Transformations - rock walls to canvas: representations of the totemic geography in Aboriginal Australia

Abstract

Within Australian Aboriginal cultures there are strong connections in artistic traditions that are linked spatially to sacred places and stylistically to encoded meaning. Artistic traditions draw heavily on mythologies, place-based narratives and representational techniques embedded in indigenous religious knowledge. The wealth of ethnographic data shows that rock-art imagery can hold a multitude of layered meanings. However, one of the keys to comprehension is that the art is placed in the landscape, part of its meaning is encoded in its location. This can be seen in rock-art, with the portrayal of prominent Dreaming figures that are connected to broad cultural traditions and with the significance accorded specific places. Knowing the Dreaming traditions and sacred places allows an understanding of the images portrayed. In Aboriginal Australia, creation of art is controlled by cultural tenets, including kin affiliation and clan relationship to sites of sacred significance. However, within the corpus of r...