TJYLLYUNGOO
By Dave Roberts
A little while back I visited
the Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, and saw some pretty
good indigenous art on show in the Three Countries
exhibition. There were great reasons to be at the
gallery, but while I was there a couple of links
to this story emerged.
| Firstly I got some insight
into the lack of a cohesive traditional art
from Nyoongar people. The dots, the cross
hatched animals, they are from other places.
I also understood that the local TAFE campus
has some very capable indigenous art students.
Some small while later, I ran into a guy
known as Tjyllyungoo, who is teaching art
at the TAFE. The group he is teaching are
all Aboriginal people, and the art that’s
coming out of there is varied. The students
are learning painting, drawing, printmaking,
and design. More than that though, they
are finding connections back to the culture
that they’ve all lost, to a
|
|
 |
| greater or lesser extent. The
students are spending time considering Aboriginal
identity, Nyoongar language, aspects of spirituality,
connections to the land and environment. |
Tjyllyungoo is also known as Lance
Chadd. He’s been a full time artist for the
past 25 years, and has always painted. He considers
that the closest we’ve got to a consistent
style that came from Southern Western Australia
originated at the Carallup Mission, near Katanning,
where a number of child artists developed a style
and became very well known in the 1940s. Two of
those child artists were Tjyllyungoo’s uncles.
Lance’s work is contemporary.
He says he’s been strongly influenced by the
Carallup mission painters, and by the work of Namatjira.
Much of the work is landscape, and the introduction
to watercolours came straight from what Namatjira
had been doing.
Tjyllyungoo was born in Bunbury, from
Nyoongar and Yamatji parents, this gives him some
attachments to both cultures (his name is from the
Yamatji side, in the Wadjiri language). Though he’s
spent a lot of time in Perth, he’s renting
a house back in Bunbury now. His Mother and most
of his 6 brothers and 5 sisters live in Perth, but
there is still a great deal of the family in the
South West. A sister and a son live in Busselton,
and others are spread around.
The work of an artist, according to
Lance, is to respect, teach, restore, and hand on
culture. Our own culture, he says, is in pretty
bad shape. So many other influences, and especially
American culture are leading to the loss of things
that came from here and are good.
Tjyllyungoo believes firmly then,
that especially for Aboriginal people it’s
important to develop and strengthen their own local
culture. Language is hard to do, there is not a
real lot written down and much of the work of teaching
has to be done by spending time with older people
who still remember what they had. At an artistic
level it is important to develop style, symbols,
and ultimately identity for Nyoongar people.
Meanwhile in the vein of restoring
and handing on culture, Lance has some projects
underway away from the TAFE course that are really
interesting. One is of course to do a series of
his own paintings. He’s travelled fairly widely
and looking back across his work, he sees that he’d
like to have done more landscapes in the South West.
They’re coming.
Another is a book describing trees
in the South West. They have uses for food and medicine,
they illustrate the seasons (of which Nyoongar people
recognise 6) and they suggest the health and abundance
of all other creatures in the environment. The book,
both the information and the illustrations, is something
to watch out for.
At an artistic level, things aren’t
as dark as they could seem. Lance suggests that
there are plenty of skilled artists who understand
theory and can do the work well, but it’s important
to get onto the development process to get an Aboriginal
expression underway.
One of the lessons that the course
at TAFE is trying to teach is that it’s not
great practice to only borrow and subsume others’
styles, and as that lesson gets through, Lance sees
personal growth and a coherent style beginning to
emerge.
Time will tell, and these things come
from more than one source, but it might well be
that the lack of a visual arts tradition here will
provide the blank canvas for one more thing that’s
really special to come out of the South West.
Dales Gorge, by Tjyllyungoo
Image provided by
www.gomboc-gallery.com.au.
You can browse and purchase Lance's
work online at www.gomboc-gallery.com.au.
August 2004
