“They say we have been here for 40 000 years, but it is much longer 
We have been here since time began 
We have come directly out of the Dreamtime of our creative ancestors 
We have kept the earth as it was on the first day.”
Dreamtime Tjukurrpaku

“The Tiwi islands of Bathurst and Melville were created at the beginning of time during the dreaming or Palaneri. Before this time there was only darkness and the earth was flat. An old blind woman arose from the ground at Murupianga in the South East of Melville Island. Clasping her three infants to her breast and crawling on her knees she traveled slowly north. The fresh water that bubbled up in the track she made became the tideways or the Clarence and Dundas Straits, dividing the two islands from the mainland. She made her way slowly around he land mass and then, deciding it was too large, created the Apsley Strait which divides the Islands. She then decreed that the bare islands be covered with vegetation and inhabited with animals so that her three children left behind would have food. Nobody knows from where she came from. Having completed her work, Mudungkala vanished.”

Maryanne Mungatopi, 1998 Palaneri -The Creation Period

Globalisation is bringing our world together in ways never before imagined. No longer enclosed and self-reliant, societies and nations are increasingly inter-connected and reliant upon each other, in an intensifying cross-fertilization of culture, and an interconnectedness of trade, media and economics on an unprecedented scale. No community or culture is an isolate; and daily existence within most countries is increasingly enmeshed in global processes and structures. The spirit of humanity now connects us as it has rarely done in the past. What are the Centers? Where are the Margins? Boundaries cross, stretch and extend, blur, dissolve and what results is almost complete erosion. No longer restricted to a few, centers in today’s world go beyond the usual London, Paris New York brackets and move further to a world of polycenters.

Timeless yet constantly evolving, the artistic traditions of the Tiwi Islands of Australia's Northern Territory are a living expression of Tiwi culture. 'Kiripuranji' an exhibition of strikingly beautiful works by Tiwi Island artists opened at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre on June 26. A seminal exhibition, 'Kiripuranji' is not an exoticisation of indigenous traditions but a triumphant platform for contemporary Australia where a duality exists, as it does in India, between the indigenous and contemporary traditions. The issues being addressed through this exhibition are centred on the re-contextualising of the ‘difference’. Presented by the Australian High Commission in partnership with the India Habitat Centre 'Kiripuranji'  http://www.dfat.gov.au/indigenous/kiripuranji/thecla_ puruntatmeri_large.jpg brought together some of the most exciting developments in contemporary art from the two islands Bathurst and Melville which make up Tiwi.

The touring exhibition supported by Australia's overseas diplomatic missions is part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program. The show was conceived curated by three distinct institutions within Australia: the three different design centres of the Tiwi Islands where the Tiwi artists themselves were responsible for the selection of the artwork that would be on display, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Australian Art Bank.

Carolyn Fitzpatrick the New Delhi Curator for the show had a challenging task in showcasing the arts works which arrived in crates from Australia. “I have very consciously tried to group together the works that are more authentically traditional. Artworks created employing traditional media are grouped together and are distinct from those printed onto paper or fabric, which are comparatively new innovations made by the Tiwi artists. The exhibition unfolds through various specific material based categories. The more distinct groupings include the natural ochre's and the baskets, ceremonial spears and works that perhaps might be used for more ceremonial purposes as opposed to the more contemporary pieces such as the prints, which are ‘fine art’.”

Kiripuranji, a Tiwi word meaning 'clever with our hands', will have been the first opportunity for Indian audiences to view a wide range of Tiwi art including canvasses, works on paper, ceremonial spears, bark baskets and effervescent textiles. Creative design has long been important to the Tiwi, who value ingenuity and innovation in the production of their ceremonial objects, their songs and dances. The tradition of Tiwi is to create original designs from abstract patterns, influenced heavily by ceremonies of life and death. Yet all the artists in the exhibition have powerful individual voices, some adhere closely to tradition in using a wooden comb to apply dots to their canvas, paper or sculpture while others use Western brushes and acrylic paint, yet others create new designs for rich textiles of bold ceramics.

Image and text based panels precede each section of the space, shedding light on the methods, materials and inspiration for the exquisite artwork on display. From textiles and painted panels, to etchings, screen prints and spears, 'Kiripuranji' animates the gallery space with a potent vibrancy. Carolyn Fitzpatrick has sensitively adapted the hanging of 'Kiripuranji' within the Visual Arts Gallery space. Stunning paper based works give way to the pulsating textiles that project off the gallery walls like museum pieces, demanding the viewer's attention. The viewer's gaze is gently directed along the pristine wall surfaces that are quite the perfect foil for these striking masterpieces. Sometimes delicate, as demonstrated by the etchings elusive as the finest lace, sometimes bold and compelling, with lines strongly marked, the art work on display explores the rich variety that the Tiwi Island artistic traditions have to offer.

When an Aboriginal child in born on the Tiwi Islands, he or she is given a totem animal and with the totem animal will come the totem song and the totem dance which are then performed at ceremonies. The Tiwi traditionally paint their body for ceremonies using natural earth pigments known as Ochre's. This tradition of mark making is the foundation for modern Tiwi art. The skin designs are handed down from generation to generation through a long tradition of the family's history. The ceremonies that honour the past and remain important influences in daily life provide the key sources for Tiwi design much of which is derived from ceremonial body painting or Jilmara.

