important works by Lin Onus from the

Important Works by Lin Onus

from the collection of S&P Global, Australia

Lots 9 – 16

Extraordinarily beautiful and technically flawless, the paintings of Lin Onus (1948 – 1996) exhibit a complex mixture of ideas set around place, ownership and history wherein they occupy a distinctive position in the broader setting of Australian art. Paintings such as those offered here from the collection of S&P Global, Australia have the capacity to transfix the viewer and are full of meaning, what Michael O’Farrell observed as ‘the sheer tactility of Lin Onus… imagery that establishes a carefully balanced dialogue of sensory and mental elements.’1 Renowned for incorporating satire and humour in his early political installations and paintings that challenged cultural hegemonies, it is in these later paintings that Onus demonstrated his Indigenous connection to country. Poetic landscapes of the natural world, combined with subtle traditional iconography, confirmed Onus’ relationship to both his adopted homeland in Arnhem Land and to his own ancestral sites at the Barmah-forest on the Murray River.

Growing up in a culturally productive and politically engaged household in Melbourne, Lin Onus could not help but be influenced by the activism of his family. His mother Mary Kelly was of Scottish origin and an active member of the Australian communist party, and his father Bill Onus, a Yorta Yorta man from the Aboriginal mission of Cummerangunja near Echuca, was an important figure in the Aboriginal civil rights movement, whose Aboriginal Enterprises (1952 – 68) provided an outlet for Aboriginal art and craft in defiance of the then national goal of assimilation. In 1957 Bill Onus, together with Doug Nicholls, established the Aboriginal Advancement League in Victoria with a goal to ‘promote cultural renewal and reawaken aboriginal pride.’2 Onus’ cultural education on his Aboriginal side was provided by visits to Cummerangunja with his father, and stories told by his uncle Aaron Briggs, who gave him his Koori name – Burrinja, meaning ‘star’.3 They would sit on the banks of the Murray River within view of the Barmah Forest – Onus’ spiritual home and the subject of many of his paintings. Leaving school at 14, Lin Onus began his largely self-taught artistic career assisting his father in decorating artefacts. After embarking on a panel-beating apprenticeship, he developed skills working on metal and painting with an airbrush. By 1974, he was painting watercolours and photorealist landscapes and in 1975, he held his first exhibition and began a set of paintings based on Musqito, the first Aboriginal guerrilla fighter, which still hang on the walls of the Advancement League in Melbourne. While overtones of bullying and racism experienced by Onus in 1960s suburban Melbourne influenced much of his art, the cultural revelations that came from his friendship with respected painter Jack Wunuwun (1930 – 1991), enabled Onus to embrace both his indigenous and non-indigenous heritage. Having first met Wunuwun at Maningrida in 1986 while travelling in his role as the Victorian representative for the Aboriginal Arts Board, his life from that moment was deeply influenced by this encounter with the late Yolngu elder and artist, who adopted Onus as his own son.

Over the next decade, Onus made sixteen ‘spiritual pilgrimages’ to the outstation of Garmedi, the home of Jack Wunuwun in Central Arnhem land.4 Wunuwun was able to offer Onus a kind of cultural sanctuary by welcoming him into the Yolngu kinship system. This relationship provided Onus with the opportunity to learn Aboriginal traditional knowledge, which enhanced his own Yorta Yorta experience of the world. Through Wunuwun, Onus was given creation stories that he was permitted to paint and an Aboriginal language he could also access. As Onus noted ‘going to Arnhem Land gave him back all the stuff that colonialism had taken away – Language and Ceremony.’5 Onus acquired his knowledge of symbols, patterns and designs from the community elders, and it seemed to him that this experience of tradition was ‘like a missing piece’ of a puzzle which ‘clicked into position’ for him culturally.6 The resulting personal style juxtaposed the rarrk clan patterns of Maningrida, learnt from the older artist, with a photorealist style of landscape, integrating Indigenous spirituality and narrative with Western representation.

The two major paintings consigned from the collection of S&P Global, Australia, Malwan Pond – Dawn, 1994 and Goonya Ga Girrarng (Fish and Leaves), 1995 were acquired from Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne. Both present photorealist images of central Arnhem Land wetlands, where the surrounding tall trees are reflected in the cool dark water of the billabong and fish glide just below the surface of the water, affording glimpses of the traditional markings that cover their bodies. Leaves float on the surface and or sink to the bottom, becoming detritus on the floor of the billabong.

