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The controversy currently raging about Aboriginal art in Australia carries the tag ‘White hands on Black art’. This tag was affixed by The Australian in their expose of the ‘practice’ or, as many would prefer, the malpractice. At the crux of the controversy is the accusation that those ‘white hands’, in painting on an otherwise ‘black’ canvas, have tainted the artwork irreparably: it is no longer sacred.
It is widely held in Australia – and not just within the cultural elite, where it would be expected – that Aboriginal art which depicts events and places of the mythic past of the Dreamtime, of which the artist is deemed to have timeless knowledge, is sacred in itself. For example, Christopher Allen, The Australian’s art critic, recently suggested (The Australian, 11/4/23) that the meaning of the patterns on indigenous paintings could not be divulged to the uninitiated. In pub talk, the paintings depict matters not only sacred but secret. This is romantic sentimentalism.
I recently saw a painting called Wati Kutjara by acclaimed Aboriginal artist Tommy Watson in the book Yannima Pikarli Tommy Watson. The painting is striking for its patterns of red and brown land above which rise two stark white figures. No-one familiar with the mythology of Australia’s Central Desert would fail to recognize the mythic Wati Kutjara, the ‘Two Men’. For me, the painting is superior in design and emotional impact to any other Watson painting in the book. There is no doubting the artistry. What is open to debate — or ought to be – is whether the painting itself is ‘sacred’ in the religious sense. Because, if Aboriginal artwork is not sacred in that sense, then the ‘white hands’ are not involved in a sacrilegious ‘theft of the Dreaming’, as NT Arts Minister Chancey Paech romantically puts it, and the controversy becomes less emotional and can focus more usefully on any forgery and fabrication that is occurring.
Certainly, the Aboriginal art industry, artists and galleries alike, promote this ‘sacred’ tag, but this is in their interest: after all, that tag is where they get to fix the price. Another Watson painting of the same name – not nearly as good, in my opinion – is on sale for A$180,000 (below) at the Kate Owen Gallery in Sydney.
In the desert mythology, Wati Kutjara (to use Watson’s spelling) was a prominent member of the mythic mob that wandered into the Great Sandy Desert in the Dreamtime. This might be a mythologized memory of actual ancient migration which contemporary Aboriginal dogma would place about 50,000 years ago. It bears noting that the wandering mythic mob included Gunya Gudjara, the ‘Two dogs’ and, ignoring the Thylacine, dogs only arrived about 4000 years ago with people from southern India. Time-series analyses of archaeological sites by a team from ANU and other Australian universities suggest that the Great Sandy Desert might not have been inhabited until about 2000-1500 years ago; that is, about the time of Christ. There is no doubt that the mythology of Wati Kutjara’s wanderings in the desert, moulding the landscape as he went, was once fundamental to the cult life of the Walbiri and Pintubi and other desert tribes. He was the totemic figure for the ‘lodge’ of initiated men whose spirit sites were along his tracks. His sites and rituals and cult objects would have been taboo to others and brutal punishment, including death, would have awaited any man who revealed them or any woman who violated them.
That time passed long ago. The artists don’t live lives ruled by mythic totems anymore. If they did, they could not be revealing in their paintings the events and places ‘sacred’ to the cult. The blurb for Tommy Watson’s book reflects this. He is painting ‘Dreamtime stories inherited from his family’, it says: ‘sites and geographical features within his Country’. Stories inherited from his family; not ‘sacred’ myths and rituals passed down in secrecy by the initiated men of the tribe. Certainly, many Dreamtime 
stories are remembered in vivid detail, especially by the older people, and where the details have faded, they can always be redreamt. A new exegesis is easily developed, the anthropologists would say. The artists are free today to paint these stories of the mythic beings and the sites they inhabit. It is a freedom traditional life did not offer them.
In my office I have a copy of the painting Minyipuru (right), the Seven Sisters, by Martu sisters Muni Rita Simpson, Rosie Williams and Dulcie Gibbs from the Martumili artistic group in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. The Seven Sisters are also primary subjects of widely recognized artists such as Andrea Adamson, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi and Athena Nangala Granites from the APY community in Central Australia.
