Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art
Key Idea 2: Connection to Country

Benita Clements is a Western Arrernte artist based in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. Clements is the daughter of artist Gwenda Namatjira and great-granddaughter of artist Albert Namatjira. Albert Namatjira was a well-known and very significant artist who depicted his Country, the Arrernte Lands, in watercolour paintings. Benita Clements is inspired by her great-grandfather’s art and how he depicted their Country. She too depicts the Arrernte landscape in watercolours, but unlike her great-grandfather’s paintings she often includes imaginative details within the landscape such as aliens, spaceships and fireworks.

In her series of watercolour paintings titled My life with Albert – my family Benita Clements depicts her Country, the Arrernte Lands. The Arrernte Lands are in the central Australia and incorporate Alice Springs and the MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory. The landscape is dramatic and beautiful, featuring hills, gorges, waterholes and tall white Ghost Gums. The soil in that part of Australia is iron-rich and appears to change colour from orange to red to purple depending on the light and weather. Benita Clements great-grandfather Albert Namatijira depicted the distinctive colours of the Arrernte lands in watercolour landscapes which frequently featured deep-purple hills and escarpments. Clements’ paintings use similar colours to depict the same Country. Although Clements technique is very different from her great-grandfather’s the particular features of their Country come through in both of their artworks. For Clements, connecting with her Country also connects her with her great-grandfather and other ancestors who lived before both of them.

Another feature of Clements’ work that distinguishes it from Albert Namatjira’s is that she blends historical and present-day time together in her compositions. Often, her paintings include impossible pairings, such as herself alongside Albert Namatjira, who passed away before she was born. Clements has said, “I like to look at the photos of Albert (Namatjira) and old-time photos of Ntaria/Hermannsburg to inspire my paintings. I like to think how they lived in the old times (…) on our Country – and what my family did.” By maintaining a connection to Country through art, Benita Clements maintains a connection to her ancestors and heritage.

Steaphan Paton is a Melbourne-based artist and member of the Gunai and Monero nations. Through much of his work he examines the tension between his sovereignty as an Indigenous person and contemporary mechanisms of colonial authority. Paton is a multidisciplinary artist who has worked in drawing, painting, sculpture, video, virtual reality and public art installations, and often draws on his connection to his Country when creating artworks. Paton is concerned with the continuation of the cultural practices specific to his traditional lands, and for this reason he uses his people’s languages, stories and designs to engage the culture of his Country.

This artwork consists of an installation of three sculptural cloaks and one large-scale video projection. Each cloak is made from green canvas commonly used for tents, swags and tarpaulins – all items used to occupy unfamiliar territory. Each cloak is reversible, painted on one side with a traditional Gunai and Monero geometric design, and on the other side sewn with official documents including infringements, parking fines and letters sent by various authorities addressed to the artist. The form of the cloaks is derived from the traditional cloaks made by Paton’s people. By placing his peoples’ designs on one side, and documents of colonial authorities on the other, Paton has created objects that capture the tension between the two systems of land tenure. When someone gets a parking fine it is issued by an authority, usually the local council, who claims sole control and ownership of the land where a carpark is located. Paton’s work focuses on parking fines as an everyday example of how colonial authorities police land, and raises questions about the rightfulness of ownership.                 

Paton’s video is shot on Gunai Country, also known as Gippsland, and shows the artist wearing camouflage and shooting modern arrows into traditional bark shields that the artist made himself. Paton is combining an Indigenous cultural practice, the shield, with a contemporary colonial technology, the bow and arrow. This juxtaposition of ancient Indigenous and new colonial technologies is key to this work. The high-tech arrows easily pierce the bark shields that are designed to defend the holder from hand thrown spears. Together these artworks are an allegory for the complex nature of Indigenous peoples’ connection to Country within contemporary times, specifically with regard to contested ownership and the violence of Indigenous dispossession.