Reflections are essential to the art of Lin Onus, literally and metaphorically. Both his painting and his social activism address issues of identity, racism and the uneven power relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Onus held a mirror to unresolved social inequality within this country and explored what it

meant to be Australian, while his luminous paintings reflect a desire to create an art that could be appreciated on numerous levels by everyone. His series of watery landscapes of the Arafura Swamp or Barmah Forest which, rich in reflections and ambiguities, substituted the traditional European panoramic view for one of cross-cultural imagery, thus subverting the primacy of Western modes of representation.

Six gouache works painted on card also offered here follow a similar structure. Picturesque landscapes contain indigenised creatures that present a duality described by Robert Nelson as a ‘form of symbolic realism’ – noting Onus’ ability to use both the traditional idiom of perceptual art in the landscape tradition, together with fish, frogs and reptiles painted according to Aboriginal conventions.7 Here his gouaches of indigenised frogs, lizards, butterflies and bats set in Australian landscapes become part of the process of reclaiming custodianship of the land and its inhabitants, thus fulfilling a sense of belonging.

Lin Onus hoped that ‘history would see him as some sort of bridge between cultures’8 and as articulated by Ian Mclean, ‘[he] successfully used postmodern strategies to infiltrate issues of Aboriginality into everyday Australian life.’9 Unifying different cultures, languages and visual perspectives, his distinct and celebrated work reflects both his activism and creative ambitions, with his activism finding its greatest voice through his prodigious talent for painting and his ability to stop people in their tracks with his beautiful yet powerful image making. A self-taught artist living between cultures and communities, Onus found a way to bring together Indigenous and non-indigenous understandings of landscape and in a spirit of reconciliation, to articulate the intersection of two sets of values and points of view.

1 O’Ferrall, M., ‘Lin Onus’ in Australian Perspecta 1991, Art Gallery of New South Wales,

Sydney, 1991 p. 80 2. Kleinert, S., ‘Aboriginal Enterprises: negotiating an urban Aboriginality’, Aboriginal History, vol. 34, 2010, see https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p170581/html/ch07. xhtml?referer=1272&page=8, accessed online September 2022 3 Neale, M., Urban Dingo: The Art of Lin Onus 1948–1996, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2000, p. 14 4. ibid., p. 15 5. ibid. 6. Leslie, D., ‘Coming home to the land’, Eureka Street, March – April 2006, https://www. eurekastreet.com.au/article/coming-home-to-the-land, accessed September 2022 7. Neale, op. cit., 2000, p. 16 8 ibid., p. 21 9. ibid., p. 41

CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE Portrait of Lin Onus photographer: David Johns © David Johns

(1948 – 1996) MALWAN POND – DAWN, 1994 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 91.5 x 122.0 cm bears inscription on label verso: Lin Onus / “Malwan Pond – Dawn” 1994

ESTIMATE: $180,000 – $250,000

PROVENANCE

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne (label attached to stretcher bar verso) S&P Global, Australia

In 1986, while visiting Maningrida in Arnhem Land in his role as the Victorian representative for the Aboriginal Arts Board, Lin Onus first met Yolngu elder and respected painter Jack Wunuwun. It was a meeting that would deeply influence the younger artist and forever alter his life and artistic direction. Onus visited Wunuwun at Garmedi, in the artist’s homelands in Central Arnhem land, where Wunuwun adopted Onus into the Murrungun-Djinang clan – the first of what would become annual visits to the outstation, journeys that Onus would call his ‘spiritual pilgrimages.’1

Wunuwun was known for pioneering the rendering of three dimensions and perspective in bark painting by drawing on influences from European art and, in his role as mentor to the younger artist, Wunuwun was able to offer Onus a cultural haven by welcoming him into the Yolngu kinship system. This relationship revealed Aboriginal traditional knowledge to Onus, which enhanced his own Yorta Yorta experience of the world. Through Wunuwun, Onus was given an Aboriginal language he could access, together with creation stories that he was permitted to paint, acquiring a knowledge of symbols, patterns and designs from the community elders. These learnt designs became intrinsic to Onus’ art for the rest of his life where the resulting personal style juxtaposed the rarrk clan patterns with a western photorealist style of landscape, integrating Indigenous spirituality and narrative with Western representation.

