The transmission of the indigenous traditional knowledge borrows various forms, corresponding to the particular sensitivities of the communities. The CLEMENT Gallery in Vevey has often exhibit paintings of the Pintupis and Utopian artists characterized by geometrical forms symbolic systems made up of dots of colors. The pictorial writing of the Ampilatwatja artists also uses the basic “pointillism” but the language and the perception of the values to be transmitted and perpetuate are different.

Living in the center of Australia, the Ampilatwatja vigorously defend their figurative writing of the bush, the vital medicinal plants and the memory of their ancestors travels. Their figuration does not mean naturalism or realism, but material and metaphysical representation in the same time. The proportions and the colors of the subjects are readable by the occidental eye, which must forget any reference to the romantic or impressionist landscape. However this painting appears comprehensible to intuitive spirits and to those sensitive to poetry.

AERIAL LANDSCAPES

These paintings, painted on the ground, restore a sight top of the landscape, meaning well the basic philosophy of the Aboriginals which include themselves in the world with equality of nature with the plants, the ground and the animals, all equipped with content and soul. Vibrating of multitude of dots given with the stick on darker backgrounds, the visions of the bush represent the thin and white trunk of the trees, the brilliant points of flowers, the tufts of thick and prickles spinifex, the oblong termite mounds, the blue crossings of underground rivers and on the horizon the ranges of hills or mountains. These peaks, which correspond in reality only to modest rocks, are mysterious, in spite of the sharp and precise line of their contours, suggesting the caves where the bones of the ancestors are piously preserved.

Easily readable at first, these peaceful and aerial landscapes, of soft colors, with atmosphere filled up of tenderness for the maternal ground, are subtly nuanced by the density or the value of the dots. By paying attention, one distinguishes, the bluish deeper water currents, the landforms and the different kinds of soil and all the water movements in small lakes. It can also be noted on some paintings some plants of a size without proportion with the very close tree. Thus such plant with the radiant stems and yellow flowers is a particularly important and vital medicinal herb for the area.

TOTEMIC BARKS

Another form of figuration, produced by the artists of Arnhem Land, from the north luxuriant and marshy Australia, is inscribed on eucalyptus barks, in fine ochre layouts. They are totemic illustration of snakes, tortoises, fish, kangaroos, echidnas represented with the technique known as the X-rays, showing the bodies of the animals and the didactic layout of the cutting-up. These sedentary hunters associate with the image of their preys, bags, arrows and axes as well as the “Mimi” spirits which accompany men and animals. One also finds the spirit of the clouds, symbol of fertility, and the spirit of “Bunba”, funeral flower which nourishes the spirit of the ancestors. The fine hatchings, “rarrk”, which covers the animals represent the signature of each family and take again the body paintings carried out for ritual or initiation ceremonies.

We also find these images of animals and men in parietal cave paintings. Just like in the landscapes of the Ampilatwatja artists, the artistic beauty of the “bark”, which appeals the non-indigenous public, is only one aspect of the high symbolic value system of the natural proximity that the Aboriginals perceive with the other living beings.

Admirable figuration of Art and subtlety which leads the glance and the spirit in a complete other dimension, antiquated for some, but essential and saving of the existence.

Mireille Callu 4.2010