creative-i by creative cowboy

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012

New documentaries from Africa, Australia, Europe and the USA Cairn’s launch - Ken Thaiday: The sea, the feather and the dance machine

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

This issue’s theme:

The earth is precious and it needs our guardianship...

Maasai Francis Nkodidio recipient of the Creative cowboy tertiary scholarship Art collecting can be dangerous: In search of Tongan Tapa

creative-i

,a Creative cowboy films publication, is published twice each year.

Creative-i provides news about Creative cowboy film projects around the world. creative-i includes images of the places, of the people and of the art, so important to making our projects a success. creative-i includes articles that relate in some way to Creative cowboy film projects, articles about art and culture, about places, people and nature. In this issue the theme is vanishing worlds as we think about what is happening to culture and nature at film locations where the Creative cowboy crew has worked.

We do so because many of these issues are profound and will one day, and in the not too distant future, impact on us all. We also journey to the Pacific and write about our adventures there.

Creative cowboy crew with Isaiah Nagurrgurrba and Alan Naminiyuo, Western Arnhem Land

This issue contains articles about indigenous cultures and the impact that we all have on these precious cultures, destroying cultural heritage and languages, damaging the supply of traditional food sources and changing climate patterns.

Recent film projects that have influenced our thinking about these matters, as we have spent time in

and grown close to the indigenous people we have worked with in remote locations, are the six documentaries in the series Film essays of Maasai Life and a number of projects in the Asia Pacific. The earth is precious and it needs our guardianship.

As 2012 begins we would like to wish you every success for the new year.

Peter and Andrea Hylands

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012

New documentaries from Africa, Australia, Europe and the USA

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

Our very special thanks go to our contributors and to our customers, their dedication makes Creative cowboy projects a success around the world.

This issue’s theme:

Cairn’s launch - Ken Thaiday: The sea, the feather and the dance machine

The earth is precious and it needs our guardianship...

Maasai Francis Nkodidio recipient of the Creative cowboy tertiary scholarship

Marc Gooch, Andrea Hylands and Gladdy Kemarre, Camel Camp, Utopia.

Art collecting can be dangerous: In search of Tongan Tapa

Cover photo by Kai Brethouwer

ISSN: 1839-9983. Creative-i is published twice yearly by Creative Cowboy Pty Ltd, as an e-magazine, and printed on demand.

Editorial by Peter and Andrea Hylands.

Photography by Kai Brethouwer, Andrea Hylands, Remi Vignals and Robin Chapple.

Design by Kai Brethouwer.

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WARNING Creative-i may contain the names and images of Aboriginal and Islander people now deceased.

2011: The creative cowboy year Creative cowboy is in Australia in remote and extraordinary locations.

JANUARY 2011

Queensland MP, Desley Boyle launches The sea, the feather and the dance machine at Canopy Artspace

Creative cowboy is in Australia in remote and extraordinary locations.

The brush sings, Rock art and Yingana and Knowledge, painting and country, three films from Western Arnhem Land, are now available on DVD. All three Arnhem Land films were shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, concurrent with the exhibition Bardayal ‘Lofty’ Nadjamerrek AO.

MAY – JUNE 2011

JULY 2011

AUGUST 2011

The National Muséum of Fine Arts, Québec shows the award winning GWYN HANSSEN PIGOTT a potters film. The UK Crafts Council’s an international art fair for contemporary objects hosted at Saatchi Gallery in London is called Collect, a potters film was shown as part of the Collect event in On Screen in May and at the Aberystwyth Art Centre in Wales during the International Ceramics Festival in June 2011.

Join the Creative cowboy crew and UNESCO Observatory on Multi-Disciplinary Research in the Arts in Africa in a series of films about Maasai culture which were released on DVD in 2011.

Travel to Erub in Australia’s Torres Strait with elder and artist KEN THAIDAY SNR to explore the ‘dance machine’.

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott and Andrea Hylands

The six documen­ taries in the series Films essays of Maasai life explore Maasai culture and how changes are impacting traditional practices and the relationship Maasai people have with the environment around them.

The extraordinary beauty of Kenya’s Rift Valley and its wildlife are the backdrop to a deeply moving and personal account of Maasai life and culture today.

KEN constructs mobilized artefacts including beizams, the shark dance head dresses controlled by a string and pulley system, which allow the dancer to open and close the shark’s jaws. The film, The sea, the feather and the dance machine is now available on DVD and can be ordered from Creative cowboy films.

Ken’s film was launched at Canopy Artspace during the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair. Our thanks to MICHAEL KERSHAW for hosting the event.

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Creative cowboy tertiary scholarship

The creative cowboy year View from our roof garden in Barcelona

Francis at Olmaroroi Village

Torres Strait meets Rift Valley in Melbourne’s Federation Square, Emmanuel at Creative cowboy dinner with Alick Tipoti

MAY 2011

SEPTEMBER 2011

JUNE 2011

In May the Creative cowboy crew travelled from London to Barcelona to document the art of portraiture.

Maasai leader, EMMANUEL PARSIMEI SUPARE, has returned to Kenya following his visit to Australia. EMMANUEL’s trip was sponsored by Creative cowboy so that he could present our new Maasai films and discuss the development of a new cultural centre in Maasailand.

Maasai, FRANCIS NKODIDIO, becomes a recipient of a Creative cowboy tertiary scholarship.

On our website FRANCIS writes about why he believes university education will benefit him and his Maasai community.

A portrait in Barcelona was filmed in PETER CHURCHER’s studio apartment and in the surrounding streets of Barcelona. Our painting nearing completion we visit the National Portrait Gallery in London to find out more about the art of portraiture. This new film is now available on DVD. In the Art & Culture section of the creative cowboy website ANDREW McLELLAN and PETER HYLANDS discuss the way in which objects are displayed by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

EMMANUEL visited cultural institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria, Australian and International NGOs and Universities and held discussions with Australian Government agencies including AusAID. He also gave entertaining talks and hosted a Creative cowboy / UNESCO Observatory Maasai film night at Melbourne University. We would like to thank everyone for their hospitality and kindness.

Reflecting on an ancient portrait, courtesy Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford

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“I applied for a course in the field of medicine, medical micro-biology and was successfully admitted into the school at Jomo Kenyatta University of agriculture and technology (Karen Campus) Nairobi.

I am the first Creative cowboy scholar Maasai student. Maasai are one of the most oppressed and marginalized indigenous communities in terms of education, social and economic development.

I promise to work extra hard in attaining a first class honors degree. I came to being one of the scholars when I met PETER and ANDREA HYLANDS in the Olmaroroi area when I was taking part in the beautiful Maasai dance.

Introduction to them led to a deeper discussion about my academic background, my family background and my future in education”.

Fragility

PROFILE Andrea Hylands Director Creative cowboy films

ANDREA HYLANDS has exhibited her sculptural work internationally for almost 30 years. She has exhibited in the United States of America, China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Italy, France, Holland and Australia. She has won major awards in France and Italy.

Peter, Angelina and Gladdy

DECEMBER 2011 The filming of Bush plum, the contemporary art of Angelina Pwerle, our latest project in outback Australia, is complete and the project is now at editing stage. Here contemporary art and the beauty of Central Australia come together in a remarkable documentary.

