The History of Aboriginal Art and our Art Symbols

It has been said that Australian Aborigines devoted more time to Art than any other race in history. Aborigines of all tribes painted (& engraved) on caves, rock, bark, sand, didgeridoos, boomerangs & their huts (Yes, many tribes lived in huts!! ) opossum fur coats & their bodies. The art on huts & clothing was extremely elaborate and impressed even the European invaders. Unfortunately only a handful of opossum coats survive as examples. Most art was meaningful. Art was used in place of a written language to instruct in tribal law, religion and history. Art is still used for these purposes today. What was once written on sand, cave walls & bodies (& still is in some places) in now put onto canvas & paper by modern Aboriginal artists. Bark & trees are still used by modern artists in the same way their ancestors did. Before modern times orche was used as paint (it is still used). Each area of Australia has its traditional style of Art and Painting. Dot art is the traditional form of painting around a relatively small area of the Northern Territory & the eastern part of Western Australia. X-ray Art mainly comes from Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. To learn more about the History of Aboriginal Art, go to Tasmanian Art. Also read what inspired some of our artists.

The Story of Cave Paintings continues into modern times - please click through to finish the story. Now learn the meaning of our Art Symbols.

To properly understand any art, you need to know the artist, their culture, history & thinking. Therefore to understand Aboriginal art in the 20th and 21st century, we need to consider some history of our people. Australian Aboriginals have inhabited Australia since the dawn of recorded history & are considered to have the oldest continuing culture on earth. Present day Aboriginals are descended from several groups that came to Australia via Asia when the land bridge still existed. After Bass strait formed, some of the earliest arrivals were stranded in Tasmania, but the peoples inhabiting the mainland are a mixture of people who arrived at different times early in history. Incidently the last group of people who arrived brought the dingo with them, leading it is believe to the extinction of the thymaine from mainland Australia. Early Australian societies were not as isolated or as "primative" as Europeans later thought. For examples, most tribes were no where near as nomadic as often thought. Much of Australia is food rich for Aboriginal persons, so they often had little need to. Most clans did travel over a small area to take advantage of seasonal food & climate. This was often more by choice than necessity. Clans & tribes also traveled (sometimes considerable distances) for social & religious reasons. One advantage of this was that inter-tribal marriages were thus possible, preserving genetic diversity. Of course in desert areas, a nomadic lifestyle was a necessity. Also contrary to what was believed, houses, towns & agriculture did exist in parts of Australia anyway. The area on the Victorian/N.S.W. border where eel farming was practiced is the best known. It is now known that in pre-European times Aboriginals travel to and from Indonesia. As Australia was so rich, & our people could gather more food than needed from the land, they had no need to waste energy on intensive agriculture. The vast variety of foods eaten by tribes in most area of Australia was much larger than eaten by humans in most other places on earth and was probably a reason Aboriginal people appeared so healthy to the early European arrivals. In much of Australia burning was practiced as a way of managing the land, stop devastating bush fires and to control the movement of game (native animals). Also it much be remembered, Australia had no indigenous animals that could be herded or farmed as practiced in most other lands. Dingoes of course were domesticated, but as mentioned these are not a true native animal, but came with some of the early arrivals. This lack of agriculture was probably what "fooled" the early European invaders the most about our people, and let to some horrible consequences to Australia's original inhabitants.

This modern possum coat illustrates a form of art practiced for thousands of years of Australian history. Early Europeans were very impressed with complexity and beauty of possum coats that were worn for warmth by our people in southern and eastern Australia. Unfortunately only a handful are still in existence. In many areas these elaborate coats had an interesting double purpose. As well as keeping the individual warm they also told the story of the wearers life. Then when the individual died they were buried in their coat. In that way their life followed them & the story on the coat told the spirits who the person was & all about them. Possum coats illustrate how our art wasn't just for decoration, but told a story and served an important role in the lives of a people who didn't have an alphabet to write with.

Religious beliefs & customs varied from tribe to tribe, but many ideas, such as belief in the Dreamtime were very similar Australia wide. All tribes were very concerned about looking after their land. As each tribe had it's different land, with it's food sources & sacred sites, each group had it's unique dreaming stories. Please see stories for some details. As we had no written language art placed an important part in this. Despite the changes that have happened since European occupation, our traditional culture has continued on. Of course in some places places much important knowledge has been lost, but except in instances where tribes were massacred out of existence (eg. There is an area in Queensland which contains unique cave art not found elsewhere in Australia. As all the indigenous inhabitants were cleaned out before the white settlers were moved in, the meaning of this art has been lost.) some important knowledge has been preserved. This means that all parts of Australia, even area occupied early by the European settlers, still have their artist and art styles. As our is a living culture, it is appropriate for Aboriginal Australians in this 21st century to use modern mediums to express our feelings regarding the current circumstances we find ourselves living in. See the example in The apology.

Our people needed much knowledge to live. They needed to remember where & when food supplies were located. They needed to know exactly where the borders of their lands were. They needed to know where sacred sites were located & area they had to avoid. Stories, art and paintings were means of remembering this information. Obviously then the symbols in out art have meanings. Sacred art can contain several layers of knowledge. For example, an uninitiated person may recognise an emu, & details concerning its actions, while an initiated person may recognise that the story is in fact about an ancestral spirit in the form of an emu. A more senior person may know even far more details in the paintings. At left are illustrated 5 symbols - what do you think they mean?

Click through for the answers and the meanings of many more Art Symbols

Aboriginal Art History