In the Dreamtime, the Seven Sisters were travelling southeast from the WA coast, venturing deeper and deeper into the desert. At a waterhole called Kalypa (Well 23 on the Canning Stock Route) they met men for the first time but fought off their sexual advances. An older man, known to different tribes by various names, including Wati Nyiru and Jukurra, tried to rape the oldest sister and, to escape, the girls fled to the far south and into the heavens where they become the constellation known to us as the Pleiades. Their amorous pursuer became the star Orion and every night he follows the Sisters across the sky.
There is a curious parallel here to the Greek myth which tells of the Seven Sisters, the daughters of Atlas who held the celestial spheres on his shoulders. The sisters were being pursued by the lusty great hunter Orion and to protect them Zeus turned them into stars of the Pleaides. It is amazing that Australian and Aegean observers, thousands of years and kilometres apart, saw in the same stars this same vision of a lusty man chasing nubile young women across the night sky. It’s a small world, after all.
Some of the paintings of the Seven Sisters by these APY women are stunning images, with dotted spheres showing the sister stars clustered together or fleeing down the canyons of the night, while Orion burns brightly close by or swirls in orange dots in hot pursuit.
But we face the same questions posed by Watson’s Wati Kutjara. Why are these painting considered sacred by so many people? Perhaps they would argue, along with SA Arts Minister Andrea Michaels, that the story of the Seven Sisters is sacred in itself, as are all the Dreamtime stories. But if that is so, what do we say of other paintings of the mythic origins of the Pleiades? What of Elihu Vedder’s painting (below), for instance, hanging in the American Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing the Seven Sisters bound by chords to their respective stars and dancing with flowing robes and bare breasts.
Is Vedder’s painting sacred too? And if not, why not? After all, it depicts essentially the same myth, albeit set in another landscape. Certainly, the Aboriginal paintings of the Seven Sisters are more appealing to the modern eye than Vedder’s 19th 
Century classical style, but that is a measure of aesthetics, not sacredness.
A multitude of questions emerge from all this. Would those who hold sacred the Aboriginal paintings of Wati Kudjara or Minyipuru also hold sacred paintings by a devout Christian of Christ’s apostles walking by the Sea of Galilee? Or off Christ himself calming the raging seas and walking on the water? Is Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross a sacred painting (left)? Even with Australia’s Christian identity fading fast, being just 44per cent in the 2022 census (and much of that nominal only), this sacred designation for matters considered ‘pagan’ barely three generations ago is an amazing socio-cultural phenomenon. At its core is the romantic idolizing of the ‘native’ cultures which is widespread today, having moved beyond the intellectual elite to the general public.
The idea of the ‘sacredness’ of traditional Aboriginal society began around the turn of the 20th Century as part of a broader re-interpretation by Western intellectuals of the spirituality of ‘primitive’ societies. Tribal customs and taboos, initially viewed as pre-religious belief structures, came to be seen as profound religious systems in their own right. Myths were no longer primitive beliefs but sacred and fundamental truths. Specifically, Aboriginal mythology was the ‘sacred’ history of the Dreamtime, and traditional Aboriginal life, re-imagined as a re-enacting of that sacred past, must itself be sacred. This, of course, was but another example of Western intellectuals dreaming paradisial myths of noble man and a golden past before the corrupting impact of capitalist industrial society, but it was widely heard by the broader Australian public and influenced the profound social changes that began at that time, including the popular romanticism regarding Aboriginal culture.
For this extensive audience, Aboriginal art became their window to a sacred past where believers imagine Aboriginal nations living peacefully in harmony with nature and each other, all blessed with a spirituality unknown, indeed unknowable, to ‘white’ people. For them, the paintings are sacred and often come with the spiritual bonus that the holiness is too secret to share.
All this demands, of course, that the painting is by an Aborigine – and only an Aborigine. If a white man contributes to the painting in any way, even by artistic suggestion regarding the interplay of space and colour or the balance of the colours, the painting is corrupted, as NT Minister Paech put it. The Tjukurpa, the sacred Dreaming, has been interfered with, he said. The 
art is no longer sacred, and its commercial value is diminished accordingly.
The suggestion – indeed, the dictate – is that a white person must not paint Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. The wonderful paintings by Ainslie Roberts from his Dreamtime exhibitions and books from the late 1960s and 1970s would be rejected today as cultural appropriation (his The Ninya is reproduced at right). This is despite his extensive and detailed knowledge of the mythology, and his commitment to show Australians, in his words, the ‘ancient cultural heritage they should be aware of and respect’.
