Barbara Weir was born in 1945 at what was formerly known as Bundy River Station in the region of Utopia, Central Australia. Barbara's mother is artist Minnie Pwerle and her father is Irish. While out collecting water at the age of eight she was taken by Native Welfare, and her family believed she had been killed. Thirteen years later in the 1960's, she was reunited with her family at Utopia and had to re-learn her native language. She stayed until late 1997, always maintaining a close relationship with Emily Kngwarreye who looked after her as a small child. It was through her unique relationship with Emily Kngwarreye that her interest and talent in art flourished. In 1970's she played a major role in a successful land rights claim in Utopia and in 1985 was honoured for her work by being made the first woman president of Urapuntja Council. She is a mother of six, with thirteen grandchildren and lives in Adelaide.
In 1994, Barbara, along with a small group of artists from Utopia, travelled to Indonesia. Barbara returned full of ideas for developing her own creative painting style. She began work with her son, Fred Torres (now the owner and director of DACOU Aboriginal Art Gallery). After Emily's passing in 1996, Barbara concentrated on developing her skill as an artist and soon attracted the attention of collectors by producing works that were very contemporary in style. It was not long before her paintings were drawing rave reviews. In 1996, Barbara travelled to Paris and Switzerland at the request of a European art gallery owner. There she painted some paintings for the gallery owner and they were all sold quickly to art collectors in Europe.
Her first solo exhibition, titled 'Dream Works' was launched in 1999. This exhibition was a sell-out. Susan McCulloch, art critic for the Australian Newspaper and author of Contemporary Aboriginal Art reviewed the show favourably in a full-page article, published in the Australian newspaper. Her second solo exhibition launched in April 2000. This exhibition was featured in the 30min Discovery Channel documentary 'Utopia Revisited'
Her canvases are dramatic and compelling and her Dreamings include: Bush Berry, Grass Seed, Wild Flower and My Mother's Country. Her strong linear patterns represent women's body paint designs - stripes applied to breasts, arms and legs for traditional ceremonies known as Awelye. In her Grass Seed Dreamings series, she fills the picture plane with finely painted reeds of grass that appear to be rhythmically moving as if blown about by a warm breeze. These seeds and grasses, as well as berries, yams and flowers, are integral to the women's ceremonies. In yet another stylistic convention, she employs an intricate dot technique with acrylic paints to create amorphic shapes that appear like a vast cosmos. She describes this series simply as the stories of her mother's country, their symbolism deliberately kept ambiguous.
Grass Seed
This Dreaming tells the story of the grass seed that is part of the bush tucker found in the region of Utopia. This seed is collected, crushed to a fine powder and is then used to make a bread, very similar to damper. The people of Utopia were still using this seed as late as the 1950's. During that time the seed grew in abundance but as the years passed there were very few good seeds to be found due to bullocks roaming the land and eating the grasses. The people then began to eat a substitute that the white man provided, and today very few Aboriginal people collect these seeds.
My Mother's Country
Barbara Weir's Aboriginal grandfather came from a region called Atnwengerrp, and it is this country that is depicted in her paintings titled "My Mother's Country". In the background of the paintings, Barbara often depicts the abandoned campsites that the people made as they trekked across the country in search of food or the coolamons used by the women to collect the fruit and berries. It may also show the forms of a woman's body that are adorned with paint for the women's ceremonies. Overlaying these representations is a complex array of dot work that depicts the type of bush-tucker found across the land. This includes the bush yam, potato, berry, plum, banana and the ever-important grass seed that was vital to the people's survival. This edible grass seed, from a particular type of grass, was collected by the people and then cleaned and ground into a paste to form a type of bush damper. The grass seed was quite abundant across the land in the time of Barbara's Grandfather and Mother. Today, the rabbits and bullock eat most of the grass seed.
Selected Exhibitions
2005
Utopia Revealed, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2004
Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
Hogarth Gallery, Group Exhibition, Sydney
2003
Light Over Utopia, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
Hello Dolly, Walkabout Art, Group Exhibition, Sofitel Melbourne
2002
Generations, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
Contemporary Aboriginal Art From The Utopia Region, BMGART, Adelaide, SA.
Group Utopia exhibition at Galerie a Le Temps Du Reve France
Paintings From Utopia, Framed: The Darwin Gallery, Darwin, NT
Group Utopia exhibition at Knut Grothe Galeri in Charlottlenlund, Copenhagen.
Reunited, Alison Kelly Gallery, Armadale, Victoria.
2001
Two Women Dreamings, (with Gloria Petyarre) Dreamtime Gallery Santa Fe, New Mexico
Women Artists of the Australian Desert, Gallery 2021, Auckland, New Zealand
Desert Colour, My Country, Raintree Aboriginal Art Gallery, Darwin, NT.
