Concert Program

“ For First Nations Australians, a song is never just a song. It is a map to identity, a way to find home. It is our way of knowing. Our way of belonging. A song is so much more than just a song. – Deborah Cheetham

LUMPU LUMPU COUNTRY
Daisy Andrews comes from the remote Aboriginal community at Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. She was born at Cherrabun Station and belongs to the Walmajarri people. In 2004 the ATW translated her painting, Lumpu Lumpu country, into a tapestry. The tapestry Lumpu Lumpu country captures the drama of the landscape with its cliffs and valleys, wildflowers and blazing red earth. The carpet of purple flowers finds a visual echo in the lavender coloured sky, and the whole image is suffused with sentiment. Andrews states “when I draw my picture I am seeing that good country in my head, looking at those sandhills, flowers, everything was very good. I think hard when I look at my country. I think how I have to paint it. I look hard, it makes me sad too, it is beautiful, good country, but it makes me sad to think about all of the old people who were living there.”

DULKA WARNGIID
Through the arts program at Mornington Island Arts and Craft Centre, a group of 7 Bentinck Island women came together to paint Dulka Warngiid (Land of All) in 2008. The tapestry was commissioned for the Melbourne Recital Centre, with funding provided by the Hugh D T Williamson Foundation. Unlike other indigenous Australian communities the Kaiadilt (Bentinck Island) have no graphic, pre-European art tradition, aside from body painting. These artists have been able to build up a collective and personal repertoire of images and symbols- birthplaces, rocks, wild flowers, story places, hunting grounds, reefs, waterholes, body paint and scars. In a broad sense, each of these artists came to painting via more traditional practical artistic pursuits, such as making hibiscus bark string, singing, weaving dilly bags and making and repairing fishing nets. Each of the artists explored the materiality of the paint and surface while representing their own connectedness to land, ancestors and community narratives. “We each painted our country area which was special for us. Our painting is all of our country. That’s what the title means — country, place land— land of all.”

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