Inevitably, flawed ideas reveal themselves by their absurdities. If a white Christian Anglo-Celtic person must not paint Aboriginal stories, does this mean Aboriginal people must not paint Christian Anglo-Celtic stories? And what if the Aboriginal is a devout practising Christian? Is he still allowed to paint the Dreamtime stories and, if he does, will they be sacred?
What of the full-blood Aboriginal who asks his white mate what he thinks of the latest painting? Needs more blue in the waterhole, his mate says. I can’t reach it from here, the artist says. You do it. So, his white mate adds a little dark blue for depth in the waterhole, and we are told the painting is irreparably tainted. Yet a painting by a fair-skinned primarily Anglo-Celtic woman with only minor Aboriginal parentage is authentic beyond question because the woman identifies as Aboriginal. None of this is to question that much of the work by Aboriginal artists is deserving of the applause it earns. Whether it is deserving of the price tags it commands, is a matter for the market to determine and is not the issue here.
It is equally true that much Aboriginal art is of debatable artistic merit and the gushing praise can often be patronising. The 2023 Sulman Prize winning Monster Coming by Doris Bush Nungarrayi (below), for example, has been described by Christopher Allan (The Australian, 6-7/5/23) as a picture of little doll-like goblins that would have been considered childish were it not painted by an old Aboriginal woman.Equally, much Aboriginal art can be repetitious, reflective of the speed and volume of production from some artists and communities. There are reportedly thousands of Aboriginal artists in the Central Desert region. One community was reported to be 25 per cent artists. This was not an ‘artists community’; this was 25 per cent of the resident Aboriginal population.
Even some of the highly treasured artists produce very repetitious work. For example, multiple paintings of the Seven Sisters advertised for sale on the internet are clearly variations on the same image, seen from different perspectives and distance. In fairness, most, perhaps all, are striking images, but the similarities are obvious. It is, of course, not uncommon for artists to paint the same theme many times, constantly seeking to capture it precisely, but such repetition must be careful lest it become the Central Desert equivalent of the production-line paintings of Rome’s Coliseum or the Sydney Opera House. Those variations in quality will be sorted out in the marketplace – though in this instance, the price might be loaded up with sacred baggage. Caveat emptor!
Given the current idolizing in Australia of a re-imagined traditional Aboriginal society, and the socio-cultural malaise within which that flourishes, it is unlikely that we will see any return to a less romantic view of Aboriginal art in the near future. The Western urban intellectual enthusiasm for the ‘primitive’ and the woke requirements for Australian corporate lobby and boardroom walls will sustain the high-end Aboriginal art market for the foreseeable future. For many in the broader public, the fetishizing of Aboriginal art will manifest itself more in the enthusiasm for Aboriginal imagery on football jumpers and other paraphernalia.
The white hands/black art controversy is not simply an objection to many hands making light work. Multiple people contributing to a painting is not uncommon among Aboriginal and other artistic communities, as evidenced by the acceptance of non-Indigenous collaborators on paintings submitted for the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. The problem is the creation of those who see light hands making sacred black works profane. There is obviously a racial element at play here and, while it accords with prevailing woke notions of Aboriginal cultural exceptionalism, it is counter to any rational appreciation of art. As Philip Hook, the former director at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s, has noted, art is ‘a commodity whose value has little intrinsic or objective value but is vastly inflatable by fantasy’. The fantasy here is that a painting of Dreamtime events by an Aboriginal is sacred in itself, and can be priced accordingly for a believing market.
The quality and value of the painting is no longer simply a measure of its artistry; it is also being determined by the racial identity of the artist. We appear to have arrived at a place where the value of a painting cannot be judged properly without our knowing the racial identity of the artist or artists involved. Artistically, intellectually, socially, this doesn’t seem a place where we should linger too long.
Peter Purcell is a geologist, with experience in Australia, Oceania, South-East Asia and East Africa. He has edited several books on Australian geology and authored many articles on geological, environmental and social issues. He has had a lifelong interest in indigenous culture and contributed The Corrupting Myths of Indigenous Origins to our June edition
A great article.
However, is it ‘amazing’ that there are common links in myths and stories for humans in Australia and Europe or elsewhere, or, is this what we would expect as part of our common human heritage?
