Birrundudu Drawings
A collection of 810 crayon drawings were created by sixteen Aboriginal men working on Birrundudu, a Northern Territory cattle station in 1945. The works resulted from the men’s engagement with the anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt. Dutifully recording as much information about their meaning as he could, Ronald Berndt and the men who made these drawings captured an extraordinary record of the Country, ancestors, history and ceremonies of the region.The collection is cared for today by the Berndt Museum at the University of Western Australia. Apart from a handful of drawings, most of the collection has never been seen. Birrundudu Drawings brings to the world for the first time these remarkable art works. These 810 drawings sat in silence for the eighty years since they were created: first in the Berndts’ home and then at the museum. Some of these silences are interrogated in this book. Others will take longer to resolve. What is beyond doubt is the fact that the Birrundudu Drawings represent a monumental body of Aboriginal knowledge and creativity. The drawings are not simply important because they have never been seen, nor because there are so many of them. They are important because of the convergence of these two aspects – their scale combined with their novelty has transformative potential in the narratives of Aboriginal art and Australian history. A breathtakingly beautiful and history-swerving body of work.
ISBN 9781763733145. Upswell Publishing. hb. 384 pages. 27 x 25 cm.
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