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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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Inspired by her direct environment and ongoing connection to Country

Naomi Hobson is a Southern Kaantju/Umpila woman who lives in Coen, a small town of 360 people in the centre of Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland. A multidisciplinary artist, she regularly works across the mediums of painting, ceramics and photography. Inspired by her direct environment, Hobson's works express her ongoing connection to Country and her ancestors' ties and relationships with their traditional lands.

Through her work, she references her family's political and social engagements as well as her own personal engagement with her Country and community. In Hobson's recent photographic series Adolescent Wonderland, she is working to empower young people in her community, to encourage them to be themselves and to celebrate their uniqueness. Through this process, more young people in her community have taken up photography.

Today photography needs to push the boundary. I feel it doesn't need to be picture perfect and as a fine art - I'm using the medium to tell real stories that I feel don't get told or haven't been told. I want people to see who our youth really are; fun, playful, smart, savvy, proud, adventurous and witty
Naomi Hobson

Learn more about Adolescent Wonderland and how you can incorporate Hobson's work into your classroom with an online briefing by AGSA's Education Coordinator, Kylie Neagle.

The backgrounds in Hobson's photographs are black and white, while the figures and their props are emphasised by colour. Why do you think the artist has chosen to do this? Why not just take a colour photograph?

Look closely at the poses of each of Hobson's subjects. Re-enact these poses. Now that you have placed yourself in these positions, what does their body language suggest? Are they confident, insecure, relaxed, happy, sad, excited? Share your responses with the class.

Adolescent Wonderland is a series of photographs that tell the real-life story of young Aboriginal people in remote Australia. The title of this series was inspired by the classic children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Themes of youth, playfulness and childhood memories are evident in Hobson's photographs. The brightly coloured figures and their props lure the viewer into a dream-like reality, much like how Alice follows the white rabbit.

As Shonae Hobson, Naomi Hobson's daughter, describes one work titled Road Play, 'depicts sisters Laine and Katarna on a street outside their home and illustrates the dualities between teenage adolescence and childhood nostalgia. Laine is pictured wearing a white "rabbit" mask - a clever reference to Alice's escape into the rabbit hole that leads to a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures and characters. The symbol of the rabbit is used as a metaphor for the playful and adventurous lifestyle of Indigenous kids today'.

Sometimes artists who use photography in their work manipulate their image or their subjects. Does a photographer 'make' or 'take' a photograph? Provide examples for your answer.

Create & Capture

Hobson has said ' Adolescent Wonderland is getting people to appreciate just being themselves'. How would you describe the people in your family? Take a series of photographs of members of your family being themselves. How will you capture the essence of who they are with a single still image?

Themes of youth, playfulness and childhood memories resonate throughout Hobson's photographs. Think about an object that you associate with your childhood - one that is playful and reminds you of a happy time. It might be an old toy, an item of clothing or a delicious treat that you associate with a particular time. Photograph this object in your home. Edit this image so that the emphasis is on the object - you may like to exaggerate or alter the colour. Display your photograph in a class exhibition.

Conversations about colour

Colour is an important element in Hobson's work. Compare the use of high-key colour in Hobson's Adolescent Wonderland series to the First Jobs series by Tracey Moffatt. How have both artists manipulated colour in their work? How are these artists' works similar and different? Discuss the following statement in relation to Hobson's and Moffatt's photographs: 'Colour is a powerful tool in art making, one that is emotive and can evoke nostalgia and humour.'

Tracey Moffatt, First Jobs series

Naomi Hobson's paintings Blue Reef at Night, 2018, and Touch the River Floor, 2019, are inspired by her direct environment and connection to the Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland. They explore the vastness, colour and patterns of Country.

Hobson describes being woken at night by colour. She also speaks of how sometimes a particular place or location in her home of Coen will come to her as a colour. Country and colour are connected for Hobson, who says: 'I was brought up with the widest hue - it's very bright where I live in Cape York.' This chromatic intensity is conveyed in Touch the River Floor and is a reminder that, for some people, colour is experienced through other senses, including touch, taste, sound and scent, as well as through sight.

