Spent a lovely day at the National Art Gallery in Canberra. There are free tours three times a day with volunteer guides and I was lucky enough to be the only person who signed up for my tour, So it was personalised, meaning that we spent more time looking at the indigenous art than the Monet and the Pollock, etc.
The guide was really good and explained indigenous art to me a bit more - Western art looks across or ahead. In other words we look at things around us, like other people and landscapes and paint them. Indigenous artists in Australi, however, paint what is above them - sky, stars, etc - or what is below them - the land. They never paint abstracts, instead each painting has a story or is about the person or persons painting. The middle painting below, for example, is by several artists all telling their stories.
The painting above is by a woman artist who lives by the sea, where it often rains. I think it would look fantastic on the wall at home, which is by the sea where it also often rains.
Two completely different images of the face. The first by a Torres Strait artist and the second from the Ned Kelly series by Sidney Nolan.
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