Aboriginal Art: Traditional Symbols and Meanings

Aboriginal art is well known for its long tradition of conventional designs and symbols. Many of the modern paintings of the Central and Western Desert, some of which you will see in this exhibition, use these designs. Indeed, a lot of artists continue to draw on such imagery and symbolism as a way of keeping alive connections to their land, their ancestors and the 'Dreamtime'.

A lot of the designs that can be seen in the art today are derived from the ancient tradition of ceremonial body painting. For example, in Central Australia, intricate designs consisting of stripes and circles were painted onto the face and body using ochre pigments ground into a paste with water. It is only relatively recently (in the 1970s), that artists began to experiment with applying some of these designs to canvas using acrylic paint.

While the most frequently used symbols are relatively simple to learn, they can be used in more elaborate combinations to tell more complex stories. For example, a 'Water Dreaming' painting might show a U-shaped symbol for a man, sitting next to a circle or concentric circles representing a waterhole and spiral lines depicting running water. The painter is telling the story of the power of the waterman to invoke rain. Further symbols will add to the depth of the meaning.

Today, it is common for artists to refer to the 'outside' or public story, while the painting also retains an 'inside' or sacred story accessible only to those with the appropriate level of knowledge. A good illustration of how the different levels of an Aboriginal painting might operate is through the example of dots or dotting - one of the more conventional and widely-recognised techniques that gives Central and Western Desert art its distinctive character. Although dots can represent many things - including stars, sparks and burnt ground - this technique is also used as a way of cleverly disguising the true meaning of the painting.