Art balgo

The art balgo belongs to the community aboriginal of Balgo Hills in Australia.

They paint abstract landscapes seen of the sky, in the form of a entrelac of lines, of an infinity of points, a multitude of geometrical forms traced in blazing colors. This art draws its sources and its direction in the history of one of the oldest ages of the world.

Archaeological excavations put at discovered cave paintings carried out approximately 50.000 years ago in this area of Western Australia. This prehistoric Art thus precedes paintings by Altamira and those of Lascaux in Europe. These people thus worked out the oldest religious system which ever existed, translating their language and their philosophy in true Article.

At the base of their concept, there is what they name in English the “ dreaming ” or the “ time of the dream ” i.e. the “ paddle of humanity ”. These “dreamings” traverses the world in the shape of extraordinary beings and forms and consistency give him, creating, for example, the rivers and the rocks, components thus a crowned geography. If they are invisible in our eyes, they are always present and the natural landscape testifies to their existence.

In cosmology aboriginal, creation is not given for always; the perpetuation even of the life depends on these “dreamings” and so that the world continues to exist, the initiates must periodically turn over on the spot of creation and celebrate these extraordinary beings by the ritual ones which they left to the men. Through their pertaining to worship and cultural practices, the Aborigène S thus maintain our world, alive and fertile.

Not having neither books nor of museums, the tradition of the aboriginals thus remained thanks to their transitory art: the drawings are made on sand with a finger or an end of wood and body paintings also belong to the initiatory rites. All this art is made to be considering and used by the only members of a specific group, it is used to speak about the daily life and to inform the young people on the behaviors to be respected; then it is erased or delivered to the elements.

When at the end of the Years 1970, two English artistic advisers, Geoff Bardon and Peter Fannin discovered the artistic potential of the indigenous artists of Balgo Hills, they understood that they had the possibility of carrying out a promising mercantile operation, and provided free fabrics, easier to transport than the wood panels used usually.

A debate had then taken place in the community, about the risks to make tangible and permanent an art, by nature and transitory destination, and only intended to be used within the framework of closed and secret ceremonies. He then invented a public form of their art which could carry a share of their philosophy, but without to break the crowned and secret taboos. With this intention, they transformed and made evolve/move the graphic codes their ancestors and created the contemporary Art balgo.

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