story. Let us seriously consider moving forward in the ways of our people, we must find our way back to this teaching, living the Yindjibarndi values that will ensure our survival. When we start to listen to each other, that's when the healing happens. Lorraine Coppin Juluwarlu Group Aboriginal Corporation Excerpt from a catalogue essay, January 2025
‘This is my story about working in the cattle station, learning to drove cattle in the Kimberley on my Country. I use art to tell my history. Early days old people didn't know station animals, I am bringing this history and what we saw in my generation by telling this story. Still, we are learning pigs, nanny goats but I had just come out of the bush and I had been living on bush food. I saw these animals for the first time and then I got to work with
Senior Gooniyandi artist Mervyn Street led and won a historic Stolen Wages Class Action against the WA government for workers not paid between 1936 and 1972. Mervyn has worked his whole life as a passionate activist and documenter of unwritten history through his art. His solo exhibition Stolen Wages traces this important story through his own eyes and his personal life as an unpaid stockman. Presenting some of his most iconic and pioneering artworks from the 1990s through to today, the exhibition is both an artistic timeline and a tribute to Mervyn's lifelong mission to get acknowledgment for the unpaid station workers who were integral in building the economic wealth of this state. Mervyn says that he didn't know what ‘art’ was when he started drawing cowboy images on a water tank sometime in the 1960s or '70s. He didn't know that there was a job or a way of making an income out of it. He just had an innate desire to make images of his life and memories in his own way, distinct from other artists in the region. We are so lucky he did start drawing, and even luckier to have this body of work within an urgent moment in time for Australia.
them. Old people used to spear them and get in trouble, they didn't know.
You may look at this work and think it's good, but it has a lot of meaning. The station stories and early days are when everything changed. I paint about history to make a difference between Dreamtime and modern history.’
– Mervyn Street (courtesy Mangkaja Arts)
Emilia Galatis , Curator
A Perth Festival and Juluwarlu Art Group Commission Presented with Juluwarlu Art Group and the John Curtin Gallery
A Perth Festival Commission Presented with Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency and Walyalup | Fremantle Arts Centre
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