Today in our lecture we watched another film by Hetti Perkins called Art and Soul: dreams and Nightmares. The main aspect of this film that I was really taken away by was how Hetti was explaining about her father being apart of the Stolen generation. He was taken to camp with many other Aboriginal Children where Christianity was forced upon them and their Aboriginal heritage was frowned upon. It was from here that a lot of these children lost their tradition of who they were and the laws and beliefs of their country. We learnt about an artist who has reflected about losing his history in his work. Lin Onus is a Victorian born artist who grew up in a white community and was not allowed to pursue anything to do with Aboriginal culture at all. In his artworks he reflects upon the Indigenous culture that he never learnt and the tradition that was never brought down to him. Because of this, Onus’s work reflect a completely different style to that of stereotypical indigenous art. In his pieces, Onus has searched for traditional Aboriginal styles and stories and incorporated them with stereotypical White Australian references.
The artwork above is titled Fruit Bats (1991) by Lin Onus. this peice relfects the use of Traditioanl Aboringal references but also stereotypical white Australian influences such as the Australian hills Hoist.
Image from: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/work/395.1993.a-c/
