North poles
The Tatini tell the story of their people – and Tiwi artists are spreading the word far and wide.
The preparations for the grand opening of the flash new building at the Munupi Arts Centre are in full, chaotic swing. We are in the village of Pirlangimpi, home to about 300 people on Melville Island, Australia’s largest island after Tasmania. The entire mob is yet to arrive for the big day and as they meander in Carol Puruntatameri, 60, explains what all this art business means to her. “Oh, it mean everything,” she says in her lovely, rambunctious Tiwi accent. “Yeah, it’s good for me and my people. Them stories, them old stories, it’s important we tell them stories.” The stories of her people, the Tiwi, live in their art. “It’s our songlines, our dreaming, ya know.”
The new arts centre is a simple, elegant structure. It will be dedicated to Carol’s daughter-in-law, the famed Tiwi artist Natalie Puantulura, who died in 2016 and who created much of her art here. Natalie came from fine artistic stock and was the granddaughter of the late Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, whose paintings are now resold by Sotheby’s and hang in the British Museum. One of Natalie’s intricate dot paintings has been transposed and laser-cut into large sheets of aluminium that form the walls of the new building – it’s a shed clothed in art. The building’s architect, David Kaunitz, has flown up from Sydney with a photographer to celebrate the day. The photographer asks for a running sheet of the proceedings. He’s handed a piece of paper headed “Run Sheet”. The rest of the page is blank.
Carol’s partner, artist Mario Walarmerpui and his mate, ceremonial leader Marius Pirrawayingi Puruntatameri, take me over to a nearby shed to show me where the pole carving is done. The poles, known as Tutini, form part of the Tiwi burial passage, the Pukumani ceremony, and are central to the creation story of the Tiwi. The men explain how they shape the poles from ironwood trees with chainsaws, power tools, axes and chisels and how each pole tells a story. Even with the luxury of modern tools it’s a slow and arduous task.
Mario and Marius strip down to red loincloths in readiness for the ceremony and as they carefully apply ochre to their faces with a fine brush, using the selfie function on a mobile phone for a mirror, they explain the Tiwi creation story. The nub of it is that the first two people on Tiwi were a husband and wife called Purukaparli and Wai-ai. One day, Purukaparli left his wife and their son, Jinani, at home while he went hunting. Wai-ai took the opportunity to sneak off and visit her lover, Tapara, the moon man. But she carelessly left Jinani out in the hot sun and he perished. This story of betrayal and neglect is believed to have brought death to the Tiwi, who’d previously lived for eternity. The Pukumani ceremony is to ensure that the dead enter the spirit world in the right manner. It’s a story that sits harmoniously alongside the virgin birth and the resurrection.
The Tiwi islands, Melville and Bathurst, lie 80km off the coast of Darwin and are home to 2600 people. The first Catholic missionaries arrived in 1911 and most Tiwi are now Catholic. They’ve absorbed the faith and made it their own – one true God, with a few of their own spirits thrown in for good measure, like an each-way bet for the ticket to the afterlife. At the islands’ cemeteries, Christian crosses at the end of burial mounds are dwarfed by impressive carved and elaborately painted Tutini. One death, two rituals.
Tutini poles played a pivotal role in introducing the whitefellas of Australia to the art of the blackfellas. In 1958, the deputy director of the NSW Art Gallery, Tony Tuckson, commissioned Tiwi artists to create 17 ceremonial Tutini for an exhibition at the Sydney gallery. It was the first time Aboriginal art had been displayed in a major gallery as contemporary art rather than in museums as antiquities. This was a breakout moment for Aboriginal art, at least in terms of whitefella appreciation of it.
With their faces painted, Marius and Mario and the other men move on to decorating their bodies with ochre. Using a switch of gum leaves, they dab the damp ochre and slap the pigment- laden leaves against their skin. “Come with me,” says Marius as he grabs an axe and we head off into the bush to collect more leaves for the smoking ceremony. Out in the scrub, he explains the significance of the ceremony. “We smoke the new building and also the employees and the workers, and even you whitefellas,” he says with a grin. “We do it to get all the bad spirits away from this building and the people themselves, so… the people here will work in safety and harmony.”
By this stage a big mob has gathered, maybe 100 people, and the clarion call to set off the day’s proceedings seems to be a scuffle between two big dogs, Rocky and Ruby, who go toe to toe among the crowd. There’s much shouting in Tiwi and when I ask for an interpretation I’m told: “They said, ‘Get out of it you mongrels’ but in Tiwi.” With the dogs banished, the fire is lit and the smoking ceremony begins. There’s singing and dancing and clapping of sticks as we make our way around the fire to be cleansed by its healing smoke. Someone grabs a twig from the fire to take into the building, but it’s gone out and there’s more shouting – “Ya got no smoke you idiot,” but in Tiwi – and others follow with leaves that are actually smoking.