Every human alive today is descended from the same group of distant ancestors. Aborigines also migrated to and colonised this land. Who is to say what stories they brought with them?
And since spiritual/mythic/religious teachings around the world have the same sorts of themes, we can identify them as human themes and not particular to one group or culture.
If, as some argue, we are all part of a greater Mind then coming up with the same sorts of stories to make sense of the world is a given.
Didn’t Jung record somewhere talking to a patient in a Swiss mental institution who described in great detail a strange imaginary solar phenomenon only to see a visual representation of the lunatic’s description in the paintings in a pharaonic tomb that was opened up years after his encounter with the patient. His collective unconscious perhaps explains the similarities in the Greek and Aboriginal seven sisters myths.
It was the solar phallus image and yes, later identified in mythical stories and not just from Egypt.
And the theory of the collective unconscious does explain such things. One could make a case that those deemed mentally ill are more connected to the collective unconscious and to realms beyond the material in such ways.
One could also make a case that shamans of old could access these realms and weave their myths from such sources. Aboriginal groups sometimes had witch-doctors who were more healers than shamans, but, one presumes, there were semi-shamanic figures in some of the clans.
I think it is not about sacredness but it’s about creating a closed shop.
It’s the same as a plumber or builder reporting an unlicensed person for doing some DIY around the house.
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Peter Purcell has elegantly exposed this crass commercialization of idolatry.
Surely the crux of this controversy is that paintings have been sold as painted by an Aboriginal artist but have in fact been contributed to by another non-Aboriginal person or persons. The problem is therefore a matter of truth in advertising or fraud rather than any perceived illusion of spirituality. As far as I know, the paintings (regardless of whatever religious feelings the artists may have) have not been advertised as sacred. If anyone buys them thinking that they are sacred, then they have only themselves to blame for their delusions.
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There is nothing to stop anyone from painting in a similar style to that of the artists illustrated above beyond the threat of “cancelation” by a mob of woke morons. It is perfectly legal to do so as long as you are truthful when you sell the painting. Afterall the now ubiquitous dot painting was developed by white art teacher Geoffrey Bardon at Alice Springs in the 1970s to allow aboriginal artists to redact secret parts of their images with dots. This was essentially pointillism repurposed from French Impressionism, so it turns out that not only the canvasses, frames, oil paints and brushes used in modern Aboriginal art were developed by Europeans but also elements of the image.
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Never-the-less a buyer is entitled to assess the merits of a painting on whatever criteria they choose, including the race of the painter. As this practice is widespread in the case of Aboriginal art, it increases the resale value of the painting, hence the necessity for honesty in advertising.
Nicely said Ian.
I should also point out that Orion is a constellation, not just a star as claimed in paragraph 8 above, so it is unclear how profound the similarity is between European and APY traditions concerning Orion and the Pleiades.
How interesting that Christians want their ‘sacred’ art to be seen by all; they want to share it. Yet pagans want to keep it top secret. Why? Not for sharing?
They – or more likely, agents on their behalf – want to keep it secret so they can imbue okay artwork with some extra layer of mystique which might elevate it above a souvenir tea towel.
Excuse me, wasn’t some of the best Aboriginal art produced by Eddie Burrup?
At the beginning of the dreaming time, long long ago, there was a man person who we shall call Gronk, He was the strongest of the tribe by reason of being a man and he was a mighty hunter. It came to pass in this dreaming time that Gronk slew a mammoth, a feat which supplied the group with food for such a long time that Gronk became a Hero, and the tribe rejoiced. Much more of this dreaming time passed, and the tale of the heroic feats of Gronk became wedded to the lore of the tribe, and much painting was undertaken with hands. Thus, in the same dreaming time, the story of Gronk passed from Hero into legend, and, er, the story itself became a Legend. More dreaming time passed, a lot more, and alcohol was discovered, accidentally of course, and during the confusing part of the dreaming time the ancient tale of Gronk passed into the hands of the dreaming lizard, and was kept secret by the elder men of the tribe. This secret keeping caused the tale of Gronk to undergo a change, and thus it passed from Legend into Mythology, and Gronk became a Myth. After more dreaming, and sleeping, and drinking, the elders came to view the need for a visionary tale to anchor the Dreaming Stories of the tribe, lest they be forgotten, and the word God was invented. I can only guess that much moonshine was consumed that night around the fire, and this dreaming talk caused the Mythology of Gronk to be elevated to the status of a God. After all, what else does one do around a meager fire in the middle of a dry and arid desert when one does not know where one’s next feed is coming from…….why, of course, invent a God so that we can blame him. And that, dear readers, is how this shit happens.
