Landscape is an important concept in contemporary Indigenous art. "Aboriginal paintings are maps of land" (Morphy, 1998) but they are also a metaphor for relationships between people and place.
What is landscape?
From a European perspective a landscape is understood as a scene from nature.
From an Indigenous perspective landscape is a focus of individual and collective identity and a symbol of their colonial dispossession.
In this module we explore the idea of Indigenous landscape from three different perspectives.
For Aborigines landscape is the centre of their identity and existence. It embodies the spiritual world of the Dreaming. Painting the land asserts rights and responsibilities to country.
For Indigenous people the act of performance is equally as important as the art object. Performances occur as part of ceremonial life and in more public settings such as the opening of art exhibitions and major international events like the Olympic Games in Sydney 2000.
Landscape is gendered. Men and women relate to the landscape differently. These differences are reflected in sand drawings, body painting and various art forms from acrylic painting on canvas and bark painting to printmaking and fibre.
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