Historical Aboriginal Art

[Jilliana]

I recently went to the Koorie Heritage Trust in Melbourne Australia, and learnt about the 38 Aboriginal nations that live in Victoria. We learnt about their culture, history, and diet, as well as getting to handle some of their tools and artefacts.

Below are photos of an art installment called Birrarung Wilam Shields. They are found at Birrarung Marr in Melbourne, and consist of five metal shields representing the five clans of the Kulin Nation. The shields are roughly 5ft tall, and made of a heavy rough metal with a brownish colour. This art installation, along with several others at this location, are fully tactile and safe to explore through touch. IDs below each image.



ID: A human size metal shield, mounted to a pole, shows carved images of five human figures without faces. An eagle appears to soar over them. The two tips of the shield are decorated with linear art above and below the main image. The Eagle represents Bunjil, an ancestral spirit who created the land and everything within it.



ID: A very narrow and deep shield with a harsh pointed angle in the middle front. It is carved with geometric designes, mostly diamond shapes set within each other, enhancing the apoearance of sharpness and depth.



ID: A tall metal shield is carved with a serpent-like figure, running from one tip to the other, curving over the whole shield. Concentric circles span its body. The background is linear decirations and organised dots.



ID: A broad and tall metal shield, with a central design of curves and waves, appearing like a body of water within the metal, set on a background of concentric diamonds.



ID: A wide diamond shaped shield, with two basic human figures at either tip. Between them, two arrows make an X shape, and are surrounded by angled lines mirroring their placement. Behind each figure is a several small sun or star designs, each of these made up of several small lines oriented toward a single middle point.

Tools like this were carved with patience and purpose, with each artist having their own unique style within the community.

Hope you all enjoy!

[Frisbee]

Thank you for sharing, and putting up descriptions for these. Definitely sounds like an experience.

[Volinn]

These are all very cool! Love the intricacies of the carving.

[Jilliana]

Thank you for sharing, and putting up descriptions for these. Definitely sounds like an experience.

I'm glad you appreciated the descriptions. Inclusion is the name of the game in my RL work and though I had fun, I was also there for work.

I will say also that it is a show of respect to the First Nations people, I thought it appropriate to add descriptions for you blind/VI players. I learned while touring that every single person in these tribes was useful to the tribe as a whole. The deaf were used for their talent in smelling and seeing, the blind for smelling and sensing, the deafblind also...and so on. The concept of disability was not a thing in these tribes, and still isn't.

Credit should be given to my lovely assistant for writing the photo descriptions.

These are all very cool! Love the intricacies of the carving.

Glad you liked them. All I could think was, "Cogg needs to see these!" I could have stayed there days looking at everything.