And now that we have demythologised ourselves, of course, and we have no God. But thankfully we do have the Government. In fact the Government has many important attributes of the old Deity. It provides an abundance of opportunities for ritualistic behaviour, including adoration of our Supreme Leaders (such as Al Ban Easy and Dan the Man). In fact, the beneficent and all-powerful Government provides for all our needs, tells us what to believe, and makes sure we know how to behave. The great advantage of the Government over God, of course, is the fact that the Government really is omnipotent, and is therefore much more effective at inculcating and enforcing the necessary belief system than God ever was.
Late ’70s I assisted the Aboriginal contemporary dance training that produced the Bangara company. At that time language wasn’t uttered because it would weaken its spirit. Initiations and sacred sites could not be mentioned because they would lose their dreamtime essence. I guess the openness of all this today is because most self elected Indigenous who have read about their born again traditions in colonial diaries and collections of native words, so have no real idea of the inner meaning.
Well said:
” I guess the openness of all this today is because most self elected Indigenous who have read about their born again traditions in colonial diaries and collections of native words, so have no real idea of the inner meaning.”
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When a knowledgeable Aborigine dances as a kangaroo, they show how they’re behaving this season, how to approach them, are they calm or edgy. How to successfully hunt. But the dancers today have to be told “hold your hand like this, and bend you knees like an Aborigine.”
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And that’s just practical stuff like getting your food from the supermarket. Seven Stars or mythic foundation tales – they don’t know the meanings even to a level as simple as Aesop’s moral tales.
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Aboriginal science – they can navigate by stars – the first astronomers. Wow, it only took 65,000 years to figure there’s some patterns. No-one asks them what exactly are those little dots of light in the night sky and where they go in the daytime? It’s not science, it’s not astronomy, it’s not even as analytic as astrology.
‘White hands on Black art’. outside the paywall:
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=92ec4a17-0fa5-496f-a10f-1566f0e953a6
Wonderful article Peter, thank you. My concerns about the relationship between mainstream Australian culture and Aboriginal art arise from a recent vist to the National Gallery in Canberra. The NGA was basically closed for renovations, but many groups of primary school children were being taken around the main exhibition still on show, which was Aboriginal art. All through the gallery, groups of children were gathered in front of the artworks and were being lectured by guides. Under these circumstances, viewing art in a gallery becomes a quasi-religious activity, especially for children, who are being told of the special status and meaning of the works selected for display by the authorities. But there is a problem.
The problem, in my view, is that of how this quasi-religious art-interpretation experience of the child is best structured and presented for the benefit (NB) of the child. In all likelihood, much of the ‘sacred’ aspect will be inculcated in this process, just as it might be if a Christian artwork were being interpreted to a child. One of the difficulties of interpreting and interacting with culture in a complex multicultural society is that of placing oneself as a person in the correct relationship to the material. With children, it is easy to hijack the process, and make it into one of indoctrination rather than one of truly personal art appreciation.
Perhaps a mixture of both was occurring at the NGA. However, as a Christian, I am acutely aware of the blatant and times aggressive de-Christianising activity of the woke gallery administrations in Australia. For them and their audiences, Christianity becomes a primitive, oppressive superstition, the influence of which in the past was unfortunate and in the present is best sidelined as much as possible. Aboriginal artwork, with its mixture of abstract designs and romantic backstories, is a ‘godsend’, providing an ideal vehicle for inculcating woke values. Sadly, from the perspective of Aboriginal art, wokeness is actually supremely condescending, elevating the primitive only to facilitate what is actually a remarkably vacuous worldview.
Thank you Peter Purcell for the clearest and most succinct description of the “Cargo Cult” that is destroying a Nation and its people.
