This week I visited the South Australia Museum to see the Australian Aboriginals culture gallery. The gallery contains many artefacts and of Aboriginal culture, all with detailed stories behind how they came to be.
Upon first entering the gallery, I noticed the Tindale Masks upon the wall. The masks were of various objects or animals like a turtle, a wheel or a cross. They are names the Tindale masks after Norman Tindale who stumbled upon them, and decided to collect them.
These masks were used by young Aboriginal men in 1947 in a group of performances before their intiations. It involved a month of ceremonies near Port Hedland in Western Australia by the Nyangumarda and Palyku people. The masks themselves are said to combine ancient elements and modern materials and subjects. The initiates took the impersonation of these animals and objects with a lot of energy and entertained onlookers with their dance with these masks.
There was a series of images showing records on the rocks - in other words a collection of drawings and stories that have been drawn onto rocks over time. Initially, it was the colours that caught my eye. That of purple and blue, not a colour you would expect to see on rock. However, upon closer look you can see layers upon layers of drawing on the one rock which is rather intriguing. This ancient rock art, as some call it, gives us an insight into aspects of their daily lives and their environments thousands of years ago.
Amongst the many objects i looked at during my visit, what caught my eye most were the Yuendumu School Doors. There was a display of about 9 doors, out the original 30, each displaying an aspect of the Warlpiri's sacred dreaming designs. They were painted by senior Walpiri men in 1983 at a remote school, 250km north west of Alice Springs at the Yuendumu school. This is considered to be a key moment in Australian art because it symbolised the Warlpiri's decisions to explain their Dreaming (Tjukurrpa) to others in the world, those not a part of their home in the desert.
The museum provided an explanation to each door (shown in the photo below)
This allowed us to not only understand what dreaming story the door depicted but also what each elements of the design meant.
