Aboriginal

As I wrote earlier today on my other blog, I'm mesmerised by Australian Aboriginal art.
It started at the National Gallery of Victoria and continued, in Sydney, at different museums (National Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australian Museum).
Calling it "Aboriginal art" might give the wrong impression that I'm interested in it from an ethnographic or anthropologic point of view. That is not at all the case. I'm mesmerised by the contemporary creation of Australian artists based on their Aboriginal traditions and heritages.
I particularly like how they navigate between abstraction and figuration. Their pieces depicting real, concrete things, telling actual stories, in an abstract language. Lines that recreate the undulating surface of the desert or the ocean, dots that recall the rare bloom of the desert, spirals showing the serpent of fire, totems and funerary stelae telling the story of the deceased. At the same time, all that can be taken as just lines, dots, spirals, patiently decorated trunks without any reference to the concrete form.
In an extremely simple and direct way, these artists transmit real emotions and feelings.
I have seen pieces of Australian artist in the Western tradition or in a hybrid fashion. However, it's this new and fresh -for me- artistic tradition, which reference I don't know or understand, that has the upper hand. I can interpret what I see according to my own cultural background. I just see it, feel it.
The pictures below are of pieces by Doreen Reid Makamarra, Yukultji Napangati, Elizabeth Nyumi, John Mawurdjul and George Tjingurrayi. They can be found at the National Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art.