Born in the “intellect” of two degenerate authors Rousseau and Marx we presented our population with two theories of Australia’s future. Assimilation as championed by Minister for Territories Paul Hasluck and Self-determination as posited by HC (Nugget) Coombs and his associate WEH Stanner (who forgot all his earlier observations). Regardless of the few ideologues, “assimilation” had worked for the benefit of the majority in Australia since the late eighteenth century.
When Bob Menzies retired in 1966 leaving Australia in the hands of the hapless Harold Holt we had an assimilated population of about 12 Million citizens, whose main discontent was the “Birthday Ballot” system of conscription to the Vietnam War. We proved our unity and Nationalist identity in the 1967 Referendum with a voting majority over 90%. Unfortunately Holt then unleashed Coombs and Stanner who projected a Homelands Cargo Cult expectation on our Aboriginal Citizens and had it enshrined by Prime Ministers Whitlam, Fraser and Keating, into the blight which the Voice can only amplify.
In 1788 two cultures met – both were violent, both believed in summary justice via Capital and Corporal punishment. We then injected the cultures from another 200 ethnicities and developed as the greatest assimilated Nation of the modern era. What a shame we changed, all the reversions we made were the wrong ones.
A very compelling summary John Singer !
Is it not ironic that as some politicians seek to remove Christian ‘effects’ from Parliament, i.e. the Lord’s Prayer, we are being bullied into honouring primitive stone-age mythical and quasi spiritual beliefs?
Am I the only one who sees the disconnect and double standards? Give me Christianity any day, and I follow no religion, to stone-age myths, stories and animistic teachings. I actually take a somewhat animistic view of the world but do not believe it should dictate our lives.
No, you are not the only one. Will be voting NO and loving it.
Thank you, Peter, for this fine piece. Your ‘Corrupting Myths of Indigenous Origins’ in the July-August issue of Q Magazine is splendid too. Thanks also, to ‘Lonsdale’ for acknowledging the singular Art of Eddie Burrup (within the complex mix). http://www.elizabethdurack.com
All the recent kerfuffle about white interference in blak art begs a fundamental question: where to draw the line on modern Aboriginal art? After all, the materials are all introduced (did traditional art really incorporate such bright colours as the blue in the third painting down?), and the methods hardly traditional, with more than 1,000 artists working in about 90 remote art centres, serviced largely by air transport. Without question, it’s a complex industry developed to satisfy a modern market, understood and promoted by the non-indigenous managers and agents. It seems a bit rich to grumble about white hands in Indigenous art and white interference in the sacred paintings that represent Tjukurrpa, when it is precisely those white hands which have carefully developed, nurtured and promoted that market. How could paintings, produced in their thousands for purely commercial reasons, be considered “sacred”? (It used to be about “The Dreaming”, now apparently replaced by the equally-elusive “Tjukurrpa”, for which “imagination” seems the best interpretation – and could be applied to all kinds of artworks.) Given all the essential material, intellectual and commercial input by those white “assistants”, what’s the problem with a judicious, professional tweak in the actual works themselves? Instead of all the hypocritical public handwringing and breast-beating, a simple solution might be to tone down the mystique, and just look at each individual work as a unique, aesthetic creation.
Another part of the current problem is oversupply — spread around art centres in most of our remote communities, there must be thousands of works awaiting sale, and most of these will fail to attract a buyer. About 0.5 km up my street, a concrete bunker beneath a house holds between 50-100 Aboriginal artworks (I last saw them 10 years ago, so forget the details). When the owner became terminally ill, he tried to donate the entire collection to the local university, which politely declined; it didn’t have the funds to store or curate it all. Could the market be reaching saturation point?
Begs the question? No. Raises many questions? Yes.
Thank you for this article.
I don’t know a lot about art. I admit to never having liked/appreciated Aboriginal dot painting.
‘Honouring’ mythical, stone age beliefs? No.
Unfortunately, as pointed out above (Stephen Due), school children are being indoctrinated.
I agree with “layer of mystique” (Tony Tea) – elevating these paintings.
At No.4 on Amazon’s list of political bestsellers is
“Reasons to vote for Albanese’s Voice” by Pauline Hanson.
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Every one of the 40 pages is blank.
I still haven’t seen any blond hair blue eyed aborigines in the commercials or ads. Could it be they are embarressed and ashamed of them? I wonder if they could be dotted into existance on these works of art?
“…indeed, the dictate – is that a white person must not paint Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. ” Because, you know, money.