Preamble
For your convenience I have listed below other posts on Australian aboriginal textiles and artwork.
Untitled Artworks (Exhibition - ArtCloth: Engaging New Visions) Tjariya (Nungalka) Stanley and Tjunkaya Tapaya, Ernabella Arts (Australia)
ArtCloth from the Tiwi Islands
Aboriginal Batik From Central Australia
ArtCloth from Utopia
Aboriginal Art Appropriated by Non-Aboriginal Artists
ArtCloth from the Women of Ernabella
ArtCloth From Kaltjiti (Fregon)
Australian Aboriginal Silk Paintings
Contemporary Aboriginal Prints
Batiks from Kintore
Batiks From Warlpiri (Yuendumu)
Aboriginal Batiks From Northern Queensland
Artworks From Remote Aboriginal Communities
Urban Aboriginal ArtCloths
Western Australian Aboriginal Fabric Lengths
Northern Editions - Aboriginal Prints
Aboriginal Bark Paintings
Contemporary Aboriginal Posters (1984) - (1993)
Aboriginal Art - Colour Power
Lin Onus[1]
Yorta Yorta painter, sculptor and activist, Lin Onus developed a distinctive visual language from a combination of traditional and contemporary Aboriginal imagery. He is a prominent Koori artist in Melbourne, Australia. He is largely self taught, yet his style and mastery of the medium of painting have ensured his central position among contemporary Aboriginal painters.
Fruit Bats - close up (1991).
See last image of this post for the complete sculpture.
Courtesy of NSW Art Gallery.
Lin Onus was unjustly expelled from school on racist grounds at the age of 14, yet later attended university. He worked as a mechanic and spray painter, before managing his father’s boomerang workshop in Melbourne. Onus forged a brilliant career and held exhibitions throughout the world.
Title: Fish and Lillies (1987).
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 90 x 122 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
For several years he worked as a motor mechanic and then with his father, Bill Onus at his shop making art and craft souvenirs in the Dandenongs (Victoria, Australia). Over many years, interstate well-known Aboriginal visitors such as Albert Namatjira and actor Robert Tudawali, would stay at Onus' family home. The family was closely associated with Aboriginal welfare and social development.
Title: Road to Redfern (1988).
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 60 x 120 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
Linus Onus had his first exhibition in 1975 at the Aboriginal Advancement League, Melbourne, and has since held regular one-man shows in Sydeney and Melbourne and has contributed to joint shows within the Koori community.
Title: Frogs (1988).
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 115 x 240 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
Onus’s political commitment was inherent in his work. His Scottish mother was a member of the Communist Party, while his Aboriginal father, Bill, and uncle Eric were leading lights in the Aboriginal rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Title: Wirrirr Wirrirr - Rainbow Birds (1988).
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 115 x 240 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
After a visit to Maningrida in 1986, Onus began his long and close association with the late Djinang artist, Djiwul ‘Jack’ Wunuwun and other central Arnhem Land artists, including John Bulunbulun. Onus then developed his signature style of incorporating photorealism with Indigenous imagery.
Title: Fish & Ripple - Dingo Springs II (1985).
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 115 x 240 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
It is a virtuoso effect, in which the landscape is overlaid with traditional Indigenous iconography, reflecting his strong ties with his father’s community at Cummergunja Mission, on the Murray River. Onus’ works from this period often have a riddling, Magritte-like quality. A memorable motif in his work is the breaking up of a seamless surface into jigsaw puzzle pieces – a metaphor for the sense of dislocation he felt, caught between black and white, urban and rural, worlds.
Title: Gumingi - Magpie Geese (1987).
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 120 x 267 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
In Onus’ sculptures, irony, wit and whimsy are the predominant features. Fruit Bats, 1991, is made up of a flock of fibreglass sculptures of bats decorated with rarrk (crosshatching), hanging on a Hills Hoist clothes line. Beneath this icon of Australian suburbia are wooden discs with flower-like motifs, representing the bat droppings. In this powerful installation, the sacred and the mundane combine. The work was inspired by Murrungun-Djinang imagery, which Onus was given permission to use. In Fruit Bats, the artist shows a head-on collision between two contrasting sets of values, and throws in a few inversions of his own. The backyard – suburban Australia’s haven of privacy – becomes spooked by the formidable presence of these noisy animals. The pre-colonial bats seem to have taken over and reclaimed their place, in a story worthy of Alfred Hitchcock.
Title: Fruit Bats (1991).
See first image of this post for a close-up of one of the bats.