As an artist, ANDREA HYLANDS is concerned with organic forms, purity of material, and the fragility of the environment. This is expressed through her delicate sculptural forms that reference the natural world.

This and other new films will once again bring us closer to the great artistry and ideas of Aboriginal Australia. Three new blogs, Talking Utopia, Bush plum and An Ancient Abstraction include images of the three journeys to our location in Central Australia made during the filming of Bush Plum.

New warriors

Angelina in Bush plum

Bush plum: The contemporary art of Angelina Pwerle

Her work is represented in many public and private collections including collections in Korea, United Kingdom, China, United States of America, Taiwan, Australia, Italy, Holland, Germany, France and Japan. She was awarded the ‘Best contemporary film’ at Ateliers d’art de France, FIFAV Montpellier, 2010 (Creative cowboy); Gold Medal, Faenza, Italy 2005; various awards in Japan and the Grand Prize, Vallauris, France 1992. Andrea is an elected member of the IAC in Geneva.

Her current (group) exhibition is called Hyperclay. This touring exhibition is at Object Gallery in Surry Hills, Sydney from 8 October 2011 to 8 January 2012, there after touring to

a series of regional galleries around Australia. Hyperclay is Object’s biggest touring exhibition, including 12 regional and metropolitan venues over two and a half years.

Hyperclay features the work of eight contemporary artists who use clay in their art practice. A collection of over 30 short videos have been produced to accompany the exhibition, ranging from artists interviews to curators, academics, collectors and gallerists, commenting on why they find a particular artist so exciting, through to ceramic students expressing what inspires them about the work in the show. These videos are shown on tablet-housed applications, integrating digital content into a traditional exhibition space. The digital content is not supplementary – engagement with the digital is paramount to truly understanding the works in the exhibition.

ANDREA’s work in the Hyperclay exhibition is called New Warriors and was produced while ANDREA was working for an exhibition in China near the site of the historic Terracotta Warriors. This work captures the performance of material, the eggshell like ‘warriors’ are the product of liquefied bone china (slip) being poured into a small spherical mould that the artist then removed at varying durations.

Through exceptional control of material, ANDREA catches her fragile soldiers in various states of viscosity and movement. Their form strikes a balance between spontaneity of material, and the precision of the artists’ hand.

Hyperclay was funded by the Australia Council, Arts NSW and the Australian Government / NSW: Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy.

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Silent country Sitting on the beach in North Eastern Tasmania (We walked on a carpet of stars, Creative cowboy films 2007) JULIE GOUGH and I contemplate Aboriginal Tasmania as we gather material for her work Locus which was to be exhibited at the 2006 Biennale of Sydney.

Julie and Peter, North-East Tasmania

PETER HYLANDS: Does anyone remember?

PETER HYLANDS: Why do you think we should remember?

JULIE GOUGH: There are lots of different layers of what remembering might be and I get a sense when I am in this part of Tasmania, at particular places and particular times that I have heard something that sounds like a voice and you are thinking what is happening, who is here? That’s what I think is possible, that memory can link you in to another dimension of people in place.

In a way being prepared or having some knowledge of the past can provide a bit of a key to understanding that you are hearing a voice, not a squeak in the sand or the roll of your water bottle in your backpack. Wait a minute, it is an understanding.

JULIE GOUGH: I really do think, especially in these telling times of global torment, I really think that remembering can slow us down and we can consider more carefully what each of us is doing on the planet, to each other and therefore to ourselves. That’s significant and important.

When I was making a lot of art that was quite angry and related really strongly to particular events that I found in history books or newspapers from the 1960s, around the time of my birth, about assimilation and about children being removed… You become something you are not happy with…

I was becoming quite specific and it was a dead end street of feeling just anger with no release. And moving away from that kind of work and trying to inhabit a place and understand what has happened here. That’s what I think best serves me.

Julie Gough We walked on a carpet of stars

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Julie Gough Education resource pack

Aralpaia A Zenikula Alick Tipoti. Courtesy the artist and The Australian Art Print Network

“We are known today as Torres Strait Islanders after CAPTAIN TORRES. CAPTAIN TORRES and CAPTAIN COOK, they came through Zenadth Kes (the Torres Strait). That is when we discovered them. They didn’t discover us, we definitely discovered them”.

Silent country Now we travel to the very North of Australia to yet more islands, the islands of the Torres Strait What strikes me about ALICK TIPOTI is just how much he knows about the culture of the Torres Strait and how much he cares about that knowledge. As one of the Torres Strait’s internationally recognised contemporary artists, ALICK, now in his mid thirties, diligently speaks about his culture through a powerful combination of art making, singing and dance as he blends tradition with contemporary techniques and media. His considered view of his culture is remarkable.

ALICK, recognised because of his great skill as a print maker, is now also making masks such as those featured in his exhibition Mawa Adhaz Parual at Canopy Artspace during the 2011 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, in which Alick had created a room full of sorcerer’s masks, each a powerful sculpture from the Torres Strait, each a reflection of culture for us all to share.

“My art is based on legends of the Torres Strait where I depict my interpretations of the land, the sea, the sky, and the many different living creatures and spirits that exist here in the Torres Strait - as with other artists, I use my art as an educational tool, teaching people about important cultural events, practices and beliefs from the past”.

It is evident that these works are guided by the cultural practices, past and present, of the people of the Torres Strait in which ALICK’s responsibilities are to document the stories and the songs and relationships that the artist has with his culture, from Badu Island and the mid-western island group in particular. These documents of culture created to guide future generations of Torres Strait islanders.

“We speak our language. I am 35 years old and I am blessed that my father and my grandfather taught me the language and I speak it fluently, I am so proud of it. Language is the core of the culture”.

Alick Tipoti

ALICK TIPOTI

ALICK’s language is Kala Lagaw Ya, Mululgal Nation. What ALICK understands very clearly is that language is the critical element that binds cultures together. Language is a precious cultural foundation in which oral histories and legends are kept safe. What is important here is ALICK’s leadership in describing the role of language in nurturing culture and heritage in the broadest sense and in enabling the understanding of the meaning and purpose of visual art and of other artistic and cultural activity.

This idea that language is a vessel that contains and nurtures culture and heritage becomes even more important when languages and histories are oral rather than written, as is the case for Australian indigenous languages.

Language is the root of belonging to and identifying with culture. When the song cycles lay broken there can be only trouble ahead.

So what is happening to indigenous languages in Australia?

Of about 250 indigenous languages spoken before Europeans arrived around 140 are still spoken, of these well over a 100 languages are critically or severely endangered with often only part of these languages, perhaps phrases, in use. As these languages are lost, with them goes all cultural memory and important knowledge about place, about environment, about ceremony and cultural practice.

Leaving what remains, perhaps

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What younger generations of indigenous people in Australia do now is critical for Australian languages

Central Australia

the artefacts, the rock art and bark paintings, impossible to interpret.

Only 10 per cent of indigenous languages, the knowledge tape of Australia, remain strong. On the Australian mainland predominant speakers are Arrernte, Djambarrpuyngu / Dhuwal, Pitjantjatjara and Warlpiri.

