I have long believed in the power of images. I can provide evidence of how they have facilitated certain alchemical processes within my own psyche. In fact, this is my art practice in a nutshell. Some images when created and/or viewed in a particular context can trigger certain responses and effect change on a deeply psychic and archetypal level. My conclusions are drawn from years of being an artist which has deepened my understanding of the spiritual power of images. The alchemical power of the image is also the basis of my doctorate but this esoteric philosophy is quietly embedded in the exegesis so as not to alarm the examiners.Of course this ‘alchemical’, or ‘magical’, practice is visible in the first recognisable forms of art-making (cave paintings as ritual) and lies at the heart of every culture, not the least significant of which still operates within some tribes of the traditional owners of our own country. The images of that culture we get to see as voyeurs and tourists carry some of the symbolism but none of the real power because those images are never seen by many Aboriginal people, let alone non-Aboriginal. The consequences of creating these images is real (to which I can attest from my personal experience within the parameters of my own Western culture) and transgressing the ‘law’ has real consequences. I believe there are many examples of this in European art history, some of which have been recognised by their creators and many that have not; the work of Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein and William Blake just to mention a few off the top of my head.
During a recent conversation with a curator of Aboriginal art I was reminded of an excellent article in the Weekend Australian that sheds some light on this phenomena in traditional Aboriginal culture. Aboriginal elder ‘Spider’ Kalbybidi was a Maparnjarra a traditional doctor, a healer of great power’, lawman and 'man of high degree'. As an artist and ‘feather-foot’ Spider was held in awe by his community. His friend Moko, second in line as a magic man, said ‘that man can fly’. He was also a ‘master colourist’ of the Yulparija group of painters from the Great Sandy Desert. These roles and responsibilites were not discrete in Spider’s life.
In 2008 Spider walked off into the desert near his home in Bidyadanga with a small back-pack and his two dogs. Searchers found the tracks left in the sand but what was most extraordinary was that they ‘simply stopped’ - Spider and his dogs had just disappeared into the ether. ‘Strange things began happening the moment he vanished’.
‘There were brief sightings of him, at dusk, in the community, and in the country’. His ‘sister….. Weaver Jack, was sure that he was still alive….there was even….proof, for now he was appearing routinely, if fleetingly, in Yulparija dreams….. Word soon spread through the bush. Other men of power came and searched’ but it gradually became clear that ‘ancestor figures had lured Spider into the backlands and taken him away. But where to and for what reason? The picture clarified, and precise details emerged, when three members of the Balbal family, all desert born, all strongly endowed with maparn.... had a shared dream in which Spider's circumstances were spelled out, and this account soon became the standard version of the story….in the indigenous domain’.
Lydia Balbal relates that in their sleep she and her two brothers saw: 'a group of ancestors, led by the prominent figure of Maruwateye, coming to take Spider, and it was they….who had transported him, far, all the way to a cave in country south of Wangkatjunka, a central Kimberley Aboriginal community, hundreds of kilometres distant…. Once in that cave, he was painted up for law ceremonies, wrapped in cloth, looked after, and fed on a rich diet of wild cat….. he was close to the landscape of Tjukurrmaradji, on the fringes of the Sandy Desert, where his mother had raised him….If he was not fully dead, it was plain from this account that, as a living being, Spider was no more; he had passed over to the world of spirits'.
These accounts are not unfamiliar to anyone interested in Aboriginal culture, however, what is really interesting from my perspective (and getting back to my introductory blurb) are the events that unfolded some time after Spider’s disappearance, events that reveal the links between his life as an image-maker and as a law-man and the inherent power of the images he painted, that enabled or activated his transition to the spirit world.
(......to be continued)
image: 'Moko & Spider', not sure if this is one of Spider's paintings or one by his sister Weaver Jack about him.
Nicolas Rothwell, 'In the Shadow of Modernity', The Australian 'Review' , Dec. 13-14, 2008, 4-6
