Uncovering a Picture of North West History: The Canning Stock Route Project
O
ne of the world's last true wilderness areas, Australia’s North West can only be described as rugged, wild and beautiful. Venturing inland from the stretching white coastal sands to red earth country exposes extraordinary rock formations, magnificent waterfalls and expansive desert. As the sun beats down on this outback frontier, it’s hard to imagine a history as rich as the magnificent landscape, however this very history has been captured to tell a vivid tale, stories previously unrecorded from the remote desert lands of Western Australia, from an Aboriginal perspective in an exhibition called ‘Yiwarra Kuju,’ or ‘one road’ – The Canning Stock Route Project. In the early 1900s, an ambitious attempt was made to drive cattle from the stations of the Kimberly through the Western Desert Region to markets in the South of Western Australia. Aboriginal guides were used to locate local waters during the surveying of the stock route. The Canning Stock Route project is a landmark cultural and artistic endeavour, with some of Western Australia’s leading contemporary Aboriginal artists contributing their knowledge to a rich cultural repository that explores the history and cultures of the Canning Stock Route. The project began as a partnership between Perth-based cultural organisation FORM, and
Charlie Wallabi Tjungurrayi, from Papunya Tula Artists, at Kaningarra, photo by Tim Acker, 2007. Courtesy of FORM, Canning Stock Route Project.
nine remote Aboriginal art and cultural centres in the north of the state with direct connections to the stock route regions. It depicts the history of the century-old, 2,000km stock route that runs from Wiluna to Halls Creek, crossing three deserts along the way. The exhibition that resulted from the project, ‘Yiwarra Kuju,’ is a joint initiative of the National Museum of Australia and FORM, and is an extraordinary blend of paintings, cultural artefacts, photography, oral history and film, created by Aboriginal artists and an intercultural team of emerging Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal curators and filmmakers. Yiwarra Kuji is on display at the Perth Convention and exhibition centre during CHOGM
(October 24 to 30) before being opened to the public for a free, four week season from November 2 to 27, 2011. The exhibition was shown at the National Museum of Australia for six months, closing in January this year. It was the most successful exhibition in the history of the Museum. The nine art centres across the North West encompass the Martumili Artists (Newman, Jigalong, Parnngurr, Punmu, Kunawarritji, Nullagine),Yulparija Artists (Bidyadanga), Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency (Fitzroy Crossing), Ngurra Artists (Ngumpan and Wangkatjungka), Warlayirti Artists (Balgo, Mulan and Billiluna), Papunya Tula Artists (Kiwirrkurra), Kayili Artists (Patjarr) and the Birriliburu Artists Tjukurba Gallery (Wiluna). n
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Issue 18
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