What younger generations of indigenous people in Australia do now is critical for Australian languages, those languages formed by place over thousands of years. Less than half of all young people who live in the remote areas, where indigenous languages remain strongest, can speak an indigenous language. Away from these remote places around 5 per cent of young indigenous people can speak their own language. This all puts what JULIE GOUGH and ALICK TIPOTI have to say in sharp perspective.

Despite endless international research findings to the contrary, the bilingual indigenous educational programmes commenced in the 1970s in Australia, are now under threat.

Policies such as those in the Northern Territory of Australia, introduced in late 2008 (and under review today because of the resulting decline in school attendance of Aboriginal children), that stipulated

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that each day the first four hours of teaching at indigenous schools must be in English, severely restricted the opportunity for bilingual education, further endangering precious languages and cultural traditions.

There can be no possible advantage to Australia in creating monolingual, that is English only speaking, indigenous people. It would be better to respect the enormous cultural and language heritage that still exists in Australia, despite every effort to erase it, and to move to a new future of respect and understanding.

A bilingual heritage can be a great advantage in life, ALICK shows us how. For me my early education was

in the German language and I have never felt that this was in any sense a disadvantage, probably the opposite, because through languages grow a greater understanding and knowledge of the world.

In many parts of Australia today the country has fallen silent, apart from perhaps JULIE GOUGH’s squeak in the sand or the roll of her water bottle in her backpack, or perhaps a distant sigh as the wind blows the branches of a eucalypt tree. The loss to the human world is great, let us stop it here.

The Torres Strait

The world we make

PETER HYLANDS reflects on our own conduct towards nature and the impact our conduct has on indigenous cultures.

“We spend an awful lot of money on art galleries and concert halls so we can celebrate our own achievements and this is of course quite right and proper, but I think it should be taken into consideration that there might be another Rembrandt born, there might be another Mozart born, but if you exterminate an animal like this, it is gone forever and no amount of technology will recreate it”.

GERALD DURRELL

The hazards of filming in remote locations include being eaten, bitten or squashed by a range of wild things.

The list of these wild things is long but includes crocodiles, alligators, pythons, tiger sharks, stone fish, hippos, lions, elephants, hyenas, taipans, brown snakes, cone shells, scorpions, mosquitoes and spiders. It probably sounds odd to say it, but I actually like the idea that the possibility of being eaten still exists in the ever diminishing wild places on earth.

In our lives we count ourselves to be very lucky in having lived with, and sometimes rescued, some of the most poisonous and dangerous creatures on earth. We learnt that it is perfectly possible to share the earth with wildlife.

The very worst idea is to go to a place, set up home, and then systematically destroy everything that surrounds you, callous and unknowing.

If we know about and respect the animals and plants that we share the earth with, and critically important for our species, that we protect and respect wild habitats and do not continue to endanger biodiversity, we will come to understand that the survival of species of all kinds, animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and plants, are directly linked to our own futures.

I often think about GERALD DURRELL and what he would think if he could see the state of these things today.

“People understand what we are talking about, people are starting to realise the rate and veracity that we are tearing up our ecology all over the world. This is not just a question of saving fluffy animals or a beautiful looking panda. In actual fact what you are doing is trying to save yourself and this is the most important thing.

Animals are a barometer, they show you if they start declining, they show you that you are doing something wrong with your eco-system and if your eco-system collapses on you because of this, then you become extinct together with the animals”.

GERALD DURRELL

African buffalo; Giraffe, Nile Crocodile, Ostrich.

Photography Kai Brethouwer.

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Culture & nature We travel from Kenya via the Middle East to Australia, from living in a tent in the Rift Valley to a hotel on Sydney Harbour, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is above us. We go from a tent with no electricity or running water and surrounded by wild animals, to every comfort imaginable and only humans as companions.

I am not far from my old office on Sydney’s Circular Quay, and outside, the hustle and bustle of ferries, which pass in a dance like procession in the view framed by our bedroom window.

This is familiar territory, it is good to be back in this great global city.

Glass of wine in my hand, I reach for the hotel’s lavish publication sitting on the unit above the fridge. I flick through the pages of smiling faces, spas, vineyards, restaurants and beaches. There towards the middle of these pages is an article; climate change is unproven, the science is not there, the world is cooling and on it goes. I think to myself, what an earth is this doing in the pages of this book?

I suspect this is a paid advertorial,

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“We find people who have had lots of cattle losing them and their life style completely changes. You find people moving to town to get other jobs…

Climate change can be attributed to the loss of culture” EMMANUEL PARSIMEI unannounced, by a member of the highest per capita carbon polluting nation on earth, defending their patch and economic place in the world.

Meanwhile the Maasai walk for water.

What I see in the natural world makes me think of the impact of its decline on the indigenous cultures of the world and the idea of the connection

or disconnection of peoples to the natural systems of the world we live in.

In terms of human society, the world’s indigenous peoples are in the frontline when it comes to the impacts caused by the destruction of the natural world, whether home is deep in a rainforest, in a remote dryland or the most distant ocean, no one can escape our actions. We impact their worlds and a way of life and the cultural traditions that accompany it. Make no mistake, indigenous people are our barometer too.

In Maasailand, drought has made life increasingly difficult, the often daily walk for women and children to collect water grows ever longer, the distance travelled by the men to find pasture for

the cattle and goats grows ever further.

The men face long periods away from home, so do the young male children who help their fathers to look after the animals. The young child with a spear minding the goats is a long way away from a classroom and education.

The reality for the Maasai is whether or not their traditional way of life is sustainable, given the significant changes to weather patterns in the Rift Valley. If the dry conditions continue or become more severe what can be done to defend and maintain long standing traditions? In the Creative cowboy series, Film essays of Maasai life, we explore the pressures on culture and community and on traditional ways of life from a range of external influences.

Many Maasai now see education as essential to the future of their children, particularly the opportunity to access senior school and tertiary education.

There is far less wildlife in the Rift Valley than there once was, much of its destruction occurred in the earlier part of the twentieth century and much of what remains is in game reserves such as the Maasai Mara.

The great biodiversity, the wildlife and the habitat of the Rift Valley have played a significant role in sustaining Maasai culture by providing other income sources through tourism and employment, much of it knowledge based. The Kenyan and Tanzanian Governments are very aware of this.

Maasai know a lot about their environment and the species with which they live, they understand in great depth the impact of a changing climate and its impact on their traditional sources of income.

Loosing cattle or goats in drought is an economic disaster for Maasai families, it can also mean starvation.

What is evident about Maasai society is that environmental changes combined with external pressures will continue to have a significant impact on Maasai culture in the next few years. Not least, is the relatively new trend, and perhaps economic necessity of selling off traditional lands for development, partly forced by changes to the patterns of nature, including of course, rainfall.

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Culture & nature I will now take you to Australia’s Arnhem Land, when I look at the early photos of Oenpelli, taken by the British anthropologist Sir BALDWIN SPENCER about 100 years ago, it is possible to identify changes in vegetation, today there are fewer trees on the Oenpelli flood plain.

As well as the changing climate threat to indigenous culture and tradition, other threats can be imposed by non indigenous cultures on the traditional ways of life of indigenous peoples. The clearing of rainforests around the world is an example of this.

