Garnkiny: Constellations of Meaning

TEXT ON SCREEN: Garnkiny: Constellations of Meaning 16 September – 8 November 2014 At RMIT Gallery. RMIT University logo.

AUDIO: Song by Phyllis Thomas, recorded at Purnululu 2014.

VISUAL:  Anna speaks to the camera from the Gallery with artwork on the walls in the background.

ANNA CRANE (CURATOR) SPEAKS: The moon dreaming story, it’s a Ngarranggarni story, which means a dreaming story from Gija country.

VISUAL:  Shot of a woman at the exhibition viewing artworks and a projection on the wall. Intercut with Anna speaking to the camera. Cuts to a close-up of a painting representing various shades of brown, red, pink, black and yellow.

ANNA CRANE SPEAKS: Garnkiny and his skin name is Jurru and it comes time for this man to choose a wife, so his elders and his community have gathered together all of the women who are the correct skin to marry this man.

VISUAL:  Returns to Anna speaking the camera.

ANNA CRANE SPEAKS: They’re all assembled in a place on Gija country, um and the elders ask this man which of these particular women he’d like to marry.

VISUAL:  Rusty speaking to the camera from the gallery in front of one of the artworks.

RUSTY PETERS (ARTIST) SPEAKS: The story about the moon, my grandfather told me about when I was a kid and he’d tell me about the moon and his step mother, she is the moon, who wanted to marry that, she was his mother in law.

VISUAL: Mabel speaking to the camera from the gallery in front of one of the artworks. Intercut with a shot of a painting with a yellow background and three abstract looking objects or symbols.

MABEL JULI (ARTIST) SPEAKS: So his mother in law is sitting down, he was looking with his sad eyes and what see that girl is. She his mother in law was really nice, a nice woman with the long hair and he was touched, tingling inside, he’s  thinking ‘oh I love that mother in law’.

VISUAL: Returns to Anna speaking the camera. Intercut with a shot of a painting of a reddish-brown background and a moon-like symbol on a hill-shaped object.

ANNA CRANE SPEAKS: So when the elders ask him, who is it that you want to marry, and he says, the woman who was his mother-in-law, which is a taboo.

VISUAL: Returns to Rusty speaking to the camera.

RUSTY PETERS SPEAKS:  When my uncle and his brother they would tell me ‘you shouldn’t do that with your mother in law’ and he was kinda sad you know he didnt know what to do.

VISUAL: Returns to Mabel speaking to the camera. Intercut with a shot of a painting with reddish background with various symbols in black and white.

MABEL JULI SPEAKS: He really loved his mother in law, he wanted to really marry her and they told him, ‘no that’s your mother-in-law, you can’t marry her, you wanna go and move away’.

VISUAL: Returns to Anna speaking the camera.

ANNA CRANE SPEAKS: So he, he gets furious and walks off from this particular place in Gija country and from there he travels through quite a few different sites in Gija country and he changes those places along the way and eventually he ends up at a place called Yarin, which is a hill on springvale station which is Mabel and Rusty’s country and he walks to the top of the hill.

VISUAL: Returns to Mabel speaking to the camera.

MABEL JULI SPEAKS: He was move away, walking up the hill and he turned around, he’s seeing  the big mob sitting down and he told them people, you mob gonna die and I’ll be still coming up..

VISUAL: Returns to Anna speaking the camera.

ANNA CRANE SPEAKS: And he speaks to his people and he say’s, when you die, you’ll die forever, your bones will become white in the sand, you won’t come back, but I’ll keep coming back, and he becomes the moon. So every month the moon goes dark for three days so Gija people say he dies for three days, but then he rises again.

VISUAL: Returns to Mabel speaking to the camera. Intercut with a close-up of a painting with a yellowish-brown background and a moon shaped placed above a hill shaped object.

MABEL JULI SPEAKS: Ah, that story, my mother and father told me that when I was a little girl. I had it in mind all the time when I was a little girl when I was growing up. I was thinking, ‘I could draw that moon, in the board, you know. When he  told me that, I was what about you, you can do painting too. Try too, you try to paint, you might have good luck in there’

VISUAL: Ralph sitting and speaking to the camera with an artwork in the background. Cut with a shot of two Indigenous elder ladies, seated in the gallery, one waves to the camera, smiling. Cut with a shot of Rusty and Ralph at the exhibition with others around them. Cuts back Ralph speaking to the camera.

RAPLH JULI (ARTIST) SPEAKS: Some of me with Juli and a nephew of Rusty Peters, the reason why I came to this gallery here is to see my mother and my uncles painting and it made be proud, cos the near future, to pass it on to my children, my family.

VISUAL: RMIT University logo www.rmit.edu.au. This video features the song by Phyllis Thomas, recorded at Purnululu 2014, used with permission.

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