With the spiritual cleansing done, elder Regis Pangiraminni takes to the microphone and welcomes everyone. He starts off well but then rambles on a bit – at least in the opinion of Carol Puruntatameri, who grabs the mic from him and talks about her deceased daughter-in-law, Natalie Puantulura. At the mention of her name there’s some loud wailing from women, and some men too. Then the dancing begins with the stomping of feet, clapping of hands and sticks, and mesmerising singing. “These dances are the family dreaming dances and they represent animals,” Marius explains. “There’s a crocodile dance and my dance, the jungle fowl dance, and there’s a boat dance by another family…” The dances have been handed down for thousands of years and they’re beautiful, joyous, uplifting and highly competitive.
And then someone shouts, and they all look out the back of the flash new building to where a Toyota troop carrier is coming up the road. The sheepish looks on the faces around me say, “Oops.” The vehicle is packed with the relatives of Natalie Puantulura – the woman this building was just named after. They’ve come over for the ceremony on the ferry from Bathurst Island, but they’re a tad late. The mob piles out to greet Natalie’s relatives with hugs and cheers. They start the show afresh.
This month in Adelaide, a ceremonial Tutini recently carved by Mario Walarmerpui and then painted by his partner, Carol Puruntatameri, here at the Munupi Arts Centre will be unveiled in Adelaide. It will be part of an impressive installation of 25 Tutini made by artists from all over the Tiwi Islands. This forest of Tutini will be one of the major attractions at Australia’s largest contemporary exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait art, Tarnanthi (pronounced Tar-nan-dee). As well as a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, works will be displayed at 37 venues around the state, from small art galleries to hospitals. The works have been commissioned from dozens of arts centres and individual indigenous artists from all around Australia.
The word Tarnanthi comes from the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and means to come forth or appear, like the sun peeking over the horizon. The vibe is regenerative, bringing forth the new. Dr Lisa Slade, assistant director of the AGSA, tells me Tarnanthi is part of “a gentle revolution” of Australians rethinking who we are. “Yesterday we gathered all the little partners together,” she says. “The small galleries, the hospitals and the arts centres that will display the work. We got them to do a small presentation on what they are doing. It was wonderful. People were trying to get their mouths around Aboriginal language for the first time, they were talking enthusiastically about their engagement with these remote communities.” She reckons Australians have been sold “the mythology of Aboriginal art and culture being timeless and immoveable and kind of lost. We’ve been sold this idea of a culture in decline and Tarnanthi proves that to be an absolute lie.”
One of the exhibitions is a joint project between artists from Ninuku Arts in the APY Lands of South Australia and glassblowers from the Adelaide JamFactory. The Ninuku artists hand-painted glass balls in their distinctive designs and fired them in a kiln – and the balls were then sent to the JamFactory to be expertly blown into large glass vessels.
In another exhibition, the Ballad of Billy Gardiner, they’ve assembled a collection of paintings by the late artist Nyaparu (William) Gardiner, painted at the Spinifex Hill Studios at South Hedland, WA. Gardiner’s paintings depict stories of Aboriginal struggle, such as the Pilbara pastoral strike in 1946 in which hundreds of Aboriginal workers walked off the stations for three years demanding better pay and conditions during Australia’s longest-ever strike. Gardiner’s paintings will be displayed in a gallery with a video of the late artist singing and playing guitar.
And then, there is that forest of Tiwi Tutini.
Back on Melville Island, I rise early for a stroll along the beach as a huge crocodile lurking 30m offshore observes my progress. Later we set off for Milikapiti, a three-hour, 80km drive by road but 10 minutes on a plane. The island is huge, more than half a million hectares, and from the air you see brilliant blue rivers meandering through lush tropical rainforests. Away from the waterways it’s dry and vast, the flat eucalypt scrublands waiting for the monsoon. There are some commercial eucalypt and pine plantations, but according to the NT Government’s latest Tiwi economic profile only seven people are employed in agriculture, fishing and forestry. Most people work in government services, in shops or on work for the dole programs. Due to its isolation, building viable industries has proved difficult.
This isolation is both a curse and a blessing. The Tiwi have retained their language and were never dispossessed of their land by the government or pastoralists. Their culture and beliefs somehow weathered the onslaught of missionaries. Traditional hunting for turtles and dugong and the gathering of shellfish and bush tucker is common. At this time of year, giant trees are heaving with plump mangos and cashews. While not without its problems, colonisation has been a gentler process for the Tiwi than it has been for many of their Aboriginal brothers and sisters on the mainland. In this environment art has thrived and through the art the culture lives. It also provides many families with much needed extra cash. “For some people it is everyday shop money,” I was told. “For other artists it is fridge and washing machine money. For a few it’s car and boat money.”