The introduced water buffalo and cattle have done their work on the edges of billabongs, erosion and the destruction of native vegetation result, disturbing the breeding grounds of native birds and animals.

Sitting by a remote billabong in Arnhem Land is a different experience to the one it once was. We go back to 1935 and far away to Gordonvale in Queensland. The Australian Bureau of Sugar Experimental Stations released its first batch of cane toads imported from Hawaii (cane toads are native to Central and South America) at Gordonvale in that year, in an experiment to reduce the impact of cane beetles on sugar cane crops in North Queensland.

LEFT: Goanna.

TOP, LEFT: Cane toad TOP, RIGHT: Burning off on the Injalak flood plain TOP, RIGHT: Jacob Nayinggul and Peter Hylands BOTTOM RIGHT: Anthony Murphy and Rob - Wulk Billabong BOTTOM FAR RIGHT: Isaiah Nagurrgurrba on Injalak Hill

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The cane toad had little impact on protecting sugar cane crops but proceeded to devastate wildlife populations including marsupials (such as Quolls), birds and reptiles.

“I’ve seen 50 or 60 dead Johnson’s freshwater crocs, bellies up, and I thought straight away they might have been having a feed at cane toads” This happened because cane toads are highly toxic when eaten. The vast numbers of cane toads have also had an impact on other amphibian species in the parts of Australia where they now exist. For a very long time, little was done to slow the spread of the cane toad. In Australia the cane toad is not officially recognised as what is described as ‘a threatening process’, because not all Australian States

consider toads to be a problem (cane toads have not spread to all of the states for now). There is a greater effort to slow the spread of the cane toad in Australia today but the problem is now so overwhelming and the cane toad is so widely distributed that it is too late to repair the immense damage done.

In the early 2000’s the cane toads’ front line crossed Arnhem Land and Kakudu, they have now reached the Kimberley in Western Australia, and, to the south, the southern parts of Queensland and on into New South Wales. Once established in a place, cane toad numbers increase rapidly, and disastrously for Australia’s wildlife, are highly toxic in all their developmental stages: eggs, tadpoles, toadlets and adult toads. They have no successful predators in Australia.

The enormity of the wet season in 2011 looks as if it has accelerated an increase in numbers of cane toads in Australia’s Northern Territory and North Queensland.

Traditional owner (Creative cowboy’s Knowledge, painting and country) JACOB NAYINGGUL talks about the impact of the arrival of the cane toad in Arnhem Land on a traditional way of life (from a conversation with Australian Broadcasting Commission’s TIM LEE in 2006).

“Yes, yes and traditional teaching.

Goanna’s name is in teaching ceremonies, too. I’ve seen 50 or 60 dead Johnson’s freshwater crocs, bellies up, and I thought straight away they might have been having a feed at cane toads.

It would be wise to recognise that and try to put some thought – how we would save the goanna” For JACOB also, sitting by his remote billabong in Arnhem Land is now a very different experience, gone, much of the wildlife, and gone, much of the Aboriginal peoples’ traditional food source. As a consequence of an ill conceived act a long time ago, one thoughtlessly introduced species in Australia, will continue to have a significant impact on the traditional food sources of indigenous people.

This impact risks, not only long held cultural practices, but the health outcomes for indigenous people, already suffering health consequences from the introduction and to the easy access of the modern western diet.

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Water, water everywhere

Bully Sailor at home in the Village of Saim

One hot and windy day on Erub BULLY SAILOR described to me his fight for sea rights. These rights, so essential because of the plundering of the sea and destruction of the reefs by fishing fleets coming to the Torres Strait, diminishing the future livelihoods and food sources of the islanders.

This led me to contemplate some of the other issues faced by the salt water or sea people of Northern Australia (both Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people).

For at least a generation the ‘walls of death’, that is when drift nets become ghost nets, have floated silently through Australia’s Northern seas, nets lost and discarded by fishing trawlers and fleets from distant lands.

These nets, up to four kilometres in length, continue to fish as they float unattended through the ocean, an indiscriminate and silent slaughter in the ocean, and later when the nets are washed ashore, an indiscriminate slaughter on the land. The dolphins, the turtles (there are six species in the region), the sawfish, the dugongs, the sharks, the fish, the birds, the seals – the list goes ever on.

In the last few years a remarkable thing has happened, in collecting these nets from land and sea, an indigenous art movement has come to life. Here is an extract from the GhostNets Australia website.

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“The remoteness of northern Australia restricts access to plastic recycling plants in both other parts of the country and the world. Consequently disposal of the huge amount of rubbish found on these beaches has placed an enormous burden on local refuse systems (mostly landfills). A solution to this dilemma has been through an innovative project where GhostNets Australia, through its large network of renowned fibre artists, facilitates workshops that marry traditional weaving and fibre techniques with these modern materials. The result is fantastic artworks”.

The discarded nets are collected by indigenous rangers and the artists themselves, if animals and fish are still alive they are disentangled and set free.

What needs to happen of course is for the regions governments, particularly of South East Asia, Japan and Taiwan, to toughen the laws relating to international fishing activities and to register and inspect fishing nets

on a regular basis. All nets should have an electronic tag so that owners can be identified and lost nets located.

While indigenous people are in the frontline of the consequences of this destruction and desecration of the sea and its creatures, current behaviour can be in no one’s interest, particularly that of the international fishing fleets.

What is obvious from our own travels in the Torres Strait is that some of the regions islands are very low lying and only just above sea level while islands such as Erub (Darnley Island) have volcanic origins and have, as a consequence, a significant amount of land that is well above sea level.

Conversely, the top Western group of Torres Strait islands, mangrove country, composed mainly from sediments deposited by the rivers of nearby New Guinea, are very low lying and increasingly subject to flooding.

There are of course a number of other islands, particularly the coral cays and the low silt formed islands, in the Torres Strait facing a significant danger of flooding.

The changes are higher tides, stronger winds, changing rainfall patterns, increasing temperatures and changing disease patterns. The first thing to go on small low lying islands is the supply of fresh water, as the water table becomes saturated with sea water. Many of the trends and patterns occurring in the Torres Strait are unknown to oral histories, which means there are no ways of knowing what the changes will bring, changes well beyond the ability of the islanders to influence other than building defensive walls to keep the sea out, a short term solution at best. These changes are delivered to the islanders by the

polluting industries of the western industrial countries and of Asia.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park ends as the Australian mainland ends at the tip of Cape York Peninsula, the park ending where the Torres Strait begins. The ecosystems to the north of the park, the corals and the species that live there remain largely unprotected.

Australia now has significant plans to extend the protected areas of its seas and oceans, let us hope that this happens.

THIS PAGE TOP LEFT: Ken Thaiday with Alag mask TOP RIGHT: Ken Thaiday’s dance machine reflects the culture of the sea people BOTTOM: Ken Thaiday and Peter Hylands in the mangroves on Erub

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R emembering the

Burrup Murujuga

A boriginal

matters

The director of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, MICHAEL MANSELL’s, recent comments about the protection of Aboriginal sites in Australia and prospects for world heritage listing of these sites are noteworthy.