As a child, Hobson would find interesting patterns and shapes in nature, including grains of sand or glossy bark from ghost gum trees. For one whole week, take a sketchbook with you everywhere you go and sketch interesting patterns you encounter in your everyday environment.

Recall a memory when you spent time in a natural environment. Capture that memory using mark making. Layer your painting using different materials, colours and patterns associated with this place.

Conduct some colour experiments using your other senses. What do you think red, yellow, orange, blue, purple or green taste, sound or move like? Create a chart for your taste responses and record your sound and movement responses. Compare your responses with others in the class.

Hobson connects colours with places and stories. Experiment with mixing paint to create three different shades of colour that capture the place where you live. Using only these three colours, create a painting that depicts your environment

Explore our online Student Gallery to see how children have responded appropriately to the work of Naomi Hobson

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Sonja Carmichael and Elisa Jane Carmichael

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Sonja Carmichael and Elisa Jane Carmichael

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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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Sonja Carmichael and Elisa Jane Carmichael

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Inspired by Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) to explore contemporary materials and techniques

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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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Trawlwoolway artist Julie Gough is a descendant of Aboriginal leaders in Tasmania including Woretemoeteyenner (c.1790-1847), a Trawlwoolway woman from Tebrikunna in north east Lutruwita (Tasmania), and Mannalargenna (c.1775-1835), leader of the Plangermaireener. Gough creates works of art that often draw on the histories of her ancestors. She does not shy away from speaking the truth. Her works of art explore and expose forgotten histories and challenge the established colonial narrative perpetuated in Australia's national story.

Gough's studies of pre-history archaeology equip her with the foundational skills of working with the archive - investigating, gathering, trawling through and analysing historical records. Working with the colonial archive, Gough likens herself to a detective; her forensic approach has sustained her art practice for the past twenty-five years. Working closely with historic texts and material collections Gough creates installations, site-specific works, sound and video, and is a leading academic. Her work challenges the one-sidedness of the colonial archive as a national story and considers the ways in which the past continues to shape the present.

Articles and Books

Cumpston, Nici. Tarnanthi 2021. Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2021.

Franks, Rachel. "G overnor Arthur's Proclamation to the Aborigines." State Library of New South Wales. Accessed 7 September, 2021.

Harmon, Steph. " Murders, massacres and the black war: Julie Gough's horrifying journey in colonial genocide." The Guardian. 28 June, 2019.

Gough, Julie. "The chase: Finding the hidden figures of history." Art Monthly Australasia. May, 2017, i298, p56-61.

Gough, Julie. Dark Secrets/Home Truths. Exhibition Catalogue. Melbourne: Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi. September, 1996.

Judd, Craig. " Julie Gough: Tense Past." Artlink. 11 October, 2019.

National Museum of Australia. "The Black Line."National Museum of Australia. Accessed 7 September, 2021.

Sheils, Julie."Julie Gough's 'Tense Past' reminds us how the brutalities of colonial settlement are still felt today", The Conversation, June 24, 2019.

Strzelecki, Gloria. "Julie Gough, The Promise II." AGSA Magazine, i45, Summer, 2021.

Watts, Richard. " Review: Julie Gough: Tense Past, TMAG (Dark Mofo)." Artshub. 12 June, 2019.

Websites

Art and Australia." Confrontation of our Tense Past for a Conscious Present ". Accessed 7 September, 2021.

Australian War Memorial. " Governor Davey's Proclamation to the Aborigines (1816)." Accessed 7 September, 2021.

Julie Gough. Artist website. Accessed 7 September, 2021.

Video

"In the Making: Julie Gough." Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. 13 July, 2021.

" Julie Gough: Tense Past." Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. 14 June, 2019.

" This Place - Artist Series - Julie Gough." National Gallery of Australia. 24 February, 2020.

Gough's Trawlwoolway ancestry and the incomplete stories of her ancestors from the Tasmanian colonial archive is a vital part of her art making. Research Tasmanian history and the impact European invasion had on Aboriginal people, including the Black War of the 1820s. You might begin by finding out more about Gough's ancestors specifically, Woretemoeteyenner and Mannalargenna.

