In the second installment in the story of Aboriginal law-man Spider Kalbybidi, enter Emily Rohr, the gallerist who looked after the ‘careers of the Yulparija artists’. Emily understood who Spider was, his importance as a Magic man, so she paid particular attention to what was to be their final conversation one afternoon during which he ‘urged her to look after the last surviving Yulparija artists’. It was unusual for Spider to speak because he was regarded as deaf and dumb, a silence which Emily suspected was in reality ‘connected to deep, cataclysmic desert dramas from the past, involving the ceremony cycle’ at which he was initiated.Emily also sensed that Spider’s work was always ‘about something else’, something to do with 'ideas and metaphysics’. She recognised that the ‘physical world’ for these old people, and particularly for Spider, was the ‘least important world for them’, what was important was ‘the further, higher world' which was also the subject of their paintings. For the Yulparija people, in fact I believe all Aboriginals, and some people from my own culture, myself particularly, dreams are the ‘connecting gate into the other realm’.
A month after Emily’s conversation with Spider something quite uncanny happened. Emily’s husband, Michael, was reversing his boat-trailer, when visiting gallerist William Mora discovered a painting in the driveway - ‘a canvas with two large rips slashed through it’. It was one of Spider’s paintings - ‘a rendition of sandhills and desert springs, ochre red, with white dotting and pale glimpses of elusive blue’ and from the scratches and paw prints, they could see that the rips had been caused by dogs. When Emily questioned Weaver Jack about it she simply said: Oh yes, that’s just Spider telling us where he’s gone.
Emily fretted about what had befallen Spider while the ‘artists and their families at Bidyadanga had other preoccupations’. In traditional desert culture, what is most important is not what has happened, but who did it and why. There were several ‘mutually exclusive yet oddly supportive’ theories but the ‘best-known young artist at Bidyadanga, Daniel Walbidi said simply: We don't know. Some people say it was because of a painting he did, some people say it was because of his power, the maparn.
But I like one particular theory, one that naturally supports my own belief systems and personal experience of the psychic otherworldy power of images and provides a final fascinating twist to the tale.
(to be continued)
image: Spider Kalybidi, Naru, 2004
article reference: Nicolas Rothwell "In the Shadow of Modernity, The Weekend Australian, Dec 13-14, 2008
