You may have heard about Aboriginal Art and wondered what their symbols and artwork mean. It is, however, interesting to know that each Indigenous Artwork has its meaning.
The art is known to have originated from the Aborigines of Australia. It has rich spiritual beliefs and tribal culture, essential in ensuring the practice’s continuity. Each art comes with some historical message about a particular area, people, event, or ritual.
Various techniques derive from the Indigenous Australian Art Concept. Below is a highlight.
Aboriginal Rock Art
When we talk of rock art, you understand that it is engravings implanted on rock surfaces. Stencils, drawings, and prints get infused in rocks for a specific purpose. It gets characterized by shelter art and limestone cave art.
It is performed as part of the ritual for ceremonies such as funerals, initiation rites, etc. The events are permanently marked on rocks to show a bond between the land and its people. Amazingly, you will find scratched motifs at the cave entrance and the finger lines at the dark parts.
Painting pigments serve in engraving the artwork. Ochre clay and kaolin clay are the components the artists use. Colors such as yellow, red, and purple make up the paints. You will use hands to make handprints while stencils do the spraying. Bladelike rocks cut the rock surfaces to make the permanent engravings.
Aboriginal Bark Paintings
Bark paintings mostly involve tree barks. Several subject matters were pasted or drawn on the tree barks to pass a specific message. For instance, in Western Australia, there was lots of content about the Arnhem Land in the Kimberley region before the 1970s.
The production of back paintings exists to date. Materials for bark painting depend on the information they work on. If temporary, a light ink applies, and if it is permanent, the ink and the artwork are more pronounced.
The nature of the story determines how the bark gets painted. Each genre also has its kind of painting. During painting, a specifically chosen ink makes drawings on the barks which get retrieved from hardwood trees.
Each community has its specific design for drawing and storing the bark paintings.
Aboriginal Sand Drawings
Sand drawings have been a standard method of passing information, especially in deserts and the seashore. Images are drawn using the finger or by using sticks, which begin to fade over time.
It is an indigenous method of expressing a family’s culture or beliefs. The indigenous Australian desert is known to have been a place where people conveyed the audience. Among the Walangari, they used sand drawings to bind the families.
Special ceremonies such as seasons of food got marked by sand drawing. However, at times sand drawing got overrated so that the specific information is hidden. Graphics can cover as much as a kilometre.
Aboriginal Body Painting
Among the Australian Indigenous people, body painting has a lot of significance. It is a spiritual act done by individuals. There is a variation between cultures and their practices on body painting among the aboriginal tribes.
The most exciting thing is that there are specific guidelines for doing body painting. Traditional and respected patterns apply to symbolize features. Distinctive designs apply to show social positions, family relations, tracts of land, and a precise ancestor.
In the Eastern Arnhem, men painted themselves to show their clan and boys during initiation. Scars, feathers, face painting, ornament, teeth, and shells were the tools for painting. Different colors also symbolized a specific aspect.
Aboriginal Dot Painting
Simple dots are done to form a specific art with a lot of beauty. Australian Aboriginal art is identified and recognized internationally on dot painting. With better concentration, you will quickly understand the hidden spiritual meaning of the dotted art.
Dot painting gets endorsed on the soil and a person’s skin. Circled and encircled dots form an integral part of the design. It originated back in 1971 by Geoffrey Bardon, an art teacher who noticed Aboriginal men drawing symbols on the sand while making stories.
Different colors have different meanings, accompanied by different orientations. Original colors include yellow, black, and white. Charcoal and clay gave the colors, but later acrylic mediums make more painting colors.
Aboriginal Cross Hatching
Cross Hatching is a style for drawing where the artist fills and shades part of his artwork. Materials such as pencils, charcoal, paint, and crayon apply. Cross-hatching involves making a cross pattern from the original one.
The Australian Aboriginal art fine technique hatching has a more stylistic and structured appearance. In the Arnhem, Land barks were used and were durable that they still exist.
Aboriginal Wandjina Artworks
Wandjina is associated with Western Australia, associated with rain-making. His images get painted on the rocks and caves.
Each painting has its significance and represents a specific ritual. Several communities share the Wandjina.
The artwork includes hair designs and facial characteristics that represent climate features. Eyes mean thunderstorms. Cutting a long story short, a full-bodied Wandjina represents one walking on the earth.
Conclusion
The several techniques used in Aboriginal Art have a different and unique meaning. You will be impressed by the role of the Indigenous Australian Art Concept in promoting ancient artwork. The application of the techniques is significant in some events.
