From The Earth – Contemporary Indigenous Ceramics from Alice Springs Pottery, Ernabella, Hermannsburg Potters, and Tiwi Islands
Gallery One, JamFactory Adelaide
13 December 2008 – 25 January 2009

Reviewed by Christine Nicholls for World Sculpture News, Hong Kong

Judith Pungkarta Inkamala, Hermannsburg Potters, 2008, Rock Wallaby, hand built terracotta, underglaze decoration, 405 x 265 mm

From the Earth is a survey exhibition of contemporary Indigenous Australian ceramics from the Tiwi Islands (situated off the north coast of Australia) and also from Hermannsburg, Ernabella Arts, and Alice Springs Pottery in Central Australia. It features works by established and emerging artists, some of whom have now specialized in ceramics for a considerable length of time.

To the best of my knowledge this is a genuinely groundbreaking exhibition: the first occasion on which Indigenous Australian pottery from Australia’s northern seabord as well as from diverse locations in the Central Desert region have been displayed in a group exhibition. From the Earth, showing in the principal gallery of Adelaide’s highly regarded JamFactory, gives audiences an opportunity to consider and perhaps appraise distinctive regional and personal differences in style, technique and practice. At the same time the exhibition shines the spotlight on certain commonalities evident in these diverse approaches to pottery making.

John Patrick Kelantumama, Tiwi Design, 2001, Purrukapali, earthenware, underglaze decoration, metal, 705 x 270 x 105 mm.

The accomplished John Patrick Kelantumama, a senior Tiwi man who is affiliated with Tiwi Design based at Nguiu on Bathurst Island, has worked as a professional potter for more than three decades now. Beginning his long and successful career as an apprentice with Tiwi pottery in 1976, today Kelantumama is recognized nationally as a master potter. Kelantumama’s Purrukupali, fashioned from earthenware and metal with underglaze decoration, depicting the legendary Purrukapali with his infant son Jinani, is an immediate, vivid and touching work. This compelling work relates to the major Tiwi narrative of how death came to be visited upon Tiwi Islanders.

That story goes that after some years of marriage to the old man Purrukapali, Bima, his much younger wife, entered into a ‘hot’ sexual liaison with Japara, her husband’s younger brother. One fateful day the adulterous couple, who habitually left baby Jinani under the shade of an ironwood tree while they went about their sexual romp, forgot about the baby. Returning late on the same afternoon Bima found that her baby son had died underneath the tree – the sun had swung around exposing the child to its strong rays, killing him. This unleashed an entire sequence of violent and desperately sad events that are still, to this day, played out in the ceremonial lives, particularly in the funerary rites, of the Tiwi.

Mark Virgil Puautjimi, Tiwi Design, 2006, Japara - the moon man, earthenware, underglaze decoration, 430 x 170 x 75 mm

There are more splendid ceramic works relating to the same extended Tiwi narrative on display in From the Earth. Included among these are Mark Virgil Puautjimi’s Japara (Moon Man), depicting Purrukapali’s younger brother Japara who was transformed into the moon as a result of his transgressions. Lunar craters are understood to be the scars left on Japara’s face – resulting from the fight unto death that took place between the two brothers in the wake of the cuckolded Purrukapali’s devastating discovery of his wife’s adulterous liaison and the consequent death of his infant son Jinani. Cyril James Kerinauia’s marvellous Moonman and his Bima and Jinani also relate to this narrative. The major players in this ancient Tiwi drama of crime and punishment have been rendered with wonderfully wild, spiky ceramic hair. This bestows upon them a somewhat neo-Gothic air – notwithstanding the fact that these ceramic sculptures are rendered in such bright colours. Given the base treachery, violence and originary ills underlying this Tiwi narrative, the protagonists’ ‘feral’ head-dresses seem quite fitting.

