Two old artists looking for food: Living forms of the landscape
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“As they work, the artists are often distant from each other, John in the south and Mulkun in the north of the Australian Continent. If you fancy a drive it means 4,000 kilometers on the road, and much of the drive through remote and remoter places still”.
Duration
29.24
Director
Peter and Andrea Hylands
Cinematography
Andrea Hylands
Warning to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers that the content of this film contains images and voices of Indigenous people now deceased.
Creative cowboy films would like to thank: John Wolseley, Mulkun Wirrpanda, Jenny Long, Djambawa Marawili, Merrkiyaway Ganambarr-Stubbs, Nonggirrnga Marawili, Takeshi Kano (Mino City), Liyawaday Wirrpanda, Will Stubbs, Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, Joseph Brady and the Mulka project team, Angus Cameron, Rose Cameron, Nomad Art Productions, Andy Greenslade, Dr Mathew Trinca, National Museum of Australia and Doug.
We tour John’s painting and learn more about the plants that now come to life on its surface.
“These are yams, this red root is a yam and this is a climbing vine, a wonderful plant that has roots that swell out and this is what Mulkun paints in the most wonderful way – this is her version of this plant and it is such a wonderful idea as the plant curls around a tree in a spiral, so she shows it how it curls around the tree and climbs all the way up and here is me being a bit obvious just showing it climbing the tree.She goes a step further and shows it in the most incredible way, it is almost as if you are looking down at the tree. The sense of the circular motion in her artwork and the energy of the plant as it climbs up, she has really captured the wonderful movement of the plant." John Wolseley
In part two: Living forms of the landscape, we look at the living forms in John’s great painting and hear about the food plants that have sustained Yolngu life for thousands of years. The plants are not only useful, they are of great cultural significance and beauty, these things, so well described by the brush and pencil of two great artists.
What are the two old artists telling us here, what drives the enormous effort to create the works, John’s vast painting and Mulkun’s huge plant opus on bark? What they are telling us and what is so central to Mulkun’s passion about food and the wellbeing of her people, is to pass on her vast knowledge of the edible plants of her country to future generations. This is also the idea that John has so whole heartedly supported in his collaboration with Mulkun, the strength of which is so handsomely described in the exhibition and book, Midawarr ~ Harvest: The art of Mulkun Wirrpanda and John Wolseley.
“This is the food we ate when I was young. Back then everywhere we looked there were old people. Strong and healthy – they lived with us for a long time. Nowadays people die when they are only young. There are very few people as old as I am. Children are given rubbish food to eat. It is killing us.” Mulkun Wirrpanda.
“So Mulkun lives, and lives off the land, in a place whose name is ancient and her clan hold the oral tradition of the Flood in their songs of Luthanba. This is eyewitness testimony of a geological event. The plants which she records here are the same foods that have sustained her people over this time. And yet in this very moment of history, at a time when that knowledge could now be recorded in writing, it is potentially coming to an end".
"The human genius to do ‘less for more’ allows deep-fried chips with chicken salt to become the ‘tuber’ of choice among young Yolngu. And these Yolgnu are dying faster than the ancient knowledge itself on a diet that results in obesity and diabetes. The market dictates that selling canned and frozen fatty, salty, sugary products offers the best return for the outsiders who sell to remote communities. And thus Yolngu Children are raised on Coke and red lollies".
"This collection of paintings is a love poem to those delicious foods which surround the children even as they are being poisoned.” Will Stubbs
Each of the two films contains insights into the philosophies and techniques John and Mulkun use to create the works that you will see at the Midawarr~Harvest exhibition.
The exhibition also contains a short film, which is a combined work with our friends from the Mulka Project, who completed the final editing. As always it was a joy to work with them.
A note on the nature of Australia
Peter Hylands describes all those years of friendships in a distant land.
For John, the story begins in a very distant land and at the edge of Exmoor in Somerset. For England this is probably as country as country can get in a small and crowded land. Today we think of John in a very different landscape and in the nature of Australia.
As we fly across Australia as we have done so often over the last 45 or so years since we first visited the Australian Continent, I like the idea of looking down on the Australian landscape and imagining John Wolseley down there somewhere. His trusty 4 wheel drive loaded high with the essentials of the artist, the Arches paper, the water colour paints and the occasional good bottle of red supplied by son Will.
Looking down on this land, snug in the cabin of the aircraft, there is a sense of disconnection to place. We pass by unknowing of what is really down there, all a kind of metaphor for modern life.
So who cares? Why do we have to worry? Piece by piece and mile by mile, the vast array of plants and animals that we speed over are the building blocks of our world.
They provide the mechanisms that sustain us.
For John, down in and within that landscape, there is a very different experience.
The noise and colour of the Australian bush, a pandemonium of Parrots overhead cry out to the landscape below, the mournful call of the Australian Raven mingles with the powerful smell of Eucalypts in the summer heat.
A lizard darts across the sand and into a delicate mat of small plants. The land shimmers.
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Highlights from the documentary
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