Seeds & Sovereignty: Mapping Country

Tue 21 May 2024

‘Seeds and Sovereignty’ at the Gallery of Modern Art until 18 August 2024, brings together works from the QAGOMA Indigenous Australian Art Collection that celebrate the interconnected relationships between plants, people and Country. The lessons embedded in cultural knowledge systems contain critical information about the collection and use of natural resources, ensuring safe consumption and plentiful harvests.

Over countless generations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples developed an intricate understanding of their Country’s unique environments and ideal ecological balance. Intertwined within cultural knowledge and ceremonial practice, this insight into nature is embedded into societal systems wherein totemic relationships of responsibility to flora and fauna ensure ongoing land management and sustainability.

‘Seeds and Sovereignty’ is curatorially responsive and seeks to honour the ground-breaking research of historian and author Bruce Pascoe’s widely acclaimed publication Dark Emu (2014, Magabala Books). Pascoe’s work, and others that followed him, have successfully challenged accepted histories around the pre-colonial lifestyles of Indigenous people in ways that recognise these sophisticated land management practices while reaffirming the sacred obligations of custodianship that underpins their success.^[35]

‘Mapping Country’ is the first of four blogs that celebrate the interconnected relationships between plants, people and Country.

Mapping Country

The establishment of missions and settlements throughout Australia ruptured many traditional ecological systems. However, even when displaced from their homelands, obligations to land and ongoing sustainability remain imperative for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Artists commonly use their work to express connection to and authority over their Country. Such depictions can be literal, codified, or even metaphysical maps of Country, featuring significant plants that represent abundance or the location of botanical resources.

Alec Baker ‘Ngura (Country)’ 2018

Betty Chimney ‘Ngayuku Ngura (My Country)’ 2018

Alec Baker’s Ngura (Country) 2018 (illustrated) and Betty Chimney’s Ngayuku Ngura (My Country) 2018 (illustrated) employ classic Western Desert topographical mapping design embedded with ancestral stories, significant sites, iconography and landmarks, including plants. Janet Koongotema’s celebratory depiction of Waangk Awa’ 2021 (illustrated) asserts her tribal rights to the ngench thayan (sacred) Wik-Mungkan ‘story place’ of her Dilly Bag Dreaming.

Janet Koongotema ‘Waangk Awa” 2021

Wathaurung artist Carol McGregor’s Skin Country 2018 (illustrated) maps the locations of native flora of the greater Brisbane region in relation to the Brisbane River, as it snakes towards the coastline. The botanical illustrations reflect extensive consultation with Elders, community members and historians in their placement; whereas Utopia artists Poly, Angelina and Kathleen Ngal express their deep cultural knowledge of Country in abstract imagery typical of the region. Each artist’s intricate dot work shimmers across the canvas, increasing in density or vibrancy in places that represent places of abundance of food resources, or sites of ceremonial, ancestral or other cultural significance.

Carol Mcgregor ‘Skin Country’ 2018

Sophia Nampitjimpa Sambono ( Jingili) is Associate Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, QAGOMA
This text is adapted from an essay first published in QAGOMA’s Members’ magazine, Artlines.
‘Seeds and Sovereignty’ / Gallery 3.5, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / 2 March – 18 August 2024.

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal peoples, Torres Strait Islander peoples, and Elders past and present. In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge the immense creative contribution First Australians, as the first visual artists and storytellers, make to the art and culture of this country.

Endnotes

1. ^ Bruce Pascoe’s research builds on the work of historian Bill Gammage in re-examining colonial and historical records to reveal truths of the landscape. Barkandji researcher and curator Zena Cumpston (and others) have continued this rewriting of narratives of erasure. Both Pascoe and Cumpston have been central to re-presenting this knowledge in art contexts in exhibitions including ‘Bunha-bunhanga: Aboriginal agriculture in the south-east’, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2019–20; and ‘Emu Sky’, Old Quad, University of Melbourne, Vic., 2022.