“What we have got is about 50,000 years of human existence and evidence of that existence from one end of the country to the other. None of that heritage has been nominated by Australia as worthy of world heritage status. In the meantime 200 years of white history has resulted in 18 nominations”.

Now we go to Western Australia, where, when it comes to a development proposal, almost no Aboriginal heritage sites have been protected by its Parliament, let alone given world heritage protection.

This is what PETER HYLANDS had to say at the opening of the Roebourne Art Group Exhibition at Mossenson Gallery in May 2008.

(The situation is far worse today).

I want to start by saying a very warm welcome to LOREEN SAMSON and ALICE GUINESS. It is wonderful to see you both here. We also acknowledge PANSY HICKS, the third artist in the Marni Bura Roebourne Art Group exhibition. I want to thank you for the

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from the Creative cowboy archives

Photos by Andrea Hylands, Remi Vignals and Robin Chapple

LEFT Climbing men

wonderful work you have brought with you. Welcome to all of you.

The other works in the gallery are from Waringarri Aboriginal Arts, one of the East Kimberly’s oldest and most influential art centres. Dawang: Our Country, Our Place, Our Home features works from PETER NEWRY, AGNES ARMSTRONG, RONNIE YUNDUN, DAISY BITTING and CAROLE HAPKE. Both the Pilbara and Kimberly share something in common, indige­ nous heritage and ancient lands are under threat.

Tonight I am going to talk to you about place and caring for place. The single most important idea that should have come from the Australian Prime Minister’s 2020 summit is the idea that the non indigenous residents of Australia should think much more about the place they live in, and in understanding this, to tread carefully on country.

I have always instinctively cared about place but I never understood why and how. It was not until I started to look at and think about the art work of

ABOVE On the Burrup

Aboriginal Australia that I understood more fully.

In Dampier last year LOREEN explained to me her feelings about what is happening to her own country:

“It breaks my heart, everything will be gone” Each artist, each work, in the gallery speaks about place and connection to place, either through

the acknowledgement of memory, of education, tradition and law or through the horrors of destruction. In all the works, caring for country. From Pansy’s bush tucker paintings, Loreen’s paintings about mining and the social issues in Roebourne to Alice’s paintings about Bandut or dancing ground. The land sings. In these works, nature and culture are brought together in ways which should speak to us of our own conduct towards the land we live on.

I want you to think of two very different types of human behaviour coming together some two hundred years ago. The aboriginal understanding that place must be cared for and maintained in equilibrium and the European (as it was largely then) idea that foreign lands should be conquered, we call it the tabula rasa, we get rid of the lot and start again in our own image, we wipe it clean. These separate notions of place still continue today.

Interviewing Loreen in Dampier TOP An ancient valley on the Burrup

What I am going to tell you about now describes this perfectly. The artists wish me to speak about this. We go back to Roebourne, we go back to country.

The close by Burrup Peninsula, or in local language the Murujuga, contains an extraordinary collection of ancient rock engravings created by many hundreds of generations of aboriginal

There are more than one million rock engravings. That’s fantastic, aren’t we lucky to have such a thing in Australia? Oh yeah!

As we speak, the culture and nature of the Burrup continues to be destroyed. The Burrup, now shaped by industry forms a Peninsula, joined to the mainland by earthworks to create

“…an extraordinary collection of ancient rock engravings created by many hundreds of generations of aboriginal people over a period of about 30,000 years. “ people over a period of about 30,000 years. The art includes the earliest ever depictions of the human face and the images of extinct animals.

The area of the Burrup rock art, which during the last ice age was some 150 kilometres inland, became a series of rocky islands as the ice caps retreated and sea levels rose. When people first started the engravings, the images of animals depicted species from far inland, as the ice age waned and the Burrup became a coastal land, the images were of fish, crabs and other sea creatures.

The images of human ceremony continued throughout all this time.

One of a million or so rock engravings

road and rail access for industrial development.

The sources of extraction of the mining and energy wealth are located well away from the Burrup.

The Burrup is still under significant pressure from even more industrial development in the form of industrial infrastructure – factories and processing plants, infrastructure for extraction industries whose source of supply is distant from the Burrup.

What is remarkable is that the rock art precinct on the Burrup contains some of the hardest rock on earth and is surrounded by degraded pastoral land which is some of the flattest on

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“…When the destruction first started the rock art was just bulldozed, no one knows how much, now an attempt is made to save and relocate the rock art.…”

earth, the later perfect for industrial development and infrastructure.

It probably costs 30% more to build on the Burrup as massive amounts of rock have to be moved to clear the sites for construction. This rock of course is some of the most precious in the world.

The question, therefore, is why is the Burrup being used for industrial infrastructure, given its enormously important and global cultural significance?

When the destruction first started the rock art was just bulldozed, no one knows how much, now an attempt is made to save and relocate the rock art.

What is critically important is to ensure that as much of the rock art landscape as possible on the Burrup stays intact.

Moving the rock art essentially destroys its relevance in time and place. As population pressure increases so does vandalism and the likelihood of theft.

The rock art for the present remains largely unprotected and undocumented.

Vandalism on the Burrup is now rife, more is discovered on every visit. There are many recent examples including the desecration of a fish engraving site with the use of power tools.

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An engraved standing stone now fallen

A greater scientific effort is needed.

There are now plenty of disparaging quotes from eminent persons around the world in relation to Australia’s conduct on the Burrup. I will leave those for you to discover but give you two quotes from WA. “Heritage is in a mess in Western Australia. If Stonehenge were in the Pilbara, it would no longer exist” SALLY MORGAN, author, artist, academic

“We’ve dreamt of this area [the Burrup] becoming the most important industrial region in the southern hemisphere for twenty to thirty years, and finally the realization is starting to happen” FRED RIEBLING, Speaker of the WA Legislative Assembly & MP for the Pilbara region

“…The place is still being destroyed…”

Now to some recent government actions; Australian Heritage listing, which does not protect the Burrup from development, was postponed three times by the Federal Government.

Emergency Heritage listing in 2007 was also rejected by the Federal Government. These delays were constructed to allow the door of development to remain wide open and resulted in the approval of the Pluto B gas train extension.

In early July 2007, the Australian Federal Government did finally announce an Australian Heritage listing of parts of the Burrup Peninsula. The place is still being destroyed.

Well there has been a change of government in Canberra, hasn’t there? The Resource’s Minister is now busy promoting, on behalf of the Federal Government, the development of a major Sassol Chevron plant on the Burrup. Meanwhile a number of companies have thought twice about the heritage and cultural issues on the Burrup and withdrawn from development plans. The WA Government, undeterred is now embarking on yet another round of encouraging new developments

including an explosives plant and various small granite mining operations.

From a heritage and professional point of view the complete (and in my view, deliberate) lack of documentation of what actually exists on the Burrup is extraordinary. The WA government and its cultural institutions are to be condemned for this, as is the Federal Government for its compliance with these appalling standards.

So what is the answer to my earlier question? The Burrup rock art and landscape has been callously destroyed because its significance was never recognised by those doing the destroying. This is now a source of great embarrassment, which requires, because of increasing international attention, more cover-up and even greater spin.

