Indigenous Design and Architecture

In the lecture today we had a look at the themes, designs and motifs that appear in Architecture around Australia and around the World.
One major piece we looked at was the Mosaic outside Parliment house in Canberra. This piece was designed by Michael Nelson Jagamara from Pupunya from a Sand Painting showing the tradition of the Walpiri People. It is suppose to represent the associated with particular places and of the moments of meeting and coming together.
What was something controversial about this work was that the artist did ask for the piece to be removed due to the lack of Government treatment for the Aboriginal People.
It's very odd to think that White Australians believe that to represent who they are, they need Aboriginal art to do this. It's as if White Australians identify Aboriginal art as theirs.

Later in the lecture we looked at the video about the Indigenous art museum being created in France. Here they asked many Aboriginal artists to create work for the walls, ceiling and flooring for the design of the building. I have to say that the works looked amazing!

Image from: http://www.genkin.org/cgi-bin/photo.pl/australia/canberra/au-canberra-0001