Mark Virgil Puautjimi, Tiwi Design, 2005, Buffalo, earthenware, underglaze decoration, 270 x 220 x 70 mm

There are also a number of fetching Tiwi works depicting everyday life and entirely secular themes, for example, Mark Virgil Puautjimi’s Buffalo, an earthenware work with underglaze decoration. Feral hoofed animals, including camels, donkeys, horses and pigs, none of which are native to Australia, are literally on the loose in many remote Australian outback regions. Rampaging buffalos are both feared and desired (as a magnificent food source) on the Tiwi Islands. Traditional Tiwi geometric designs have been applied to these ceramic sculptures, which are characterized by their extraordinarily left-of-field colour use. Puautjimi’s Buffalo is no exception: vibrant yellows, warm oranges, blue and olive greens have all been used to masterful effect. So what if this ceramic buffalo looks a little like a multi-hued, short-horned wombat? This contributes to the creature’s charm.

Robert Edward Puruntatameri, Munupi Arts and Crafts, 2008, (right) Vessel with Lid, earthenware, underglaze decoration, and sgraffito decoration, 240 x 165 mm; (left) Vase, earthenware, underglaze decoration, and sgraffito decoration, 150 x 105 mm

Fellow Tiwi Islander and countryman Robert Edward Puruntatameri, representing Munupi Arts and Crafts, based at Pulurampi on Melville Island, also makes a strong contribution to From the Earth with his vases and appealing round vessels. These he has adorned with tradition-inspired Tiwi geometric designs, fish and other sea creatures including squid. Puruntatameri’s father, the illustrious late Eddie Puruntatameri, is credited as the major founder of Tiwi Pottery along with his apprentice John Bosco Tipiloura. Puruntatameri-the-younger is clearly working hard to keep the family tradition alive. The status of Tiwi men as master carvers becomes overwhelmingly apparent in the aptitude they have shown in the transition to pottery, which is not a vernacular Australian tradition. The carved, wooden three-dimensional sculptures of traditional Tiwi visual arts practice seem to have allowed for a seamless segue into that other three dimensional medium, ceramics. That this has happened in the comparatively short space of time since 1972 when pottery was first introduced to the Tiwi Islands is a formidable accomplishment.

Rona Pananangka Rubuntja, Hermannsburg Potters, 2008, Rock Pigeons, terracotta, underglaze decoration, 410 x 310 mm

Travelling south and inland, Judith Inkamala, Hedwig Mocketarinja, Carol Panangka Rontji, Rona Panangka Rubuntja and Rahel Ungwanaka, all from the Arrernte community of Hermannsburg in Central Australia also make notable contributions. The Arrernte potters’ cap-lidded pots, decorated with everyday desert scenes, are rendered in vivid colours, bringing to mind their celebrated precursor, the Hermannsburg school of landscape art, of which Albert Namatjira was not only the progenitor but also the most famous exponent. These women’s ability to create ‘living pictures’ of their desert homeland on these three dimensional pots is exemplary. Without any doubt the pièces de résistance of these works are their sculptural lids, which always relate to something – often fauna – culturally significant to the maker. Hedwig Mocketarinja’s alert, crouching marsupial really caps off her work; as does Carol Panangka Rontji’s rather phallic, predominantly deep green Port Lincoln parrot. In a similar vein, Judith Inkamala brings a wonderfully eye-popping quality to the ‘bush creatures’ she creates and perches atop her bowls: her exquisitely-fashioned rock wallaby and captivatingly importunate perentie (a large burrowing Australian lizard) are cases in point. The Arrernte potters of Hermannsburg began working in the early 1960s and have since transformed ceramics into an art form distinctively their own: their unique, collective artistic ‘signature’ is evident on all of their work. Their skilful hands render these superficially conventional desert landscapes animate and alive.

Anilyuru (Carol) Williams, Ernabella Arts, 2008, Ngayuku Walka, terracotta, underglaze and sgraffito decoration, 75 x 170 mm each

Ernabella Arts, situated in the Pitjantjatjara/Yankunjatjara community of Ernabella (Pukatja) in South Australia’s arid north, is also represented in From the Earth, with contributions from sisters Tjimpuna and Carol Williams and several others. Ernabella artists only began experimenting with ceramics a little more than a decade ago but they have already made a considerable impact on the market with their carved and incised sgraffito forms. The sgraffito method, involving decorating pottery or ceramics by scratching through a surface of plaster or glazing to reveal different colours underneath, is the preferred method of many of these artists, no doubt because it taps into other long-run Pitjantjatjara/Yankunjatjara artistic practices, particularly those that relate to wood-carving.

