The broad aims of the Aboriginal Community College in Port Adelaide, South Australia, are to provide time, space, and resources to Aboriginal people that will allow them to make discoveries about themselves, their heritage and their environment, and to move in directions that they establish as relevant to themselves and/or their community.
Located in an old terrace house in Cope Street Redfern, is the voice of the Aboriginal Community in Sydney. The terrace house is not unlike any other in the inner city. However with the Koori colours on one wall and the music of Koori bands blasting out from its speakers up on the balcony the house is fairly outstanding.
Maningrida Art and Craft is synonymous with the best of contemporary traditional Aboriginal bark painting and sculpture, both major individual works and important collections.
Emerging from the heart of central Australia is the most exciting and dynamic development in modern Australian art. The materials are modern -acrylic on canvas. But the content is traditional - mythical and ritual.
Painting movement at Papunya 1971-75 one of the few positive offshoots of the Government's Assimilation Policy. Senior men began to paint on boards and made murals for the school, initially showing sacred secret material, later self-censored. Paintings use complex patterning and dotting to describe formation of land by Ancestors, natural features and travel.
Original dreaming. Aboriginal people believe that the spirit ancestors watch over us today to ensure the laws are kept and that punishment is inflicted if broken. Photograph of Yuendume women dancing.
Margie West talks to NE Arnhem Land artist Banduk Marika about artists working in Yirrkala, an Aboriginal community. She addresses traditional ceremonies today, the appropriate use of traditional designs, payment for work, copyright, and working to redress environmental damage to the beaches and lands by regenerating native trees and plants.