Bloodwood
Totem
Totems are beguiling and mysterious, affording the viewer a
glimpse into deep spiritual traditions. A particular magic occurs
when aesthetics and meaning are complimentary, when the essence
of the story is captured in the art. This happens with Bloodwood
Totems – the dancing shimmer of the pole announcing its
iconic status. The trees imbue landscapes with totemic significance,
placing the sacred into the everyday. Painting the Bloodwood
has become a meditation for Ian on ancestors and relationship
to country. Waldron’s Bloodwood Totems appear in various
contexts, as the sole subject of a painting, or making a cameo
in the background of a landscape. They come alive and their
presence can be felt as if they are about to take leave of their
place on the canvas and enter our dimension. The appearance
of the Bloodwood Totems, turning up anywhere, anytime, parallels
the essence of Aboriginal spirituality – it is non-site
or time specific, it does not change in relation to how far
from country someone lives or how long it has been since detailed
ceremony was known and practiced. The absence of stylistic references
has allowed Ian complete freedom of interpretation. While bearing
no definable relation to traditional artistic styles from Kurtjar
country, the potency of the symbol has been translated perfectly
and powerfully.
Camp
Kitchen
This camp is a working camp, used when mustering cattle at Maravale,
an outstation a few kilometres from Delta Downs Station. A generation
earlier, Maravale was a station in its own right. The building
in the background was originally a kitchen where Ian’s
mother cooked, and vegetables grew in surrounding gardens. Until
recently two large watertanks stood beside the old cookhouse
but had to be demolished because they had become dangerous.
On previous trips Ian drew these tanks and they became the subject
of a set of limited edition prints. It is with a hint of sadness
that Ian tells of the demolition of the tanks, they had been
there since before he was born. However, it is not because of
a downturn in business that things at Maravale were scaled back
and these facilities became derelict, rather the growth of business
and the centralisation of operations at Delta. Today the men
cook for themselves at this camp, beef, snake, goanna and sometimes
longneck turtles from the nearby lagoon (also inhabited by a
crocodile), all chargrilled on the open fire. The pigs were
brought in to “fatten up” but have become pets.
It’s not just a work camp, but a place to go to live,
to get away from town (Normanton).
No
Through Road / Kangaroos Next 1km
The placement of this double road sign in thick scrub, and the
nonsensical pairing of the signs, captures the irony of having
to instruct people on what is ahead and how to travel. There
is a clear regression in terms of relationship to the land in
a country where Indigenous Australians have an intimate knowledge
of the land, but now it is peppered with road signs every couple
of miles. Despite the dark humour Ian sees in these signs, he
enjoys their visual impact on the landscape, and has incorporated
road signs into his work for over a decade. They have become
an extension of the placement of text into paintings, and are
another device for telling stories, veiled messages that give
the viewer something to think about.
Holiday Nation
The question of identity as it relates to place for Indigenous
people is complicated when their place is a tourist mecca. People
“know” Australia by the way it is represented in
the news and tourist media, and in a sense this becomes Australia
because it is what a large number of people believe it to be.
The way Indigenous people know their country, in an intimate
familial way, is invisible to most people. Ian’s landscapes
are animated with an Indigenous presence and history. In tourist
Australia, in contrast to Indigenous Australia, the only Indigenous
presence illustrated is that of settlements in remote areas
producing art and artefacts and living in a manner that bears
the visible marks of “ancient culture”.
1. extract Conversation with author, November 2007.
2. extract bid.Katrina Chapman 2008
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