Art in Adelaide

Art Gallery of South Australia and Tandanya

We were interested in getting a little culture and with the temps soaring into the 100F's (40C's), an air-conditioned art gallery didn't sound bad at all. We headed to the Art Gallery of South Australia first since it was just a few blocks up from the train station on North Terrace, Adelaide's “culture boulevard".

The Art Gallery of South Australia was founded in 1881 and is housed in a beautiful, stately building next to the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide. Its collection of 38,000 pieces includes all types of media from paintings and sculptures to ceramics, metalwork, photographs, fabric and jewelry and most everything in between. The galleries are spacious with arched dome roofs that allow in soft, natural light.

We were most interested in the Australian and Indigenous Art.

But the Asian galleries were very interesting, like these life-size carved Japanese temple guards ...

and a wall of Indonesian dance masks

and the only dedicated Islamic gallery in Australia.

A late lunch at the gallery and we gasped as we left the A/C and headed out into the heat. We took the free downtown circulator bus to within a block of Tandanya, the oldest Aboriginal owned and managed gallery of Aboriginal and Torres Islander art in Australia.

Tandanya, by the way, is the name given by the indigenous people, the Kaurna (pronounced Garna), to their native lands in the Adelaide area. It's the word for “red kangaroo place” and their logo reflects this.

The quality and diversity of the artwork was wonderful: acrylics, carvings, weaving, fabric, all highly influenced by the Aboriginal beliefs, myths and natural surroundings. The gallery is not large, but each piece was well-documented and for sale. A carved croc was particularly beautiful.

We were introduced for the first time to the works of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, probably the most renowned Aboriginal painter of all times. Several of his works were on display which brought up the question of Aboriginal Dot Painting which is very distinct and unique. A helpful docent answered thoughtfully and further research provided more answers. It's all theory, but the best answer is probably … keeping secrets.

South Australian Museum

 

I've always extolled the virtues of early development of libraries, art galleries and museums. It impresses me that when actual existence and survival were at stake, people still found time, energy and money to develop the arts and museums. Founded in 1856, just 20 years after Adelaide was founded, the South Australian Museum sits majestically on the cultural boulevard known as North Terrace, in the Adelaide Parklands. With over four million objects and specimens in their collection, we figured that would be enough to keep us busy for a few hours.

Though the Museum offers exhibitions on dinosaurs and Egypt and meteors … all interesting, mind you … we were most interested in their Aboriginal Cultures Gallery, considered the largest collection of Aboriginal artifacts in the Southern Hemisphere. This and the Pacific Cultures Gallery are what intrigued us the most, though we couldn't help admiring the dinosaurs in the front entry hall.

“The Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery celebrates the cultural achievements of Australia’s Aboriginal people, one of the world’s oldest continuous living cultures. This object-rich experience features over 3,000 items across two floors. The artifacts are from communities across the country, drawing from the Museum’s extensive collections.” This was on the must-see list and we headed there straight away.

One facet of Aboriginal culture we had heard of, but never really researched, was the Dreaming. We thought it referred to out-of-body, drug-induced experiences, but we couldn't have been more wrong. Rather it is the Aboriginal creation myth and stories of their cultural development, laws and traditions handed down in art and storytelling for generations.

One particularly striking exhibit was entitled Yuendumu School Doors. “The people of Yuendumu [in the Northern Territory] began transferring their traditional ochre ground paintings to canvas in the 1980s and then to the doors of the Yuendumu School. Twenty-seven Dreamings (tjukurrpa) were represented on the Doors, referring to more than two hundred sites in Warlpiri and Anmatyerre territory. For thousands of years the Warlpiri people traced their Dreaming symbols onto compacted desert sand as part of their ceremonies and when the ceremonies were over the images would be brushed away by hand or by the desert winds. The Yuendumu doors have now captured these stories in paint.” The South Australian Museum acquired the entire collection of doors in 1995 and restored them. The best 12 are on display here now for all to see and admire. The interpretive information and the stories they tell give some insight into Aboriginal ideas and beliefs.

We're always amazed to see island cultures that we've never even remotely heard of … tiny little isolated places that have developed their own unique cultures … like Tiwi, for instance, a tiny island group off Darwin in the Timor Sea. I'm sure there are hundreds of little islands out there with people being born and dying and carrying on life in centuries' old ways. Pictured are very distinctive Tiwi Island burial poles.