We land at Milikapiti to be greeted by Pedro Wonaeamirri, 45. He’s one of Tiwi’s best known artists – definitely a car and boat-money guy – and, apart from supplying Tutini for Tarnanthi, he’s working on a big exhibition for next year’s Sydney Biennale. Pedro and his mate, Patrick Freddy Puruntatameri, also an artist, take us for a drive to Karslake, a popular camping spot on a sand spit; there’s a plaque marking where Dutch sailors first made contact with the Tiwi in 1705.
Patrick shows me his family camp and explains how they erect barriers of corrugated tin on the sand to protect themselves from crocodiles. Have you ever had a close encounter, I ask. “Yeah, real close,” he says. “Too close. I was out huntin’ magpie geese and I shot about four or five. They was in the water and the water was up to my waist. I didn’t know the crocodile was in the water. It was goin’ for the dead ones. And when that crocodile seen me he started turnin’ round and coming towards me real fast. I thought, ‘Ah shit!’ This crocodile is comin’ straight towards me.” The nearest bit of land was a muddy spit. “I thought, ‘I got nowhere to run’. So, I just waiting and waiting and waiting and when it opened its mouth I just shot it. Close range. Shotgun.” His eyes are wide. “I was nearly gone.” One of Patrick’s Tutini will be on display in Adelaide.
On the way back to the Jilamara Arts Centre, where the two men work, Pedro tells me how in 2017 he and Carol Puruntatameri were invited to the Vatican Museum in Rome for an exhibition of its indigenous collection. On display were Tiwi Tutini that had been commissioned and sent to Pope Pius XI in 1925 for an exhibition of world cultures called the “Great Exhibition”. They are among the oldest Tutini in existence. “It was a big experience,” Pedro says. “My feeling when I first saw them, they were put beside me, and I thought, ‘Wow’.” His voice cracks and he says: “I saw these poles and I felt they should have been back home. Now they are in the Vatican Museum – but, on the other hand, I thought it was really good that other people and other cultures can see these poles and understand what Tiwi culture is all about.” So you felt sadness and pride, I say – not a bad way to feel. “Yes, it was good.” He tells me the style of the old poles in Rome is slightly different from the Tutini now being produced. “We have tools,” he says. “We carve them in a slightly different way. But I’m happy with that. We are moving forward.”
Pedro has been a member of the Tiwi Land Council since 2004 and says it is a heavy burden, trying to decide what is best for his people. At the moment the council is deliberating whether it will allow Rio Tinto onto Melville to explore for minerals. “It’s a delicate balance, to provide jobs for our kids but also to protect the environment and our way of life – there’s a lot of discussion to take place.”
Back at the Jilamara Arts Centre in Milikapiti, I meet a young, enthusiastic artist called Walter (Wally) Brooks, 25. We’ve not been talking long when someone arrives with a dead wallaby. “Some fellas was out doin’ the dump run and it was hoppin’ along and then bang! They run it over it and them fellas drop it off ’ere. They drop it off ’ere cause there’s a lot of old people who work ’ere and it’s full of iron and it’s good for them to eat it, hey.” Wallaby stew, anyone? He ducks off and grabs a boning knife. The wallaby is dead but still twitching as I give him a hand to lift it up, hanging it by the hock from the butted branch of a tree.
Wally has been working at the arts centre for two and half years and one of his Tutini was recently shipped off to Adelaide. “This is my first exhibition and I’m really excited,” he says as he carefully slices down the wallaby’s belly, pulling its intestines out. “You only get one chance to get one good opportunity to go somewhere in life, ya know, there is no other second chance. I gunna seize that chance. I am a married man and I got one little daughter and another on the way. She is really happy for me. I’m goin’ to Adelaide, ya know, my first time out of NT!”
With the guts removed, he begins peeling the pelt from the carcass, punching up with his fist around the backbone. “That old fella, Patrick, he taught me a lot when I was growin’ up. Then I come ’ere, to the arts centre, and them old fellas, they all been passin’ on them old skills to me. I been working real hard for two and a half years.” He wipes his brow with the forearm bearing the knife, careful of the blood. “These old fellas, they pass on the culture to us. When they go we are the mob that is gunna carry on.”
I ask Wally, what’s your secret ingredient for wallaby stew? “Ah, that’s easy,” he says. “Mixed vegie pack for stew from the shop.”
Tarnanthi opens at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and at other venues around the state, on October 17.
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