Courtesy of NSW Art Gallery.
Reference:
[1] Aboriginality, J. Isaacs, University of Queensland Press, Queensland (1989).
For your convenience I have listed below other posts on Australian aboriginal textiles and artwork.
Untitled Artworks (Exhibition - ArtCloth: Engaging New Visions) Tjariya (Nungalka) Stanley and Tjunkaya Tapaya, Ernabella Arts (Australia)
ArtCloth from the Tiwi Islands
Aboriginal Batik From Central Australia
ArtCloth from Utopia
Aboriginal Art Appropriated by Non-Aboriginal Artists
ArtCloth from the Women of Ernabella
ArtCloth From Kaltjiti (Fregon)
Australian Aboriginal Silk Paintings
Contemporary Aboriginal Prints
Batiks from Kintore
Batiks From Warlpiri (Yuendumu)
Aboriginal Batiks From Northern Queensland
Artworks From Remote Aboriginal Communities
Urban Aboriginal ArtCloths
Western Australian Aboriginal Fabric Lengths
Northern Editions - Aboriginal Prints
Aboriginal Bark Paintings
Contemporary Aboriginal Posters (1984) - (1993)
Aboriginal Art - Colour Power
Lin Onus[1]
Yorta Yorta painter, sculptor and activist, Lin Onus developed a distinctive visual language from a combination of traditional and contemporary Aboriginal imagery. He is a prominent Koori artist in Melbourne, Australia. He is largely self taught, yet his style and mastery of the medium of painting have ensured his central position among contemporary Aboriginal painters.
See last image of this post for the complete sculpture.
Courtesy of NSW Art Gallery.
Lin Onus was unjustly expelled from school on racist grounds at the age of 14, yet later attended university. He worked as a mechanic and spray painter, before managing his father’s boomerang workshop in Melbourne. Onus forged a brilliant career and held exhibitions throughout the world.
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 90 x 122 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
For several years he worked as a motor mechanic and then with his father, Bill Onus at his shop making art and craft souvenirs in the Dandenongs (Victoria, Australia). Over many years, interstate well-known Aboriginal visitors such as Albert Namatjira and actor Robert Tudawali, would stay at Onus' family home. The family was closely associated with Aboriginal welfare and social development.
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 60 x 120 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
Linus Onus had his first exhibition in 1975 at the Aboriginal Advancement League, Melbourne, and has since held regular one-man shows in Sydeney and Melbourne and has contributed to joint shows within the Koori community.
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 115 x 240 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
Onus’s political commitment was inherent in his work. His Scottish mother was a member of the Communist Party, while his Aboriginal father, Bill, and uncle Eric were leading lights in the Aboriginal rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 115 x 240 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
After a visit to Maningrida in 1986, Onus began his long and close association with the late Djinang artist, Djiwul ‘Jack’ Wunuwun and other central Arnhem Land artists, including John Bulunbulun. Onus then developed his signature style of incorporating photorealism with Indigenous imagery.
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 115 x 240 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
It is a virtuoso effect, in which the landscape is overlaid with traditional Indigenous iconography, reflecting his strong ties with his father’s community at Cummergunja Mission, on the Murray River. Onus’ works from this period often have a riddling, Magritte-like quality. A memorable motif in his work is the breaking up of a seamless surface into jigsaw puzzle pieces – a metaphor for the sense of dislocation he felt, caught between black and white, urban and rural, worlds.
Materials and Technique: Acrylic on canvas.
Size: 120 x 267 cm.
Courtesy of reference [1].
In Onus’ sculptures, irony, wit and whimsy are the predominant features. Fruit Bats, 1991, is made up of a flock of fibreglass sculptures of bats decorated with rarrk (crosshatching), hanging on a Hills Hoist clothes line. Beneath this icon of Australian suburbia are wooden discs with flower-like motifs, representing the bat droppings. In this powerful installation, the sacred and the mundane combine. The work was inspired by Murrungun-Djinang imagery, which Onus was given permission to use. In Fruit Bats, the artist shows a head-on collision between two contrasting sets of values, and throws in a few inversions of his own. The backyard – suburban Australia’s haven of privacy – becomes spooked by the formidable presence of these noisy animals. The pre-colonial bats seem to have taken over and reclaimed their place, in a story worthy of Alfred Hitchcock.
See first image of this post for a close-up of one of the bats.
Courtesy of NSW Art Gallery.
Reference:
[1] Aboriginality, J. Isaacs, University of Queensland Press, Queensland (1989).
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