The real answer, however, is the economic benefit to WA would be much greater if industrial infrastructure had not located on the Burrup but instead gone elsewhere. WA would then have had the greatest rock art site on earth and exactly the same revenues from gas, but with considerably cheaper infrastructure costs.

“It breaks my heart, everything will be gone”

“…I have always considered the Burrup and its rock art to be one of human society’s most important cultural sites…”

Not to be outdone in terms of reshaping the landscape, the Indian entrepreneur who has plonked his fertiliser plant on the Burrup, plans, according to the Perth media, to build a replica of the Taj Mahal in Peppermint Grove, now Australia’s most expensive suburb, while another, again according to media reports, but unconnected to the Burrup, WA entrepreneur, is building a replica of Stonehenge at Margaret River, using 2,500 tonnes of granite from Esperance.

I am sure you get my point.

I have always considered the Burrup and its rock art to be one of human society’s most important cultural sites.

In one sense I think of the Burrup as a barometer of the human condition. If we can destroy our cultural heritage, that is our past and our present, we have the capacity to destroy the future; a future that belongs to others, the future generations of this world.

Ngarluma activist, Robyne Churnside at Dampier Sturt’s Desert Peas on the Burrup - South Australia’s floral emblem about to be bulldozed in Western Australia.

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Survivors, Andrea and Peter Hylands are to the right of the photo

Swedish doctor Stefan and passengers on the rear deck as our troubles begin

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“The Mutiny on the Bounty occurred in Tongan waters near a small Island called Tofua…”

art collecting can be dang erous in search of Tongan Tapa Culture across the vast region of Oceania continues to evolve as greater external influences reach island shores. Things have changed a great deal since MARGARET MEAD’s earlier investigations and her authorship of Coming of Age in Samoa (William Morrow & Company, New York, 1928), as no doubt have our own perceptions. PETER HYLANDS reflects on his first contact with the region.

In the early seventies I was working as a designer in England.

Publisher BILL KERR, who at that time ran Longman Asia Pacific, was keen to publish a book by the Samoan author ALBERT WENDT. ALBERT’s book was called Sons for the return home.

I was approached to design the cover for the European edition of this now Oceania classic. As I researched the story and began to learn more about Western Samoa the desire to visit the Pacific islands grew. From memory the design process went well. BILL in his enthusiasm about books and life invited ANDREA and I out to the region.

At our first meal the soup, lobster, raw clams, squid, and some alarmingly coloured ice-creams all arrived at the table at the same time.

I discovered tapa cloth during my research for ALBERT’s book design.

Tapa is a cloth made by beating the bark of the paper-mulberry or breadfruit tree. The cloth is made in Samoa, Tonga and Fiji, where it has an important traditional role, and also in Papua New Guinea and Java as well as a number of other Pacific islands, including Hawai’i.

When you visit a village in these islands it is likely that the tapping of the tapa is an ever present background sound, thonk, thonk, thonk. In earlier times tapa was used for clothing but now is mainly restricted to a more ceremonial or formal role. In a contemporary form of practice we have commissioned tapa cloth from practicing artists.

After visiting Samoa and Fiji for the first time we headed off to Tonga.

The Kingdom of Tonga lies just to the South of Samoa and to the South East of Fiji. This ancient kingdom was ruled for many years by Queen SALOTE. It is probable that Tonga has

been inhabited since the 5th century BC, the present monarchy can trace its ancestors back for more than a thousand years.

Europeans first visited the Tongan islands in 1610 when two Dutch navigators arrived there, other notable explorers who visited Tonga and the surrounding islands were TASMAN, WALLIS, COOK and perhaps, the most extraordinary visitor of all, BLIGH. The Mutiny on the Bounty occurred in Tongan waters near a small Island called Tofua.

The Kingdom of Tonga consists of 169 islands (although the number tends to vary slightly depending on which book you happen to be reading!). The capital is Nuku’alofa on the island of Tongatapu.

We flew to Nuku’alofa, travelling from Western Samoa in a small and rather ancient plane. ANDREA and I were going to stay with KUNI, the owner of a hospitable Tongan guest house. We should have had an inkling that this was going to be an interesting trip, a couple of days earlier Nuku’alofa had experienced an earthquake which had been strong enough to remove a large part of the back wall of KUNI’s house, now hastily being repaired.

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One of our Tongan Tapas (detail)

Meals were a slightly odd mixture of European and Tongan dishes, prepared especially for us. At our first meal the soup, lobster, raw clams, squid, and some alarmingly coloured ice-creams all arrived at the table at the same time. Fried eggs carefully prepared several hours earlier were also provided.

We stayed on for a few days and cycled around most of the island, we decided it was time to travel to another island in the group to see how the culture and art might differ. We chose the Ha’pai group of islands which are more than a 100 kilometers north of Tongatapu. We purchased tickets on a locally owned vessel called the Olovaha which was due out of port on the following Monday morning (and eventually departed on Tuesday afternoon). The 550 tonne Olovaha had been donated by the British Government to the Tongan people some ten years earlier and was now showing signs of neglect.

We squeezed ourselves up the gangway along with some 300 rather

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large Tongans and half a dozen tourists.

We managed to find ourselves an area on the upper deck and settled in with the other passengers. We all assured ourselves that the rather alarming list of the ship was due to some kind of special cargo stowage which, with the right tides and favourable winds, would assist us to reach our destination.

We steamed steadily out into the ocean. We slept for some hours and when we woke the engines had stopped. I asked one of the crew members how long it would be before we reached Ha’apai, and he told me that the engines had broken down but were being worked on.

It was not until first light that it was obvious that something more than a minor breakdown had occurred in the engine room. Some of the younger crew members were frantically passing buckets, filled with oily looking water, out of the hatchway and across the deck. Shortly afterwards one of the two engines was re-started and we chugged slowly on.

We passed the island of Tofua, close to where the Mutiny of the Bounty took place in 1789. At this point the only working engine ground to an ominous halt and we drifted back on the current to the place we had started from a few hours earlier.

We started to worry as anxiety amongst the crew increased. The radio did not work and we discovered that there were only two life boats for a large number of passengers.

I found myself sometimes waist deep, sometimes up to my neck, in oil and water in the stairwell leading to the engine room holding one of the six buckets, that by luck, rather than foresight, had found their way onto the ship. The bilge pump did not work as it had been blocked some time earlier by flotsam and jetsam in the bilge. Six of the remaining crew and passengers including me (the rest of the passengers had resigned themselves to drowning) baled for much of that night.

One of the crew had a pocket transistor radio, on which he picked up a message from the Tongan Government, that we had been reported missing and a boat from the Tongan Navy, based at Pangai, was being sent to help.

The wind blew and the waves, now enormous, rolled over our listing and now fast sinking ship. It was impossible to believe that we could survive this situation in a fierce storm in shark infested waters in a sinking ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Early on Thursday morning a large Tongan freighter arrived and was skilfully manoeuvred alongside so that a line could be shot across to the Olovaha. The freighter towered above us and then on a crest of an enormous wave we found ourselves looking down on the deck of the freighter in a giant game of sea-saw. The captain of the freighter negotiated the enormously high waves with incredible skill and after many attempts we secured a line to the Olovaha. Soon we were

“I found myself sometimes waist deep, sometimes up to my neck, in oil and water…”

The crew continued to bail but the boat began to list at a more alarming angle than before and the deck became even more slippery as the oil spread across its surface.

