AHIS10003 Chap.4 Sacred and Secular, Public and Private
Sacred and Secular, Public and Private
Week 3 sets a pair of painted panels made for a mission church in north-east Arnhem Land beside a colonial cabinet of specimens assembled at a penal settlement in New South Wales. Neither influenced the other; the pairing asks a shared question about who an object is addressed to and what it withholds from everyone else.
The panels are structural before they are pictorial: there are two of them because Yolngu society is organised through two moieties, Dhuwa and Yirritja, and one panel was directed by a senior artist of each. The subject's materials state explicitly that what is shared with a class is the surface, and this chapter keeps that limit.
The chest, by contrast, discloses everything it contains to an owner who never travelled, in what the week calls vicarious tourism.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Two objects about 145 years apart, and the question that pairs them
- 02
Scale as the first evidence: an upright pair of panels against a container that closes
- 03
Why the work is two panels: the moiety structure it reproduces
- 04
Miny'tji as clan designs, and the limit the subject sets on interpreting them
- 05
The Yolngu vocabulary the subject supplies, and what each term lets you say
- 06
Gadayka: one tree that yields a coffin, an instrument and a painting support
- 07
Support migration from body to bark to manufactured board, and what changes
- 08
Object biography: commissioned 1962, removed 1973, recovered, displayed from 1998
- 09
The bark petitions of 1963, and painting as a founding political document
- 10
Why these works are held in a community art centre rather than a national museum
- 11
The chest as proto-museum, collaborative object and structure of concealment
- 12
The entry question worth stealing: what world is being constructed here
Comparing two objects that never met
- 1Reject the thin version. Saying both are made of natural materials and relate to Australian history would be true of most objects in the subject.
- 1Name the axis: disclosure, meaning who each object is addressed to and what it withholds.
- 1Anchor the chest: 56 by 71.3 by 46.5 centimetres closed, assembled at a penal settlement for a Governor and his wife, built to close and travel.
- 2Anchor the panels: two boards each 365.8 by 121.9 centimetres, painted in natural ochres for a church in the artists' own country, still held there today, with a two-panel structure that encodes the two moieties.
- 1State what the crossing shows about audience.
Key terms
- Yolngu
- People. Aboriginal people of north-east Arnhem Land, in Australia's Northern Territory, use this name for themselves.
- Matha
- Tongue, and so language. Yolngu Matha is the name of the language.
- Dhuwa
- One of two moieties. The moiety a person belongs to orders kinship, rights in land, ownership and ceremonial practice.
- Yirritja
- The second of the two moieties.
- Balanda
- White people. Closely related to Belanda in Malay and Indonesian, used for the Dutch, which records contact predating British settlement.
- Miny'tji
- Clan designs: elements of an artwork that carry particular significance.
- Madayin
- That which is sacred and ceremonial.
- Gadayka
- Stringybark, Eucalyptus tetrodonta. Its wood yields bark paintings, or nuwayak, didjeridu, or yidaki, and hollow log coffins, or larrakitj.
- Vicarious tourism
- The week's term for experiencing a place through a possessed object rather than through travel.
Sacred and Secular, Public and Private FAQ
Why are there two panels rather than one?
Because Yolngu society is organised through two moieties, Dhuwa and Yirritja, and the subject's glossary explains that a person's moiety governs kinship, rights in land, ownership and ceremonial practice. One panel was painted under the direction of a senior artist of each moiety. The form of the work is a diagram of the society that made it.
How much can I say about what the designs mean?
Only what the subject's own materials state, which is deliberately limited: the designs are miny'tji, clan designs that carry particular significance, and the materials say plainly that what is shared is the surface. Describe the structure, the materials, the scale and the history, and mark the boundary of what is not yours to interpret rather than writing past it.
Why does it matter that the designs are on hardboard?
The week's tutorial traces a sequence of supports from body to bark to manufactured board, and each move changes durability, audience and mobility. A design on a body exists for a ceremony; a design on board can be hung in a church, removed, stored, recovered and cased. Bark also comes from gadayka, a tree tied to a web of related objects, which manufactured board is not.
What is the connection to the bark petitions?
The week places the panels beside the Yirrkala Bark Petitions of 1963, recorded as typed paper and natural ochres on bark, 46.9 by 21 centimetres, in the Parliament House Collection, presented in both English and Yolngu Matha. They demonstrate painted design functioning as evidence of ownership and of country inside a legal and constitutional process.
Exam move
Learn the glossary terms and use them precisely, because precision here is both better scholarship and a matter of respect. Then practise the week's comparison method on other pairs: choose one axis, put two objects at different points on it, and anchor each position in a catalogue fact.
Note that the week's title appears in two forms across the subject's materials, sacred and secular in the lecture programme and sacred and profane on the overview page; if you build an essay on the distinction, say which framing you are using and where it came from.
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