Gough represents histories in new ways that force us to ask questions and re-evaluate Australian history and culture today. After you have researched Tasmanian history, share your findings with your family and class. What aspect did you find shocking that perhaps you or your family were not aware of previously?

Hear from Trawlwoolway artist Julie Gough, who will speak about her installation for Tarnanthi titled Psychoscape on display in Gallery 8 at AGSA. Recorded live at our Educator Connect event on November 5th 2021.

For Psychoscape (2021), Gough has delved into the Art Gallery of South Australia's collection of Tasmanian colonial paintings and furniture. In reconfiguring a selection of objects - a chair, sewing table, couch, wooden box, console, sideboard and card table, as well as watercolours, oil paintings, sketches and prints - Gough is working with the residue of history; "we are what we use, it defines us."[1]

Psychoscape recasts these historic representations of Tasmania, no longer inert relics of a previous time but as testimonial evidence:

Visiting places depicted in colonial art, our lands accrued by outsiders, is like walking through a crime scene. Country is a victim, pummeled, bled dry, infested with cattle and sheep, crops and weeds from another hemisphere. These are psychoscapes, shadows of Country.[2]

Central to Psychoscape is the standalone installation Promise II (2019-2021). A haunting shadow play, its silhouette figures - cut in kangaroo skin and cast onto the wall through the frame of an inverted chair - reference the nearby imagery of Governor Davey's 1816 'Proclamation to the Aborigines' (c. 1878). This sketch was modelled on the proclamation boards commissioned by Governor George Arthur between 1828 and 1830, when frontier violence between Tasmanian Aboriginal people and colonists was at a peak and British martial law and the Black Line was introduced. At the time, the boards were considered conciliatory. They attempted to describe the concept of equal justice for Tasmania's First Peoples under British law. However, as its first sequence of pictograms portrays, "Aboriginal people were offered protection through the rule of law but only in exchange for a radical transformation to European ways."[3]

In The Promise II, Gough has turned the domestic dangerous, the familiar uncanny. As the chair and kangaroo skin cast their spectres onto the wall, they are transformed into objects of truth-telling:

I'm painfully aware of... the politics of now. It is more dangerous to work with the topic of now than it is, in a sense, working with then. But the then that I'm working with has been left behind too soon.[4]

[1]Julie Gough, "In the Making: Julie Gough", Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 13 July, 2021, 9:38mins,

[2]Julie Gough, Tarnanthi 2021, Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2021, p60.

[4]Julie Gough, "In the Making: Julie Gough."

Gough works with archives - investigating, gathering, trawling through and analysing historical records. Visit Trove online, where you can explore collections from galleries, libraries and museums across Australia. Enter specific word searches like place names and date to find a historical and perhaps lesser known story connected to the place, people or traditional custodians where you live. Research everything you can about this story. Create a work of art about this story.

The shadow play installation Promise II consists of silhouette figures - cut in kangaroo skin and cast onto the wall through the frame of an inverted chair. Create an installation that references an aspect of Australian history. Include shadow, silhouettes and light as your medium.

Create a collaborative installation using works of art made by each student in the class that represent something about who they are, their family, values or cultural background.

Malahide is large-scale sculpture by Julie Gough and is made from 108 pieces of coal, strung together over found antlers. The work takes its name from a colonial property, Malahide, in Fingal, Tasmania, a place that, like the sculpture's materials, has born witness to Australia's early contact history.

Gough is innately drawn to coal as a material, with both sides of her family involved in its mining, in Tasmania but also in Scotland. Extracted from cavernous places, the coal exposes truths that have been buried deeply under the earth. The deer antlers become representative of hunt trophies adorned on walls in houses and the forced removal of Aboriginal people from their Country by colonists.

In this work, Gough translates the usually intimate scale of the Tasmanian shell necklace making tradition to create a heavy sculpture, that carries the weight and burden of Australia's shared histories. Steeped in multiple meanings, the work serves to memorialise, remember, and uncover the forgotten.
Written by Associate Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait, Gloria Strzelecki

Before reading the wall label or any information about Malahide,look closely at the work and describe what you see. What is this work of art made from? Make a list of words to describe the materials, what would the materials be like if you were to touch them?

