For Indigenous artist Aaron McTaggart, it’s the story behind a piece of art that draws him to look closer.
Just a few months ago the 29-year-old was on a plane flying back to Darwin, in awe of the view far below him. “I could see the designs that the desert people do and I was wondering, how do they see that when they’re always on the ground?” he asks.
“They’ve never been up in the sky, but they paint a bird’s eye view from the top.
“You can see the movements on the ground, and the movements have been transferred onto a canvas.”
Aaron’s a fourth generation artist and a director of the Merrepen Arts Centre and Gallery in Daly River, a tiny Aboriginal community about 220km south of Darwin.
The Merrepen Aboriginal Arts Centre started as a women’s centre in the mid 1980’s, as a place for local women to learn skills like reading, writing and cleaning.
The Centre became a corporation under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Act in 1992 and the gallery now houses works from local male and female artists of all ages.
The Gallery features canvas paintings, silk work, prints, glassware, traditional artefacts, weavings, paper máché and screen printed textiles.
Aaron has a strong connection with the Arts Centre, having learned to paint there as a young boy, taught by his mother and aunties. “All my family are artists. A lot of the works in the gallery are done by my great-grandmother, down to myself and my younger brother.”
And although art is rich in Aaron’s blood, he says it’s not always easy to get the next generation involved. “We are trying to get them involved in doing the art to keep the culture alive and keep the stories flowing,’ he says.
“We have a few kids that are becoming emerging artists, a 12-year-old and a 16-year-old...but it’s hard to try and get them more involved in the art.”
Aaron says one of the keys to keeping young Indigenous children interested in traditional art is to let them modernise it.
In the seven years he’s been directing at the Arts Centre, Aaron says he’s seen artists develop and change every year, progressing to a more western style of painting.
He says artists have started creating their own designs and patterns, and have progressed to a place where traditional Aboriginal techniques are fused and moulded with modern, western art.
But, he says, the stories stay the same.
“They’re translating their traditional stories... but in a more westernised way,” Aaron says.
“Some of them are not painting dreamtime stories, like rock art in a cave, but they’re doing more illustrative works…giving it more depth, more story and making it more interesting.”
For Aaron, the modernisation of Aboriginal art is part of passing traditional stories on to the next generation and maintaining Aboriginal culture.
He says it keeps school children interested in the stories, so when they reach a certain age, they can retell them in their own way.
Aaron’s family are some of the region’s most recognised artists.
His aunty Benigna Ngulfundi has a painting hanging in the Darwin International airport, while another aunty has had a work in Pope John Paul II’s Vatican Prayer Book.
But the magic of the artwork lies deep within the soil and waters of the Daly River community.
Corporation and Gallery manager Lizz Bott says the artwork from the Daly River region is completely different to any other Aboriginal artwork you’ll come across.
“The styles, the colours the artists uses, the intricacy, their interpretations and the special stories...it really is just very special and beautiful artwork.”