Typically characterised by an abstract mixture of lines, dots and form, narrative is rarely associated with the designs; the artists instead rely on the aesthetics of balance and strength to create designs that are evocative masterpieces. The continuous patterning that would seem to be the leitmotif of the art on display thus serves a primarily decorative function. These patterns are sometimes used in combination with images of ritual objects such as ceremonial spears, armbands, bush tuckers etc. The placement of line and dot is distinctive to the art of the Tiwi and today these decorative forms have been successfully applied to a variety of artistic mediums including painting, carving, textiles, printmaking, pottery, pandanus weaving and jewellery making.

The culture of the Tiwi people is powerfully connected to the creation stories of the Palaneri or Creation Period. This inextricable link between life on the islands today and ancient cultural traditions is what establishes the strong sense of Tiwi identity in the people and their art. A significant part of the imagery that is described through the art illustrates or derives from ‘Dreamtime’ stories. Dreamtime is the Aboriginal understanding of the world, of its creation, and breathtaking stories. It is the beginning of knowledge, from which came the laws of existence. According to Aboriginal belief, all life as it is today - human, animal, bird and fish is part of one vast ageless web of relationships, which can be traced to the Great Spirit ancestors of the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime continues as the "Dreaming" in the spiritual lives of aboriginal people today. It is through dance and mine, enactment and song that the events of the ancient era of creation brought to life.

Much of Tiwi art employs a black background said to represent the black skin of the Tiwi people that forges a link between ceremonial body paintings. In addition to black, it is yellow, white and red that form the Tiwi colour palette. The colour black is derived from charcoal, and white from clay, yellow ochre is heated until it oxidises creating red. The ochre's are ground to a fine pigment and mixed with glue to bind and adhere the paint. Traditional fixatives included sap from a tree orchid, the wax and honey of a wild bee or the yolks of turtle eggs. Today the red, yellow and white earth pigments are used on the painting surfaces of bark, paper and canvas. Some artist's prefer to use the modern medium of acrylic in their paintings, while others mix the ochre's to generate a wide range of colours from blue-grey's to purple and green.

A sense of harmony, integration and coherence pervades the visual space, an integration and sense of concord that is all the more remarkable when considered alongside the number of Tiwi artists, their individual self expression and the span of nearly a generation with the oldest artist at 75 years and the youngest at 29. “All the artists on the islands draw inspiration from the same myths. They develop and employ the same visual vocabulary. As a consequence the artworks look like they belong together even though they are the creations of twenty different and indeed distinct artists. They have an inherent link and that is the culture and the stories, the expression of a common heritage.” Carolyn Fitzpatrick

The twenty Tiwi artists whose artworks come together in Kiripuranji all work within locally specific Aboriginal art centres and yet operate within a global context. The artwork created has the overtones of a cosmopolitan language and yet is deeply rooted in its own indigenous traditions. The artists in Kiripuranji, Fiona Puruntatameri, Thecla Bernadette Puruntatemeri, Sheila Puruntatemeri, Susan Wanji Wanji, Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, Freda Warlapinni, Kitty Kantilla, Paddy Freddy Puruntatemeri, Pedro Wonaeamirri, Timothy Cook, Kenny Brown, Mary Magdalene and the textile artists who have dervied their inspiration from Tiwi design, Jock Puautjimi, Vivian Kerinauia, Harold Porkilari, Maria Josette Orsto and Osmond Kantilla produce art with a distinctive individual style, yet there are stylistic commonalities and linkages between those artists that work together in a particular art centre.

What makes the exhibition really special are the satellite events around Kiripuranji. The mood was set on the evening of the opening with a performance of Aboriginal didgeridoo music, which was followed by a workshop in didgeridoo making. An insightful lecture presentation on 'Continuing the Dreaming: Permanence and Change in Australian Aboriginal Art' was delivered by the curator and artist, Carolyn Fitzpatrick who also conducted gallery walk around tours of the artwork.

There was a bit of magic, a bit of myth, a bit of transcendence with Kiripuranji and what was interesting was that India was part of this global journey. The exhibition has just completed a successful tour of the South Pacific including Micronesia, Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand from August 2002 to February 2003. After India Kiripuranji will continue to tour various venues in Asia and will then travel to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and possibly South America.

Kiripuranji raises vital questions. Questions that are equally applicable to the traditional tribal arts of India from the exquisite wall paintings of Warli, to the paintings of Gond and the bell metal work of Bastar. What is tradition? The straightforward answer may be that it is the accumulated heritage of a culture i.e. the symbolic culture of a group. Tradition looks into the historic roots of the present culture into the past. The formulation of this accumulated heritage of a group, its various events, people or historical processes become mythologised and function as images, as symbols, as myth. The source of wisdom, of knowledge, of tools of survival, tradition tolerates the coexistence of a multitude of life forms, of cultural patterns and ways of life.

The Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Centre is reaching out in different ways to promote and disseminate artworks. Through this very interesting show the Visual Arts Gallery brought the art lovers of New Delhi a seminal display of the indigenous art traditions of Australia. It voiced the language of the cross-cultural, of bridging the gap between the traditional and the modern, and of the search for and establishing of identities within a global context. Perhaps best articulating the spirit of plurality and cross fertilisation was the exquisite canopy that hung across the ceiling of the gallery space. This work of art is a collaborative venture between the Tiwi artists and Tribal artists of India, two communities, two civilisations, and two distinct and diverse art forms communicating through a common visual metaphor.