Investigate coal mining in Australia. What are the impacts of coal mining on the environment, people's health and the economy? Research some alternative clean energy solutions which Australia could adopt. Write a letter to your Environmental Minister outlining your concerns regarding coal mining in Australia and why other methods is a good idea for our climate.

Malahide references the Tasmanian shell necklace making which are usually intimate and delicate in scale and material. In contrast Malahide is large and heavy. Imagine what it would be like to wear this neckpiece. What is Gough communicating about Australian history? Now look at the neckpiece by Lola Greeno. Discuss how scale and materials changes the way you respond to a work of art

Compare Malahide to the oversized river reed neckpieces or Ancestral Memory 2, 2019,(a large glass eel trap) made by Maree Clarke. Why do you think both artists chose to increase the scale of these objects? How are Clarke and Gough communicating similar ideas about the enduring culture Aboriginal people?

Gough's influence and inspiration comes from the people, stories, places, skills and connections to her maternal Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage. Create a sculpture that tells the audience the history of your family and who you are.

Tarnanthi is presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia with Principal Partner BHP and support from the Government of South Australia
The Gallery's Learning programs are supported by the Department for Education.
This education resource has been developed and written in collaboration with Dr. Belinda Howden, Kylie Neagle, Dr. Lisa Slade and Gloria Strzelecki.

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Included here are some complimentary recordings too.

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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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Engage with the collection and develop ideas for the classroom anytime from the comfort of your home

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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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Aligned with the Australian Curriculum, this publication encourages educators to prioritise artists and their stories, make connections to the lives of students at all levels and expose them to the diversity of art made by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. The 316-page second volume builds on the success the 156-page first volume which sold over 5,000 copies nationwide.

The second volume adds new content, features over 50 First Nation artists and writers and provides more examples of classroom projects and case studies nationwide from reception to Year 11. This publication highlights how works of art can be used as a starting point for learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and culture through a variety of learning areas including English, Design, History and Science.
AGSA's education programs are supported by the Government of South Australia through the Department for Education. Tarnanthi is presented in partnership with BHP and with the support of the Government of South Australia.

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A percentage of the profits from sales of this book will go to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

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Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila video

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Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila video

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TARNANTHI 2017 - Yarrenyty Arltere ‘Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila!’

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Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila!

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Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila!

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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila! is a group of embroidered sculptures made by nine women artists - Dulcie Raggett, Dulcie Sharpe, Marlene Rubuntja, Rhonda Sharpe, Rosabella Ryder, Roxanne Petrick, Roxanne Sharpe, Trudy Inkamala and Valerie Stafford, from the Yarrenyty Arltere Art Centre in Alice Springs. Using embroidery thread, wadding, twigs and dyed blankets, the artists at Yarrenyty Arltere manipulate techniques such as weaving, looping and knotting to create these unique figures.

Yarrenyty Arltere Artists, from the Northern Territory, comprises a dynamic community of artists who work across a range of soft sculptural forms. Originally established in 2000 as a response to the chronic social issues faced by the Larapinta Valley Town Camp community, the Yarrenyty Artlere Art Centre has played an integral role in rebuilding the community.

In the art centre the artists sew and prepare artworks while sharing their stories and culture. Every face has a story, every story has a face:Kulila! is a collaborative installation of life-size self-portraits describing this daily ritual. The distinct technique of dying recycled woollen blankets using local plants and scrap metal not only reflects an economy of means and resourcefulness but offers an insight into the daily lives of the artists. The vivid colours, bold stitching and combination of materials embrace 'both ways', of telling the stories of the artists lives. As the artists have said: See these faces, they all have stitches all over them all these stories, markings. That's what we do, sew and talk and listen and try to make things get better. So, we thought we might make these faces so you can listen, to us, to our stories.

Getting started - Bring the artists into the classroom

Watch the Yarrenyty Arltere Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila! video with your students.

