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Category: Art History
No Stone Without a Name is about colonial art of Australia's west and the role played by the European language of landscape painting in defining the land, representing it, claiming it, and the colonists' sense of owning it. It presents an engrossing picture of West Australian colonial life while making
No Stone Without a Name is about colonial art of Australia's west and the role played by the European language of landscape painting in defining the land, representing it, claiming it, and the colonists' sense of owning it. It presents an engrossing picture of West Australian colonial life while making visible a richer, more complex history. This collection of beautiful and largely unknown pictures tells the story of the Swan River Colony and reveals the shadow presence of an alternative story: the drama of possession and dispossession, the relentless brutality of Colonialism and the cultural consequences that have shaped Australian consciousness. It traces the incursions of the Enlightenment explorers d'Entrecasteaux, Baudin and Flinders, celebrating their legacy of superlative art. It follows the founding of the Swan River Colony with its sense of individual entitlement, Christian certainty and imperial authority. It reaches into the 1850s and the convict era, telling intimate stories that are also irrevocably bound to the great international themes and events of the times. Taking its title from the journal of explorer George Grey, it places European concepts of land and its ownership beside the infinitely more complex relationships in Aboriginal culture. The book ends with paintings by European artists who capture the subtlety and grandeur of indigenous people at home in their natural domain followed by a meditative suite of intimate brush drawings by a convict artist, alienated by the petty brutalities of colonial society but finding solace and acceptance with the Nyoongars. He depicted their day to day life with sacramental insight and their realisation of catastrophic loss with moving simplicity. It resonates with contemporary ideas, questioning our physical, psychological and spiritual relationships with this land and with the descendants of the First Nations. It is a timely book.
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