Facts About Australia Aboriginal Art

Facts About Australia Aboriginal Art

What exactly is Aboriginal art, do you say? Aboriginal art also known as indigenous Australian Art and it is an age-old art form created by the indigenous people of Australia who are also known as Australian Aboriginals. This style of art has been documented throughout history to be thousands of years old with its more recent commercialization some time around 1970. While Aboriginal art may be pleasing to look at, that wasn’t its original intended purpose. It was and to this day is still used to tell a story. In the past, during the times of the original Aboriginal people, they used art symbols to document and chronicle their long cross country journeys as well as stand for their customs, laws and belief systems. The main difference between historical and current Aboriginal art is that though current examples use the same symbols as its historical counterpart, current art uses acrylic paints instead of natural earth colors.

australia aboriginal

Some of the oldest forms of Aboriginal art are carvings and cave paintings that date back over 30,000 years. These are among the few remaining documented examples, due in part to the age tested durability of the rock’s hard surface. “Stencils” were frequently used during the creation of these rock paintings. That process involved placing an object in front of the rock and then splashing paint all over it. Most of the early examples of art were done on highly perishable items such as tree bark. Sadly, very few still remain because of the natural disintegration of the bark.

Iconography is a term that is often used instead of calling narrative symbols Aboriginal art symbols. Since Aborigines don’t have their own native language, these art symbols were used to document everything in their history. It was one of the only ways to record events, narrate their dreams and document their journeys. With that being said, every single of piece of actual Aboriginal art either tells a story, or has a story behind it. This is why all remaining artifacts regarding their art is so important to history.

There is a large variety of different styles of Aboriginal art, though most of them can be broken down into two broad categories: 1) naturalistic or figurative and 2) non-naturalistic or non-figurative. If you look at a painting and get the point or understand what the art is trying to depict or portray, then it would be considered the naturalistic painting style. The Kimberly and Kakadu regions of Australia are where some of the most beautiful and well known naturalistic art can be found. Non-figurative paintings are represented with geometric and abstract shapes. Dot paintings are non-naturalistic examples of Aboriginal art. The Aborigines used dot paintings to hide messages and things they wanted kept secret, especially during the time that Europeans were exploring Australia.

There are many forms of traditional indigenous Aboriginal art. The list of these forms of art contain: rock paintings, rock engravings, dot paintings, bark paintings, aerial desert “country” landscapes, weaving, string art carvings, sculptures and stone arrangements. Each one of these forms of art have their origination in areas all across Australia, which gives each a subtle, geographical defining point that minutely separates it from the rest. As with anything anywhere, the location of origin has a defining part in grooming it to morph into what it is today. One thing stays the same though, equal throughout every form or example of Aboriginal art. That is the fact that every piece has a vision, and that vision tells their story.