Making & Responding

Kulila means to listen. The nine women artists come together to share their 'everything stories', talking about good and bad experiences, as well as things they hope for.

Kulila

Sit together with your class and share your stories or goals for the future. In this case it is about the conversations that help to build the process, rather than emphasis on the product.

Create

While talking and listening to others create a self-portrait collage using soft materials such as recycled textiles, wool or thread. In our example below we have used felt and contact, ideal for early years and primary or a one lesson activity for secondary students.

Extension

You may like to extend this task by using needle and thread, adding buttons, beads or recycled materials destined for landfill, as facial features. Turn your 2D face into 3D by adding a back and stuffing and hang your student portraits in your classroom. See examples below for more ideas.

Step 1

Cut an oval shape for the base of your portrait. You may want to draw the shape first to make sure you use as much of the felt/fabric area as possible.

Step 2

Use scrap fabric to cut out your features. Create layers for your features by using different sized shapes and colours.

Step 3

Once you are happy with your design, remove the backing of the contact and carefully place the contact on top of your felt face. Seal your portrait by folding the contact to cover the back. Trim around your face leaving 1cm edge all the way around your face. No glue required. If you make a mistake or your features move, you can take it apart and try again.

Step 4

Display the portraits in your classroom.

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Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila!

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52 ACTIONS | KAYLENE WHISKEY | Kaylene TV 2/2

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Kaylene TV (2)
2020
Single channel video with sound
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@iwantja_arts #KayleneWhiskey
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Animation and editing: Jackson Lee @meltedcreative
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This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body - @auscouncilarts

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52 ACTIONS | KAYLENE WHISKEY | Kaylene TV 1/2

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Party Time!
2020
Single channel video with sound
01:00
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@iwantja_arts #KayleneWhiskey
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Animation and editing: Jackson Lee @meltedcreative
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This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body - @auscouncilarts

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Kaylene Whiskey: The making of Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place

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Kaylene Whiskey: The making of Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place

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ACMI – The Australian Centre for the Moving Image

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Kaylene Whiskey: The making of Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place

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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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I love trying different things in the art centre. I'm from the generation that grew up with Coca-Cola and TV as well as Tjukurpa (cultural stories) and bush tucker, so I like to have a bit of fun with combining those two worlds.
Kaylene Whiskey quoted by Hannah Presley, Tarnanthi catalogue 2019, p74

Whiskey listens to music or plays films in the background while she paints. What music do you like to listen to while you are working, writing or creating a work of art?

Watch the animation Party Time!, or 52 Actions by Whiskey. As you watch, make a list of all the things or people you recognise. Share your list with the class, what other things did your peers notice? What do these things have in common, can they be grouped in some way?

Now make a list of things that are important to you, include your family, friends, pets as well as your hobbies, interests or favourite foods, sports, TV shows, movies or colours. Create a series of individual drawings to represent each of your favourite and important things. Cut these drawings out and make either a collage or simple animation that communicates the story of your life.

Investigate what pop culture is and how it has influenced artists and their work. Select two works of art (one historical and one contemporary) and analyse how the artists have used pop culture within their work. Compare this approach to that used by Whiskey. What characteristics do these works of art share?

Whiskey likes trying different things in the art centre and stated 'I'm from the generation that grew up with Coca-Cola and TV as well as Tjukurpa (cultural stories) and bush tucker, so I like to have a bit of fun with combining those two worlds.' Similarly, Maluyligal and Wuthathi artist Brian Robinson states:

"Growing up on Waiben (Thursday Island) in the Torres Strait in a family of fisherfolk whose Roman Catholic faith exists in synergy with traditional Maluyligal and Wuthathi spirituality, my creations are seemingly incongruous concoctions where many motifs and characters are co-opted into the spirit world of the Islander imagination, which are then intertwined with historical narrative, personal history and humour ".

Brian Robinson was also in Tarnanthi in 2019 with his work Empyreal: A Place and a Path in the Sky and on the Earth, and in 2015 with Custodian of the Blooms.

Compare works of art by each artist. How do Robinson and Whiskey bring together their 'two worlds' - their cultural stories and popular culture they also grew up with.

