Invasion Day or Australia Day?

The Central Desert of Australia with the MacDonnell ranges running through the background

Long before the debate between calling 26 January Invasion Day or Australia Day began, the concept of celebrating the destruction of Australia’s indigenous culture sat very uneasily with me. At school we learnt that the Aboriginals in New South Wales were virtually wiped out within years of white men landing on Australian shores. This wholesale destruction wrought disease during a futile attempt to defend their land, lives and culture.

Each year I thought more and more about the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, past and present, and I felt increasingly confident to say it was not OK to celebrate Australia Day without acknowledging them and their experience of violence, deaths in custody, racism, neglect and genocidal destruction of their land and culture at the hands of many over our 233 year occupancy.

As recent example of this last year a Rio Tinto, a French owned company demolished the Juukan Gorge caves in the Pilbara region, Western Australian, caves housing some of the world’s oldest and most important rock art in the world. For iron ore. In direct contravention of the traditional owners wishes. UNESCO experts compared the destruction of this important historical site to the destruction of Palmyra by ISIS.

The Aboriginals still suffer a great deal of racism, even this week I was told by an Australian that the products I make with them might struggle to sell in Australia as they are by Aboriginal artists. The fact that much of Australia celebrates by drinking themselves into an alcoholic stupor while deriding the Aboriginals for drinking the introduced substance leaves a taste of bitter irony in my mouth. And not just mine but many people who stand with the Aboriginals on this day of mourning for their losses.

Australia is made of up immigrants from every war waged since the occupation of Australia. This is something the Country should be proud of, something that should be celebrated. Australia has provided a safe haven for many desperately displaced people from all over the world including Italians, Greeks, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Chinese (the Uighurs more recently), Cambodians, Sri Lankans, South Africans, Zimbabweans, Somalians and Eritreans.

Perhaps we can find a day to celebrate this achievement rather than the yearly juxtaposition of pain and loss alongside a celebration of a devastatingly destructive invasion?

And perhaps Australia can finally reconcile itself that it is time to accept and celebrate it’s original owners: the Aboriginals of Australia.

100% Design 2019 - thank you to everyone who visited our Bay Gallery Home stand

Our recent foray into 100% Design London 2019 was four days of pure interior designer jubilance.

Bay Gallery Home offers colour and pattern with origin helping support the Aboriginal artists we represent. The Australian Aboriginals are the oldest continuous race in the world sustaining symbiotic relationships with the land. Designers were keen to embrace the traditional owners’ depictions of their land and Dreamtime stories and we enjoyed meeting so many professionals in interior design and architecture who worked across residential and commercial projects.

Some of the most interesting conversations we had, were with those in the commercial sector looking to add colour to the grey/black/wood/concrete/stripped brick interiors they have been specifying for years. One designer said he had being asked to specify internal gardens, including moss walls, but as an alternative he wanted to offer our Lilly Green wallpaper.

One of the best moments of a design fair for us, is watching people’s faces as they come across our stand and the Aboriginal designs for the first time. As we explain the origin of the designs and invite people to explore our stand, it’s great to see any self consciousness leave them, opening them up to a wholly tactile experience as they study the fabrics, wallpapers, tiles and rugs.

We were also thrilled many interior designers wanted to specify our ‘My Country’ collection for their own homes.

Next stop New York!

Sabrina Nangala Robertson - Featured artist

Sabrina is a young Aboriginal Central Desert artist related to the famous colour field abstractionist Shorty Jangala Robertson;  like Shorty she paints Ngapa Jukurrpa (Pirlinyarnu) inheriting it from her father and grandfather who in turn learnt it from generations across millennia. Her mother is the world renowned artist Dorothy Napangardi (recently featured in the Australia exhibition at the Royal Academy). Mount Farewell (Pirlinyarnu) is where Sabrina's Dreaming sits in her traditional lands are.  She has chosen to depict the sacred Dreamtime story, in a way unique to her, where water appears to travel across the canvas with small water soakages encased in the rain drops and native plants and animals dot the land.

In 2014 her work was selected for 'Same Country Same Jukurrpa' at the Australian Museum.  Sabrina's painting was shown alongside hugely important artists of the desert community she comes from including Judy Napangardi Watson, Alma Nungarrayi Granites and Otto Jungarrayi Sims.  The exhibition followed on from the world's first Aboriginal women only exhibition held at the Museum in 1992 entitled 'Woman Artists'.  The new exhibitions aim was to show the development in artistic styles amongst the artists as they moved away from traditional circular dot painting to establish their unique styles as artists whilst sharing their ancestors stories.

You can by the painting in the gallery or online at www.baygalleryhome.com

Ngapa Jukurrpa Pirlinyarnu, Sabrina Nangala Robertson, Acrylic on linen 30x30cm

Sacred Garden of Eden rock hole - Kings Canyon

When we were young my parents flew a small aircraft around the Australian outback.  These were the days where you could land next to Uluru and crawl all over it allowing you to experience its awesome spiritual power.  Another sacred site we clambered all over was Kings Canyon.  The worlds largest monolith and one its most ancient canyons were formed at the same time the first life forms developed on earth - around 600 million years ago.  

Kings Canyon, covered with a plethora of fossil imprints was one of the most emotionally powerful places we'd ever encountered.  This ancient canyon reminded us how insignificant we are in the big scheme of things (although 35 years on we have the power to destroy it all - after a five year fight in June this year the traditional owners learnt the mining threat, including fracking had finally been nullified).  

While exploring Kings Canyon we came across this watering hole spending a significant part of the day enjoying its cool waters.  As Watarrka National Park, where Kings Canyon sits, has been given back to its traditional owners you can no longer swim in it.  It's now identified as a sacred men's site. We felt slightly heartbroken we couldn't share the same experience of swimming in it with our children.  Much of what we accessed all those years ago is no longer open to us in the way it was.  It gave us the slightest insight into what it must have been like to to torn from your land unable to share it's beauty and spirit with younger generations.

Rock hole found in the Garden of Eden, Kings Canyon, Australia

Kings Canyon walls above the Garden of Eden.