We wandered into the Pacific Cultures Gallery. We've visited Tonga and Fiji and Vanuatu and had a feel for their cultural artifacts, motifs and designs. Papua New Guinea (PNG), however, has always held a particular fascination for us. Replicas of the PNG thatch huts and trading canoes were on display.

The weapons, masks and especially the painted human skulls were a bit disconcerting. We know of a few folks who have stopped in PNG and enjoyed their visit. We know of another couple who were held at knife point and robbed. It's not on the way currently, but you never know what the future holds.

As always, as questions are answered, more questions arise. We just learned of the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute here in Adelaide and, before we leave, we're going to try to visit this gallery, touted as Australia's oldest Aboriginal-owned and managed multi-arts center.

Adelaide's Historic Botanic Gardens

 

There are actually three botanic gardens in the Adelaide area, but we visited the most accessible one within walking distance to the city center. The Adelaide Botanic Gardens encompass about 51 acres of land on the original parklands surrounding the city as planned by Colonel William Light. The gardens officially opened in 1857.

We wandered around in the morning when it was cool and lovely and fragrant. We were drawn in immediately by the Lotus Garden. The lotus were in bloom … dinner plate size, lovely pink blossoms that could knock your socks off. Ducks and water fowl slid into the water between the reedy stems and leaves and disappeared into the coolness within.

We stopped at the Amazon Waterlilly Pavilion en route to the Info Center. Though it was warm outside, the high humidity hit us immediately as we entered. This lovely glass house's singular purpose is as a home to the elegant Victoria amazonica waterlily. Though none were in bloom, the huge lily pads covered the surface of the pond. We remembered seeing even larger pads and colossal blossoms on our trip to Iquitos on the Amazon several years ago.

Free tours of the garden were available and we took advantage. It ended up being a personal tour as no one else showed up. Teresa, our guide, was extremely knowledgeable and obviously knew the gardens well. We strolled down the oldest avenue of Moreton Bay Figs in Australia.

She pointed out flowering caper plants in one garden (like the ones I put in my potato salad or eat with salmon and cream cheese on bagels)...

...and echinacea in the herbal health garden. She provided insight into Aboriginal medicine and remedies.

We visited the exquisite Victorian glass palm house. Constructed of clear and cobalt glass supported by iron glazings and imported from Bremen, Germany in 1875, it's thought to be the only one left in existence. It's been painstakingly refurbished and houses plants from Madagascar. An interesting note here … Australia and Madagascar were joined 150 million years ago as part of the super-continent, Gondwana and thus some of the plants in the Palm House are ancestors of many of Australia's native plants.

The Bicentennial Conservatory was built in 1988 and is the largest single span conservatory in the southern hemisphere (we're not really sure what that means, but it was impressive) and houses lowland rainforest plants. There's a wonderful glass mirrored sculpture in front of the Conservatory entitled Cascade by Sergio Redegalli that's most impressive.

At the end of the tour, Teresa encouraged us to visit the Santos Museum of Economic Botany right next to the Visitors Center. Opened in 1879, it celebrates the value that the botanical world brings to our society and the importance of plants in our lives; past, present and future. It is considered “the last purpose-built colonial museum in the world”. I came across a mushroom exhibit and was amazed at just how many types and colors of mushrooms there were and wondered what Alice would think of all of these.

The current exhibit, Coco der Mer, offers an artist's obsession with the largest seed in the world, the coco de mer (coconut of the sea) found exclusively in the Seychelles Islands of the Indian Ocean. It was odd and definitely erotic in a weird sort of way, but interesting.

What impressed us most about these gardens weren't the flowers or even the beautiful glass houses or the museum. It wasn't the eye candy that got to us. It was an epiphany of sorts … an “Oh, I finally get it!” moment when we figured out that botanic gardens weren't designed primarily to display beautiful blossoms or help to introduce us to and identify exotic trees and shrubs. No, they served very distinct purposes in the early colonial days: To establish forest reserves and preserve populations of endangered species of the area; to develop and evaluate new crops to determine which were (are?) best suited for the climate and environment; to provide fresh fruits and veggies; to provide seedlings to start other gardens and orchards; to evaluate the medicinal uses of local plants and herbs as advised by the indigenous people; and the list goes on and on.

I'm always amazed at what we learn on what we considered an ordinary trip to city.