Create a drawing incorporating your favourite pop culture references combined with something about your culture or family traditions.

Explore the movies and children's programs featured on NITV, National Indigenous Television made by, for and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. You may like to select a few programs you could watch with students, perhaps watch a program weekly or save some favourites for Reconciliation Week or NAIDOC week.

Sometimes artists will use alternative surfaces for creating works of art - materials that can't be purchased at an art supply store. Whiskey has painted directly onto a road sign that once marked the highway turnoff to Iwantja Arts and Craft Centre. The use of discarded metal objects has also been used by Anmatyerre artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye in Untitled, 1992, which is in the Gallery's collection. Yolŋu artist Gunybi Ganambarr who featured in Tarnanthi in 2019 pioneered the metal etching technique where unwanted road signs and metal from old water tanks were used as the surface for his work.

Explore works of art in Murrŋiny (see virtual exhibition). Compare these works by Yolŋu artists from Yirrkala to those created by Whiskey.
Tip: Look at Gäṉgän by Gunybi Ganambarr. You may also like to look at by Murrŋiny- a story of metal from the east at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art in Darwin

Whiskey is from Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands roughly 1200km northwest of Adelaide and the Yolŋu artists are from Yirrkala in East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Despite being located in very different regions of Australia, both artists are working with discarded metal. Why have these artists used road signs as the surface for their works? How are these works similar and different, conceptually as well as how they look?

Locate a discarded object or surface. It could be a piece of wood, cardboard, plastic or metal. Create a work of art on this surface which communicates something about where this object was found. Depending on the material you could paint on to it, or etch or carve into it.

Read more about Murrŋiny:
Murrŋiny - a story of metal from the east (includes virtual tour)New Arnhem Land art makes waves in debut exhibition

Whiskey's use of space in her paintings resembles comic strips. Create a comic strip painting about your family as hybrid-superheroes. Brainstorm the characteristics of people in your family. You might like to research existing superheroes and create a hybrid of these characters with people in your life - who is the Wonder Woman, Hulk or Joker in your family?

Whiskey's seven feminist icons are symbols of strength and resilience. Investigate a female role model in your life. It might be someone you know personally in your family or community or it could be someone who influences you from sport or popular culture. Create a work of art that pays tribute to this person, capturing their strength, resilience and character. You may even like to transform this person into a superhero.

Twenty four women artists from across the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, located in the northwest of South Australia, collaborated to paint a large canvas depicting the Seven Sisters story known as Kungkarangkalpa.

This painting is about the constellations known in the west as Orion and Pleiades. The sisters are the Pleiades constellation and Orion is said to be (a bad man). Wati Nyiru is forever chasing the sisters. According to the story, the seven sisters travel again and again from the sky to the earth to escape the persistent and unwanted attentions of Wati Nyiru.

They turn into their human form to hide, but he always finds them and they flee back to the sky. As Wati Nyiru is chasing the sisters he tries to catch them by using magic to create the most tempting kampurarpra (bush tomatoes) for the sisters to eat and the most beautiful Ili (fig) tree for them to camp under. The sisters however, are too clever for Wati Nyiru and outwit him. They go hungry and run through the night rather than be caught by him.

Every now and again one of the women would fall victim to his ways. It is said that he eventually captures the youngest sister, but with the help of the oldest sister, she escapes back to her sisters who are waiting for her. Eventually the sisters fly back into the sky to escape Wati Nyiru, reforming the constellation.

Making and Responding

Examine astronomical photographs of Pleiades. Compare these images to the painting Kungkarangkalpa - Seven Sisters. What similarities and differences do you notice?

Compare Kungkarangkalpa to Seven Sistas Sign by Whiskey. Why do you think these artists have captured this story? What are the messages these artists are trying to send to younger generations?

Research the feminist icons depicted in Whiskey's painting. Who are these women and why do you think Whiskey chose to feature them specifically in her Seven Sistas Sign? Provide examples to support your response.