Group Exhibition, Alison Kelly Gallery, Armadale Victoria
Out of Utopia, Group Exhibition at Chapman Gallery, Canberra
2000
Women's Business, Group Exhibition at The Australian Exhibition Centre, Chicago, USA.
Group Exhibition, Mary Place Gallery, Sydney
Group Exhibition, Quadrivium Gallery- Sydney NSW
Solo exhibition, Gallery Savah, Sydney NSW
Gathering the Past, Solo exhibition, Redback Art Gallery, Brisbane.
1999
Dream Works, solo exhibition, Gallery Savah, Sydney
Group Exhibition, North Shore Fine Art, Sydney
Group Exhibition, Gallery Savah, Sydney
Solo exhibition, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
Utopia V, Group exhibition, Quadrivium Gallery, Sydney
Bush Garden, Group exhibition, Japingka Gallery Fremantle.
Utopia, Group exhibition, BMG Art, Adelaide
Joining dots on the way to Utopia
by Robin Usher
The Age
15 July 2004
An artist from the stolen generation fought to overcome isolation, writes Robin Usher.
Everyone grows up expecting that people around them will automatically understand what they are saying. But Aboriginal artist Barbara Weir has twice lost the ability to easily grasp the world around her. The first time was as a girl after she was stolen from her family in central Australia by white authorities in the 1950s. Because she was taken before she was 10 (she is uncertain exactly when), in acquiring English she then lost the ability to speak her mother's languages from around what is now the Aboriginal settlement of Utopia in the Northern Territory. Her father, Irish-Australian Jack Weir, had been a married property owner and she was living with her mother, Minnie Pwerle, and her people when she was seized. "When I went back to find my mum in 1968 it was scary for me because I couldn't speak her languages any more," she says.
"I was frightened the first time because it was a different world from what I knew." It is a tribute to Weir's fighting spirit and adaptability that she is now a noted citizen in both the black and white worlds. As well as selling her art around the world, she is also in a position to help the communities around Utopia.
"I don't pretend to be a leader of my people," she says. "I had to learn a lot of lore before I could help them. It took a hell of a long time."
The clans speak two languages, Anmatyerre and Alyawarr, and she is obviously proud of her ability to master them.
"I can really be a bush blackfella when I go home," she laughs.
Her position as a respected member of the white world is shown by the Tourism Commission's decision to ask her to appear with her artwork in the latest push to promote Australia overseas. She says she is without bitterness about what happened to her.
"I still blame the government for taking me away," she says. "But my people didn't recognise me when I went back." She says the only solution is to accept past events. "It's up to people to let go and get on with their lives."
Weir is speaking in Flinders Lane Gallery, where her latest exhibition features two of her current styles of painting - one using myriad coloured dots and the other brushstrokes to form curving grasses. She is careful to respect traditions, pointing out that she always describes the dot paintings as "my mother's country", not her own.
"I always get permission to do those stories," she says. "If I had an Aboriginal father, then it would be my country."
The pull of family is the key to Weir's life. Her mother's other children were not aware they had a half-sister and she says Pwerle was initially reserved towards her. Weir, who had three young children herself, says the key to being accepted was Emily Kame Kngwarreye, later to be one of the most famous Aboriginal artists: "It was lucky Aunty Emily was still around because I would not have stayed otherwise."
So she kept returning to Utopia, staying longer each year while her husband worked on outback stations. "I was always being tested by the people about what I remembered," she says. "I would go hunting and suddenly I would remember a place I had known as a kid. But it took a long time for them to trust me."
Utopia was returned to the Aborigines in 1975 and Weir says she was "mixed up in the land rights business". But the decisive event that sparked her long-term return was the end of her marriage in 1977 after she had six children.
"I had to pay for the kids' schooling so I did fencing work and helped fix bores and other work like that," she says.
Paint and canvases came to Utopia in 1988 but Weir did not shine immediately, although some of her work sold. The breakthrough came in 1996 when she went to Switzerland as a guest of a collector to run workshops.
Since then, she has been back to Europe, as well as Japan, the United States and Mexico: "Aboriginal art is in demand everywhere," she says.
But success has not dimmed Weir's interest in her family. She has met a white half-brother and is to meet a cousin from her father's side during her current Melbourne visit.
"I accept both sides - I wouldn't be here without either of my parents. I want to go to Ireland to see where dad came from. It seems I've been everywhere else."
She is proud that Pwerle is in demand as an artist after only taking up painting about five years ago: "She's big time," she says.
|