Onus’ watery landscapes embrace what Wunuwun described as ‘seing below the surface’2 and function on a number of levels. Rich in reflections and ambiguities these enigmatic views clearly dispensed with the conventional idea of a European panoramic view. A landscape apparently hangs upside down from the sky. Reflected in the still water, the rising dawn sun shines golden on the serpentine tree branches and illuminates the detritus below, while a school of rarrk-covered fish swim both under the water and seemingly through the sky and the branches of the trees. As Margot Neale elaborates, these paintings are ‘deceptively picturesque, for things are not always what they seem. Laden with cross-cultural references, visual deceits, totemic relationships and a sense of displacement, they, amongst other things, challenge one’s viewing position: Are you looking up through water towards the sky, down into a waterhole from above, across the surface only or all three positions simultaneously?’3 Onus’ use of a rarrk overlay can be seen as a process of ‘indigenising the other, of claiming ownership of the land and creatures, and of subverting the primacy of Western systems of representation.4

1. Onus cited in Neale, M., Urban Dingo: The Art of Lin Onus 1948 – 1996, Queensland Art

Gallery, Brisbane, 2000, p. 15 2. Neale, M. et al, Lin Onus: A Cultural Mechanic, Savill Galleries, Melbourne (exhibition catalogue), 2003, p. 1 3 ibid. 4. Neale, op. cit., 2000, p. 16

CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

LIN ONUS

(1948 – 1996) BUTTERFLIES, 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower left: Lin Onus

ESTIMATE: $35,000 – 45,000

10

PROVENANCE

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

LIN ONUS

(1948 – 1996) BULLA GUKUP (TWO FROGS), 1995 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower right: Lin Onus

ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

11

PROVENANCE

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

(1948 – 1996) GO0NYA GA GIRRARNG (FISH AND LEAVES), 1995 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 122.0 x 91.5 cm signed lower left: Lin Onus inscribed with title on stretcher bar verso: ‘GOONYA GA GIRRARNG’ bears inscription on label verso: LIN ONUS / FISH & LEAVES, 1995 bears inscription on label verso: 1

ESTIMATE: $180,000 – $250,000

PROVENANCE

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne (label attached to stretcher bar verso) S&P Global, Australia

EXHIBITED

Probably: Bama-Mutjing (Barmah – My Father’s Country), Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 12 September – 8 October 1995, cat. 1

Goonya Ga Girrarng (Fish and Leaves), 1995 belongs to a sublime body of paintings by Lin Onus featuring transparent watery landscapes that are exceptional in their lyrical beauty. Executed in a peerless photorealist style combining technical virtuosity with indigenous concepts of space and knowledge, they comprise carefully planned layers of imagery – elements of which are sometimes, at least initially, obscured by the reflected sky or landscape. These paintings are poetic and potent statements of Indigenous cultural authority, landscapes of the natural world combined with subtle traditional iconography that confirmed Onus’ relationship to both his adopted homeland in Arnhem Land and to his own ancestral sites at the Barmah-forest on the Murray River. It was as the Victorian representative of the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council in 1986 that Onus had the opportunity to visit Maningrida in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and to meet traditional elders such as Jack Wunuwun who became his adoptive father and mentor. He was given stories and designs that expanded his visual repertoire and enabled him to develop a distinctive visual language from a combination of traditional and contemporary Aboriginal imagery and photorealist landscapes.

Blending traditional imagery with photorealism, Onus depicted not only the physical attributes of place, but also its spiritual dimensions, allowing him to address political issues while simultaneously generating contemplative experiences connected with creation, continuity and the eternal. Projecting a dream-like ‘otherworldliness’, the composition features tall spindly gum trees reflected on the waterhole’s surface with the artist’s signature motif of ‘indigenised’ fish decorated in rarrk, swimming between exquisitely rendered layers of fallen russet-coloured leaves both floating on the surface and settled on the billabong floor.

Onus’ images are often loaded with cultural history and metaphor. In Goonya Ga Girrarng (Fish and Leaves), this undercurrent is sensed in the rarrk painting on the swimming fish, yet these waterscapes also speak of an everlasting landscape. Reflected in the mirrored surface of the waterways is not only the enduring beauty, but also the fragility of the land and our relationship to it.

CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

LIN ONUS

(1948 – 1996) BIRRAKALA (BUTTERFLIES) AT NIGHT, 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower right: Lin Onus

ESTIMATE: $35,000 – 45,000

13

PROVENANCE

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

LIN ONUS

(1948 – 1996) NGAKAYDJIL (LIZARDS), 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower left: Lin Onus

ESTIMATE:$35,000 – 45,000

14

PROVENANCE

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

LIN ONUS

(1948 – 1996) WARRINYA (FLYING FOXES), 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower left: Lin Onus

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

15

PROVENANCE

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

LIN ONUS

(1948 – 1996) SPEARGRASS, 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower right: Lin Onus

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

16

PROVENANCE

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995