Think about a tradition or belief that your parents or grandparents have passed down in your family. What are some things that are unique to your family? Create a painting that will help to keep your family tradition or belief strong for future generations.

Wati Nyiru is described as a 'bad man' in the Seven Sisters story. Brainstorm a list of characters in other stories that feature a villain or an antihero. What characteristics do these villains or 'bad men' share? Use your list of your characteristics as inspiration for your own villain or antihero.

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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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Lola Greeno, born in 1946 on Cape Barren Island Tasmania, is an Aboriginal shell necklace maker, sculptor, installation and fibre artist. Greeno comes from a long line of shell stringers and her work is mostly made from shells, she sometimes combines traditional and contemporary stringing by using mutton bird features, gum nuts, echidna quills and kangaroo vertebrae. This stringing tradition is an opportunity for women to share stories and knowledge with younger generations and is passed down from mother to daughter. Greeno continues this tradition with her own grandchildren. Her necklaces tell the story of her Aboriginal heritage, visiting the beach to collect shells, while growing up on Cape Barren Island 360km from Tasmania Island.

As well as a body adornment, shell stringing played a significant role in cross cultural exchange during early European voyages to Van Diemen's Land in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were used as gifts and as items to trade such as axes, clothing, glass beads and fish hooks. British colonisation had a devastating impact on the life of Aboriginal people, and although settlement threatened the tradition of shell stringing, survivors maintained their cultural practices. The shell stringing tradition is one of the few which remains and continues to evolve today.

Australian Curriculum Connections - Year 4 History

The diversity of Australia's first peoples and the long and continuous connection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples to Country/Place (land, sea, waterways and skies) (ACHASSK083)

Australian Curriculum Connections - Year 5 History

The nature of convict or colonial presence, including the factors that influenced patterns of development, aspects of the daily life of the inhabitants (including Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander Peoples) and how the environment changed (ACHASSK107)

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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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The AGSA Art School in a box is the 'one-stop-shop' for teaching students about art elements, art principles, art terms and art history. This resource will support you in delivering authentic art lessons that use artists and their stories as a starting point.

About the cards

Works of art

A selection of sixty works of art from the Gallery's collection. These cards include an image and basic contextual information. A larger image of the work of art can be found in our online collection.

Art elements

Definitions of line, colour, shape, form, texture, space and value, with corresponding activities. Elements are some of the visual tools artists use to make works of art.

Art principles

Definitions of balance, contrast, emphasis, harmony, pattern, proportion, scale, rhythm, movement and repetition, with corresponding activities. Principles underpin how an artist uses visual tools (elements) to make works of art.

Art terms

These words are commonly used when we talk about artists and works of art. These cards include definitions and activities and will extend your art vocabulary.

Art history

These words are used to describe works of art or the movements they belong to. These cards include definitions and activities and will extend your art history knowledge.

Wild cards

Wild cards are our Curiosity Cards, which can be paired with any work of art in the Gallery or in the classroom. They are ideal prompts for engaging with works of art and practising critical and creative thinking.

How to use the cards

The AGSA Art Cards are versatile and can be used in the Gallery, classroom or at home. Of course, the entire set of cards can be explored by children independently or in groups; however, with over 100 cards to choose from, this might be a little overwhelming and unmanageable in a classroom setting.

A card dealing with a single work of art can be paired with multiple elements, principles, terms, genre and or wild cards. This may mean that potentially you could have twenty activities to choose from, for just one work of art. Let's use Absence Embodied by Chiharu Shiota as an example. This work presents a great opportunity for students to learn about line, pattern, colour, contemporary art or installation. In addition, you could even throw in a wild card as an icebreaker to start the lesson.

Planning a Lesson

Use our template to design a unit of work incorporating the AGSA Art Cards and a visit the Gallery.

Suggested example when using Chiharu Shiota's Absence Embodied as a starting point

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25 Essential Introduction to Aboriginal Art

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25 Essential Introduction to Aboriginal Art

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AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia

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Browse our online galleries of student work created in response to works of art, exhibitions and education resources.

If you have student work you would like to submit for our online galleries see our submission guidelines.

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Works of art created by children and young people