Jillian Davey, 2008, Inma Walka, terracotta, underglaze decoration, 470 x 330 mm

High profile Pitjantjatjara/Yankunjatjara potters Nyukana (Daisy) Baker & Jillian Davey, who also originally hail from Pukatja but are now resident in Alice Springs, also make an impact with their large terracotta, underglaze decorated pots. Both work now at Alice Springs Pottery, the ‘newest kid on the block’ in Indigenous Australian pottery ventures. This enterprise was set up largely to accommodate ceramic artists like Nyukana Baker and Jillian Davey who need to live in Alice Springs whilst they undergo kidney dialysis. While Davey tends towards making beautifully restrained, monochrome works, Baker offers a nicely contrapuntal splash of colour to the display with her large and often flamboyant vessels.

The vigorous, confident works on display in this exhibition indicate that Indigenous Australian ceramics is prospering, despite being a relatively nascent art form. From the Earth demonstrates that what could be described as the recent Australian ‘Aboriginal invention of pottery’ looks forward to a bold, bright future.

Postscript

Christine Nicholls adds an interpretive comment to her review:

Interestingly there is a mission connection in the case of all three enterprises: the Tiwi Islands, Hermannsburg and Ernabella all have mission histories – respectively Catholic, Lutheran and Presbyterian (which is of course one part of today’s Uniting Church). It’s become fashionable these days to give the missions and missionaries a really good bagging or solid drubbing but on balance, in my view, and I’ve never been a missionary myself (far from it) the positives of their contribution can often be seen, for the most part, to outweigh the negatives. For example, notwithstanding their Christianizing and conversion agendas, the mishos DID often encourage people to develop cottage industries such as these pottery co-ops which have proved sustainable in the Tiwi and Hermannsburg cases, over a considerable length of time. This could not have happened if they had simply been imposed upon the people – the Indigenous people involved actually get real pleasure, a feeling of well-being and self-esteem from making and exhibiting their work

Irene Mbitjana Entata, Hermannsburg Potters, 2006, Jesus Footprint, hand built terracotta, underglaze decoration, 330 x 270

With respect to the Christian influence on some of these ceramists’ work, I believe that these influences goes beyond any clear or overt reference to Christianity or Christian iconography such as the Christian cross that Irene Mbitjana Entata has placed on the lid of her obviously Christian-themed work. Judith Pungkarta Inkamala’s red tailed black cockatoo, for instance, has a distinctly angelic quality – a black angel? The same comments also apply to many of the works by the Tiwi artists – the male figures of the much maligned and suffering Purrukapali, cheated on by his wife and brother, seems to be represented in a Christlike manner or with a Christlike dimension in some of the works.

Another factor each of these ceramics enterprises holds in common is the fact that all four, including Alice Springs Pottery, the latest player in this field, the newest kid on the block, have involved and continue to involve productive and fruitful collaborations and partnerships between Indigenous artists and non-Indigenous potters and/or art centre co-ordinators. While 40 or 50 years ago these tended to be asymmetrical relationships, in other words, yes, there was a paternalistic element to them, today, the partnerships mostly take place on a relatively level playing field, founded on mutual respect and recognition. Whilst at one level these enterprises involve an exchange of skills, they also represent a great deal more than that. These endeavours also have value because they work as a ‘two-way’ professional, socio-cultural exchanges where the parties are able to learn about and share each other’s perspectives by working closely together, or ‘sharing the space’ as it were. Over time these enterprises are leading to the Indigenous creative artists independently running them – as is now largely the case with the Tiwi potters today. The figures associated with the Purrukapali/Bima/Japara/ Jinani narrative seems to have acquired the status of Supreme Beings which represents something of a move away from earlier Indigenous cosmologies – at the very least this is indicative of a cultural shift, sociocultural hybridity and so forth – unsurprising in the circumstances I guess. So the Christian references I believe are quite often not apparent in any ‘in your face ‘ way in many of these works, but nonetheless are there…