Kava Rootz

Abstract

Mowla Bluffmassacre (which Nangan narrowly escaped by a day or so) in the ‘dancers performing Nyularn’s Nurlu’ image (102). Akerman explains that this nurlu (a genre of performance that includes song, dance and material object carried by the dancers) was dreamt by a man called Nyularn and recalls the burning of a young boy during the massacre. Another such event tells of a man who, while distributing rations at a stick camp on Paradise Station, mistakenly provided arsenic (instead of baking powder) with flour to Aboriginal workers, killing them all; the man subsequently committed suicide out of remorse (107). Along with its beautiful presentation (including 95 colour plates of Nangan’s art), many aspects of this books will engage the reader. Here I will mention two that I found particularly striking: The first is the ecological observations which quietly permeate many sections of the book; the disappearance of particular species since the arrival of feral cats; the arrival of migratory birds; the behaviour of insects and other creatures; the inclusion of species within the section system, and more. The second is Nangan’s representation of the spirit world and the beings who inhabit it, with each drawing eloquently accompanied by Akerman’s explanatory text. Nangan’s depictions of, for example, a deceased ancestor (as a skeleton), or of a rai (a small spirit being who may be instantiated as a human) as almost dwarflike, are striking visualisations in and of themselves but additionally convey complex cosmological information in a way that makes these concepts accessible to an audience unfamiliar with them. Many of Nangan’s drawings represent dream experiences connected to the revelation of nurlu (a public ceremonial genre of song and dance) taught to him by the spirit of a deceased relative (15). Janet Holmes à Court observes in her Foreword that Nangan’s art has not been as wellrecognised as it might, a legacy she suggests is likely to be a consequence of Nangan’s naturalistic stylistic representation in combination with the ‘dislocation’ of the work from the cultural contexts in which the scenes represented would be interpretable (8). This book addresses the latter and makes an excellent case for a larger re-evaluation of the artistic and cultural contribution that Nangan’s work brings to a broader understanding of Aboriginal art.