The artist John Wolseley tells the story how in 2009 an Indigenous artist, Djambawa Marawili, on the edge of the floodplain of Garaŋarri, was relating to him, and a group of other artists, the ancestral creation story linked with the region.
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It dealt with a number of ancestral women who had travelled from the coast creating the food sources and water springs and at dawn they turned into brolga cranes. Wolseley continues, "He [Djambawa] gestured towards the distant source of the floodplain, and as his arm moved across it a great stream of cranes flew slowly and majestically towards the sea."
This was the spark of inspiration for Wolseley to produce a 10-metre-long painting depicting the flight of the brolgas and the amazing flora that is contained on this floodplain. As Wolseley explains, "Trailing down from the branches and foliage of various trees — cocky apple, mallotus, pandanus, cycad, black plum — were all manner of vines, and climbers: long yam, flagellaria and bush banana. Up into this living screen were various species of plants with edible fruits and tubers: bush orange, grass yams, nodding swamp orchid."
This exhibition not only marks the display of this remarkable artwork, but also commemorates an incredible collaboration between Wolseley and the distinguished Aboriginal artist and Yolngu elder, Mulkun Wirrpanda. It is a collaboration that has stretched over five years, where Mulkun, aware that the local knowledge of the flora is being lost, decided to paint all of the edible plants of the region. Some of these plants are of great totemic significance, which the Yolngu elder painted from memory, while guided by ancestral knowledge. For the first time, she assembled about 40 species as a new encyclopaedia of bush tucker from this region. In part this was designed to allow her own people to reconnect with parts of their culture and in part, it is designed to share this greater knowledge with other Australians.
It is a strikingly unusual and beautiful exhibition where, apart from Wolseley's gorgeous watercolour painting, in which he adopts the Chinese system of multiple perspectives through which to pick out all of the botanical detail with the precision of a 19th century naturalist, Mulkun is represented by all of the bark paintings of the individual plants together with the larrakitj (decorated memorial poles). This is accompanied by a number of collaborative relief prints. Although there is mutual respect between the two artists, Wolseley, one of Australia's most highly acclaimed artists who has been an environmental warrior for many decades, views himself as a pupil of Mulkun, who over their years of collaboration has explained to him the significance and cultivation of edible plants from this part of Arnhem land.
Wolseley, beyond the simple celebration of the sublime beauty of the area, also seeks to convey something of the profound spirituality of place. He observes, "I hope that the viewer of the work can share this experience, as he or she looks through this screen of jungle trees to that numinous world beyond - a world of sacred banyan trees, ancient middens, fresh springs and brolga cranes forever flying towards the sea."
We have long dismissed the idea that the Indigenous people of Australia were uncivilised nomadic hunter gatherers; this exhibition stresses how very knowledgeable farmers were the Aboriginal inhabitants of this region. Will Stubbs, who initiated this project and is a coordinator at the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala, has written an inspirational essay for the catalogue in which he explains the critical significance of this project and exhibition. Stubbs notes, "So Mulkun lives, and lives off the land, in a place whose name is ancient, and her clan holds the oral tradition of the Flood in their songs of Luthanba. This is eyewitness testimony of a geological event. The plants which she records here are the same foods which have sustained her people over this time. And yet at this very moment in history, at a time when that knowledge could now be recorded in writing, it is potentially coming to an end."
This exhibition is engaging, gorgeous and astonishing, but it is also very timely and of great historical significance. For the first time, we belong to a generation where irreversible damage is being done to our planet and to its numerous ecosystems. There is a desperate need to stop, take heed and undertake urgent repairs. One of the most important and original purposes of art is to uncover, preserve and convey knowledge. This exhibition achieves this by the spadeful, but also in a very beautiful manner.
When I met up with John Wolseley most recently, he showed me a passage from the writings of the Scottish poet, George Mackay Brown, who died a couple of decades ago. Brown wrote, "the task of the artist is to keep in repair the sacred web of creation – the cosmic harmony of God and beast and man and star and planet – in the name of humanity, against those who in the name of humanity are mindlessly and systematically destroying it." This is possibly the main achievement of this exhibition, a desperate effort to repair that which is under threat of complete destruction.
Midawarr | Harvest. National Museum of Australia. From November 24, 2017, until February 18, 2018. Daily 9am-5pm.
