More than 100 paintings on tree bark by Australian Aborigines are on display in Taipei.
The Old Masters: Australia’s Great Bark Artists — 134 works of mostly tree bark paintings and clay figurines — opened on Friday at the National Taiwan Museum in Zhongzheng District (中正).
The works come primarily from the Arnhem Land region of Australia’s Northern Territory, the traditional home of the Yolngu people, said Margo Neale, senior curator of the Indigenous Knowledge Centre at the National Museum of Australia, which helped organize the exhibition.
“It is a very highly sophisticated way of passing on culture that survives today. These bark paintings are like messages on note paper, where you write information to tell other people things,” Neale said.
The paintings are like encyclopedias, because they hold the identity of the artist, she said, adding that if a person is knowledgeable enough, they can see the information embedded in the paintings.
Neale said that Djan’kawu Cross Back to the Mainland, painted by Djunmal in 1966, describes a mythical story of two sisters who came to Australia and dug holes in to provide the land with irrigation water.
“If you look, you can see the water holes and the digging sticks, and all of these different patterns refer to salt or fresh water and mud plains,” Neale said. “So it’s a geographical map of a particular coast at the top of Australia.”
The Aboriginal communities of Taiwan and Australia have closely related anthropology and genetics, Deputy Minister of Culture Hsiao Tsung-huang (蕭宗煌) said.
“The National Taiwan Museum and the National Museum of Australia are extremely proud to present this exhibition with the highest respect to Aboriginal communities,” he said.
When the exhibition ends on Feb. 9 next year, the works of art are to be returned to Australia.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
TRADE-OFF: Beijing seeks to trade a bowl of tempura for a Chinese delicacy, an official said, while another said its promises were attempts to interfere in the polls The government must carefully consider the national security implications of building a bridge connecting Kinmen County and Xiamen, China, the Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday. PCC Commissioner Derek Chen (陳金德), who is also a minister without portfolio, made the remarks in a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Fu-kuei (徐富癸) asked about China’s proposal of new infrastructure projects to further connect Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties with Xiamen. China unveiled the bridge plan, along with nine other policies for Taiwan, on Sunday, the last day of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) visit
RSS