One of the lifeboats then splashed into the sea along with half a dozen or so of the ship’s crew. The lifeboat and crew headed towards one of the islands on the horizon to radio for help. Night fell. The ship was now listing so badly that it was almost impossible to walk on the deck. The generator which lit only the Captain’s cabin and the engine room started to splutter, and to add to our problems the wind began to blow.

being towed towards the island of Pangai. We spent the early morning on the deck with our fingers crossed, too exhausted to bail anymore.

Once inside the reef and in calmer water we haphazardly disembarked and swam ashore. The Olovaha was brought into shallow water where shortly afterwards she slowly and gently settled to the bottom. We swam ashore and stepped onto the island. The next morning we walked along the beach grateful to be on dry land again.

We did manage to collect some tapa cloth on our trip to Tonga and managed to bring it safely home.

USA

New documentaries in 2011 – now available on DVD

We had been incredibly lucky, on August 5, 2009, in a virtual re-run of our adventure, the ferry MV Princess Ashika sank near Ha’apai on a journey between Nuku’alofa and Neiafu. Almost a hundred people were lost and presumed drowned. The people sleeping below decks had no chance of escape.

Alex Schweder: Space Time Performance After a successful launch in Berlin in 2010, the DVD of this film was released in Asia in 2011. Join the Creative cowboy crew in California for the filming of this extraordinary installation.

“The wind blew and the waves, now enormous, rolled over our listing and now fast sinking ship…”

The story is not over, we made our way back to Auckland, met some colleagues at the airport to do a quick spot of editorial and design work on some New Zealand projects. Then on to a Qantas flight to Sydney. We felt a deep, deep exhaustion from all our adventures.

We could still smell the ship’s oil on our stained skin.

It was Sunday evening, we had settled back to have a brief sleep, safe at last. One of the aircrew walked past me and appeared to be inspecting the aircraft. After returning to his cabin an announcement came over the intercom, ‘our arrival will be delayed because Sydney is very busy tonight’. Odd we thought, Sunday night? Soon the truth was revealed – hydraulic failure. We had another emergency on our hands.

The delay was so that the runway could be prepared for our landing. As the plane groaned its way towards the airport the captain made reassuring statements, the passengers looked at each other.

We could see the runway, and the fire engines alongside, awaiting out landing.

Bang, we were down, we rolled to a stop at the end of the runway and were unloaded there. Our friends, who came to meet us at the terminal, looked at ANDREA and I. ‘You do look pale’ they said.

‘Ah, it’s a long story’…

A Sac of Rooms All Day Long

ALEX SCHWEDER LA’s ‘perfor­ mance architecture’ is based on the notion that relationships between occupied spaces and occupying subjects are permeable. This is to say that a subject first perceives his or her environment and is then changed by that perception. This person in turn alters their environment to make it correspond to their fantasy.

This process continues until the scrimmage of objects and subjects produces an architecture where referring to the two as distinct becomes irrelevant.

In Creative cowboy film’s Space Time Performance, ALEX installs the work A Sac of Rooms All Day Long at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. ALEX describes this work as being part of a series

of works that he calls buildings that perform themselves, we follow the choreography of an inflatable vinyl building. Installed, the building performs itself, from a plastic puddle on the floor to a writhing performance of two life size houses stealing space from one another, only to return again, to a plastic puddle on the floor.

The work reflects and distorts the bodies of the viewer. ‘How do I get in’ says a young child, ‘you can’t says the mother, that’s the point’. Not being able to get in creates a desire in the viewer to make the entry that is denied to them. To the outsider, what is revealed is an extraordinary work and an extraordinary performance where building and sound and viewer perform together.

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Australia

New documentaries in 2011 – now available on DVD Far left: Angelina and Gladdy Kemarre collecting yams Left: Angelina painting Below: Angelina and Gladdy

Bush plum: The contemporary art of Angelina Pwerle

Melbourne’s Niagara Galleries describe ANGELINA’s work:

For ANGELINA, her bush plum dreaming paintings reflect “the whole thing, all of country”.

In 2011 ANGELINA PWERLE took part in an exhibition E(merge): two spiritualities. This extraordinary exhibition brought together two artists from two very different cultures, ANGELINA and HU QINWU, in the Space Station Art Gallery in Beijing’s 798 Art District.

There are both differences and remarkable similarities in the work of these two artists, connected by the strength of their spirituality and their ancient Aboriginal and Chinese cultures.

The works are beautiful and serene.

Far away from Beijing and a few weeks after the end of the Beijing exhibition the Creative cowboy crew visit Camel Camp in Central Australia, ANGELINA’s home and workplace. The film Bush plum is a contemplation of the work and country of ANGELINA PWERLE, a visual poem, capturing the imagery and connection between painting and country.

Central Australia is a place of extraordinary power and beauty, the art from this place is a mirror, a spiritual reflection of beliefs, of culture of country, of its plants and animals.

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“One can see the paths of the seeds of the bush plum being blown by the Dreamtime winds and the tracks the women make as they go about the business of collecting the bush plum for food. Or perhaps it is the cosmos above charting the country below”.

ANGELINA’s delicate and peaceful paintings are created by using a fine stick of bamboo, each of the many thousands of dots in a painting are applied individually. The paintings are often large in scale. The work itself becoming a contemplation in the artist’s mind. The state of painting creating the opportunity for meditation and focus, the execution is painstaking and precise and continues for many days.

Bush plum: The contemporary art of Angelina Pwerle

In the blog Talking Utopia, filmed at the Artlore office in Alice Springs, MARC GOOCH (Artlore) and BILL NUTTALL (Niagara Galleries, Melbourne), talk to PETER HYLANDS about the

Australia development of contemporary art practice at Utopia. Utopia, an area of just under 2,000 square kilometres, is semi-arid desert country to the north east of Alice Springs, inhabited by Aboriginal people, who live in a number of communities or outstations across the Utopia lands.

You can discover more on creativecowboyfilms.com

Torres Strait

New documentaries in 2011 – now available on DVD

Ken Thaiday Snr: The sea, the feather and the dance machine

Creative cowboy continues to document the indigenous cultures of Australia.

In 2011 major film projects in Australia include the locations of the Torres Strait and Central Australia.

“We have a lot of different materials.

I’ve started a new way to do it... I’m a man to make things alive and moving”.

The creative cowboy crew travel to Erub in the Torres Strait with artist KEN THAIDAY Snr. KEN, a senior and inventive Torres Strait islander artists, constructs mobilised artefacts, his art is now exhibited in major art galleries and museums around the world.

Finally the day came, we all met very early one morning in late September at Cairns Airport. We checked in all the camera equipment and soon we were lifting off the runway on our way to Horn Island. KEN was very happy to be making that journey.

Once we had arrived at Horn Island our adventures really began. There sitting on the runway was the small plane we had chartered, its mission was to get us to Erub, KEN’s original home.

Brakes on hard – the engines of our little plane roar – brakes off, sling shot, we lift quickly off the short runway, the wind takes control. Then we are looking at the blue green sea below, with its coral cays and reefs.

