An introduction to Australian Aboriginal Art. Discusses features of Central (desert) and Northern Aboriginal Art, and shows uses of these traditional features in contemporary art (includes short video clip of dot-painting method).

3. Types of Aboriginal Art
There are two distinct styles of Aboriginal Art:

4. Central (desert) Art
FEATURES:
 Symbols
 Dots
 Aerial View
 Landscape
 Traditionally drawn in
the sand and for body
adornment

5. Northern Art
FEATURES
 Real objects & figures
(not symbols)
 X-Ray drawings
 Lines & cross-hatching
 “Flat” drawings
 Earthy colours
 Painted on bark

6. Contemporary
(modern)Aboriginal Art
 Aboriginal artists of today combine traditional painting
techniques with modern themes, images and colours.

7.  Today, many Aboriginal artists incorporate dot painting into
their art work. Also, with the availability of acrylic paints, the
traditional use of ochre to make their paint, which gave the
Aboriginal dot painting and art work their ‘earthy’ colours, has
given way to more contemporary and bright colours, as used
by Bronwyn Bancroft in a lot of her book illustrations.

8. Sally Morgan
My Place

9. Gertie Huddleston
Garden of Eden

10. DJ (Danielle) Mate

11. Art of Papunya Tula

12. The emergence of
“dot” paintings

13. Papunya Tula
 Traditional Aboriginal dot painting is an Aboriginal art
form that was prominent in the Central Western parts of
Australia. The dot painting style itself, originated from the
Papunya art movement in the 1970’s. Papunya Tula artists
used a process of drawings in the sand to be used in
spiritual ceremonies. In such rituals the soil would be
smoothed over and used like a ‘canvas’ to represent sacred
designs, replicate movements of ancestral beings upon
earth. These Dreaming designs were outlined with dancing
circles and were often surrounded with a mass of dots.
Afterward the imprinted earth would be smoothed over,
painted bodies rubbed away, so as to hide the sacred secrets
which had taken place.

15. How to “dot paint”

16. Aboriginal Art tells a story
The narrative follows the lie of the land, as created by ancestral beings in
their journey or during creation.
The Last Journey of Christ Artist: Kutjunga

17. Aboriginal Iconography

18. Your Task
 Create a painting representing your
journey through the landscape from
home to school.

19. How?
Find directions from your home to school on Google Maps.

20. How?
Identify features of the landscape and develop symbols for them.

21. How?
Draw a draft design of your journey, based on the Google Map, in
your Art Diary.

22. How?
When you are happy with your design, lightly copy it onto the
canvas. Divide the background into sections.

23. How?
Paint the sections using contemporary colours, adding contrasting dots using the
paintbrush handle when dry. (Paint route from home to school in black).