Rusty Peters' Waterbrain

My interest in aboriginal art first arose due to a write up on the east Kimberely paintings in a Qantas inflight magazine. The paintings had a sparse, spiritual quality and used natural ochres (in fact each region in Australia has its characteristic art and I will try and post on them from time to time) and something drew me to them. Subsequently, I caught the exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery. One of the paintings caught my attention because it was a visual philosophy tract - though we needed a written explanation. The 12 metre long painting was called "Waterbrain" and the artist was Rusty Peters.

Waterbrain

The painting takes you from the time before you are born, when your spirit resides in water to the development of consciousness, initiation into adulthood and finally a return to the waters when you die. The way I put it does not do justice to it, below are some excerpts from the description (copyright for this text rests with Rusty Peters, Frances Kofod and Jirrawun ).

"We all start out as babies lying down, then we crawl, then we walk as here in the middle (of panel three), then we start to run. This is the same for black and white. Our brain comes from the water."

"Here at the top (of panel three) it shows how we progress from walking to running. When we were in the water we did not think about anything, but once we start running we start to understand and have our own ideas. The water brain leaves us and our parents and teachers start to tell us how to live. We grow up and start talking. We regain our memory and begin to think. This is shown by the brown part in this panel."

"The next part (panel five) is about our education for life. My grandfather taught me how to live......All knowledge is passed on from old to young by black and white."

That exhibition also made me (till then a collector of junk prints) look at art and its collection in a new way. As one of the artists writes "we don't want people to say look isn't that a lovely picture that the aboriginal has painted? We want things to be real and we want places of importance to be left alone so people can go through and see it. And then sit down in peace and think clearly of the happiness of the surroundings, of how we pass through our generations".

At Work

It is a pity that the painting is now most likely in a private collection and few photos exist apart from a small one at the Art Gallery site (it was chosen as a Director's favourite). The painting is not a drawing room centrepiece but one that should belong to the nation.