Clockwise from above: Ken Thaiday on Erub; Ken in shark headdress; Ken in his studio as Canopy Artspace; A recent Hammerhead Shark headdress ready for despatch.

We are on our way on the last part of this journey, the beautiful coral reefs and cays below us. Out of the left window, York Island, easily identified with its island dissecting runway and then, eventually in front of us, the tiny hillside runway of Erub.

As we approach Erub we can see the joy in KEN THAIDAY Snr, the joy of coming home. We bank and approach the very short and sloping hillside runway – bang, we are down, brakes on hard again, park the plane and greet the welcoming party.

KEN is overjoyed, the emotions of return are very powerful.

The welcome was warm and the days we spent with KEN on Erub were very beautiful. They were days of exploring the island, collecting seeds for his artworks, watching KEN fish and attending dinners and dance performances. We even found one of KEN’s early dance machines in the art centre display room.

Working with KEN for three weeks was an experience that we will never forget. KEN worked very hard to make his film an extraordinary experience for the viewer, his passion and caring for his culture, people and home, is there for everyone to see.

Torres Strait Ken Thaiday Snr: The sea, the feather and the dance machine

The sea, the feather and the dance machine was launched during the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF) in August and will be broadcast in Australia on National Indigenous Television (NITV, FOXTEL) in 2012.

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Africa

New documentaries in 2011 – now available on DVD

Film essays of Maasai life

“We find people who have had lots of cattle losing them and their life style completely changes. You find people moving to town to get other jobs…

Climate change can contribute to the loss of culture” Emmanuel Parsimei

Filmed in the Rift Valley, Kenya; Film essays of Maasai life, is a series of six film documentaries about Maasai life today.

These documentaries investigate the contemporary influ­ences that are shaping Maasai culture.The documentaries are set in Maasai villages in the Rift Valley, we meet the warriors, visit huts, join ceremonies and traditional dances and view the spectacular environment and wildlife so important to Maasai life today.

Maasai artistic traditions include dirges, songs, plays, dressings (clothing and body decoration), making of artefacts such as spears and other weapons, jewellery, building and animal husbandry. The results of all this artistic creativity are still used in ceremonies today, these cultural activities and object making traditions may have their origins hundreds of years ago.

Contemporary Maasai artefacts are now collected around the world, creating new opportunities for Maasai artists and craft workers. The task now is to identify individual artists and crafts people and to describe the objects they make in their cultural context.

Determined to defend their way of life, the Maasai consider the changes that they can make to help navigate the future. These changes include improved access to education and the development of a broader economic base, including the growth of arts and crafts practice, already strong in Maasai culture.

Traditionally, male and female roles have been clearly defined and are often quite separate. The women carry water, prepare the food, build houses, and look after children. The men look after the cattle and goats, often walking for long distances to find pasture. The men build the fortified fences around the Enkang (village enclosure) and train as

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warriors to defend their village and their animals.

In this account of Maasai life today, women discuss their changing role in Maasai Society. Young women and men discuss the tradition of female genital mutilation and their strong opposition to a practice that is now illegal in both Kenya and Tanzania.

“Like all indigenous peoples, the Maasai are in the front line of the impact of climate change” The arts and crafts are practiced by both men and women, the men make spears and other artefacts and the women create the distinctive Maasai jewellery. Given artistic traditions and increasing engagement with the arts internationally there is a strong likelihood that a contemporary form of art practice will continue to grow. This will include the visual arts, as well as music and literature.

In the documentary Keeping knowledge, the possibility of developing a Maasai Cultural Centre with the assistance of UNESCO Observatory is discussed as a way of developing the art and cultural practice of both men and women.

The Rift Valley has been very dry, dust is all around us. Will the rains come this time? The cattle and goats struggle in their search for food, the men walk ever further in search of pasture, the women walk ever further to fetch water. The children remain at home to help their families.

Changes in climate have a direct and powerful impact on Maasai people, drought means the death of the animals that are so central to Maasai culture. Drought brings severe food shortages and has a powerful impact on the ability to maintain cultural traditions. Drought diminishes the possibility of sending children to school and then on to higher education.

Like all indigenous peoples, the Maasai are in the front line of the impact of climate change. Maasai people pay the social and economic price for actions that had little to do with them, the pollution of the atmosphere by industrialized cultures, far away.

The extraordinary biodiversity of the Rift Valley, the numerous species that surround the Enkang (village enclosure) of the Maasai, are important as they are at the heart of the cultural richness that is Maasai society.

Species survival is also critical for economic reasons as environmental tourism expands. Environmental

New documentaries in 2011 – now available on DVD

OBSERVATORY

Multi-Disciplinary Research in the Arts

pressures on Maasai society continue to grow in complexity and include drought and climate change, development issues and land use, conservation issues and a semi nomadic way of life, animal husbandry, population increases, new technologies, ecotourism and globalisation.

All these things create an increasingly complex framework in which Maasai culture and society has to function and evolve. Like all indigenous societies, the connection to the land and nature that surrounds them, are the core elements in the future and success of the Maasai.

A culture too precious to lose and in whose people’s memory is stored the knowledge and tradition that is so important to the continuing diversity of the human planet.

Film essays of Maasai life

PANORAMA, TOP: Rift valley, Kenya; Shopping in Maasailand; Peter, Kai and Amos discuss the film shoot; Cows on their way to greener pastures, Maasailand; Creation of Maasa artifacts; Warrior viewing – during filming Birds sing and lions roar.

Africa

Women at work and women at home; Enkang life; Changing times; Food and celebration; Keeping knowledge; Birds sing and lions roar

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Europe

New documentaries in 2011 – now available on DVD

Europe

Peter Churcher: A portrait in Barcelona The Creative cowboy crew join figurative painter PETER CHURCHER in his studio in Barcelona.

The portrait nearing completion

“I have been primarily concerned with the painting of the human figure in a narrative context and the depiction of the human presence - that is the Portrait”.

Barcelona Streets

A portrait in Barcelona was filmed during the early summer of 2011.

These were days of golden sunlight, of food, of wine and of conversation.

The only interruption to our tranquillity, the spontaneous protests from the balconies and streets of Barcelona.

And we visit NEIL EVANS at the National Portrait Gallery in London to find out more about the art of portraiture.

What is it like to have your portrait painted and why do people commission these paintings? How is the portrait constructed and how does the artist

capture a likeness? How does history influence the art of portraiture?

A leading exponent of figurative painting, PETER CHURCHER’s paintings deal primarily with the human subject in portraiture and group figure narrative subjects.

Peter Churcher: A portrait in Barcelona

The Creative cowboy crew Andrea Hylands - director Peter Hylands – director Rob Pignolet – cinematography Kai Brethouwer – art direction and photography Liz Butler – design Mark Warren – special effects

Creative cowboy documentaries and educational products can be purchased on DVD from the shop: www.creativecowboyfilms.com/ products-page/

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Public art galleries and museums wishing to include screenings of Creative cowboy documentaries in their exhibitions / theatres or wishing to use Creative cowboy photographic images of artists and places please contact ANDREA HYLANDS at ahylands@creativecowboyfilms.com

Rob Pignolet and Peter Hylands somewhere in Central Australia

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