Anniversary of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

Forget about Halloween, the 31st of October is Reformation Day, and 2017 marks 500 years since the German monk Martin Luther (1493-1546) nailed his 95 thesis to the door of a church in Wittenberg. That thesis sparked a religious revolution which resulted in the Protestant Reformation. This event changed the spiritual landscape of Europe and beyond.

Along with the publication of controversial texts, Europe was flooded with printed pamphlets and images; the Protestant Reformation also helped to marshal the development and evolution of the print medium.

The Rare Books collection at the Baillieu Library holds a 1518 copy of Luther’s Resolutiones disputationum de Indulgentiarum virtute (Resolutions on the disputations about the power of indulgences). While three very different portraits of him from the Baillieu Library Print Collection show that attempting to frame Martin Luther and his legacy is a very complex exercise.

Martin Luther 1540
Heinrich Aldegrever after Hans Brosamer, Martin Luther, 1540
James Bretherton after Hans Holbein the elder, Martin Luther, (1770-90)
Unknown artist, Martin Luther, 1773

Yolngu culture comes to the Baillieu Library Print Collection

‘May I have a volunteer to cut off their hair.’ This was the arresting opening statement to the art history tutorial led by Yolngu elder and artist Wukun Wanambi. Students soon presented their heads to have a piece of their hair snipped off and then looked on with fascination as the hair was transformed into marwat (paint brush), which then shaped an image, as the artist created marks on paper with the brush and gapan (white clay) transported to the University from the Northern Territory.

Wukun Wanambi leading an art history tutorial. Photo: Xing Lu

Wukun Wanambi is a frequent visitor and advisor to the University of Melbourne and the Library is delighted to now have one of his prints in the collection. The etching Wawurritjpal V (2006) was one of five prints gifted by Dr Susan Lowish through the Cultural Gifts Program in 2017. The prints were all made in the Yirrkala Print Space at Buku-Larrngay Mulka in the Eastern region of Arnhem Land.

Like many Yolngu artists, Wukun Wanambi has a high profile international career. He visited London in 2013 and created larrakitj (hollow log memorial poles) for the 2015 British Museum exhibition Indigenous Australia: enduring civilisation. In 2017 he travelled to the US to work on a major forthcoming Aboriginal art exhibition.

Wukun inherited the rights to paint the saltwater imagery of the Marrakulu clan. Wawurritjpal V expresses an ancestral story which frequently appears in his artistic practice.

Wukun Wanambi, Wawurritjpal V (2006) © Reproduced with the permission of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre

The prints produced in the dedicated facilities at the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre demonstrate many exciting innovations and developments since Aboriginal artists first took up Western printmaking techniques in the 1960s.

Love and skulls: An exhibition loan to the Art Gallery of Ballarat

The exhibition Romancing the skull at the Art Gallery of Ballarat opened to the public on October 14th. Object loans from three of the University’s Cultural Collections (Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, Rare Books and the Baillieu Library Print Collection) are key features of this edgy and multi-layered show. The Nuremberg Chronicle, open to the image of the Dance of Death, and the exploded skull model by Tramond & Co. are some highlights.

Tramond & Co., Model of an exploded skull

The exhibition also reunites a husband and wife: the artists Will Dyson (1880-1938) and Ruby Lindsay (1887-1919). Dyson was born at Ballarat and Lindsay at nearby Creswick where they were later married. When Ruby Lindsay died from influenza, at the age of just 32, Will Dyson’s biographer said ‘The fire and sting went out of him from this time on.’ [1.] The two works on loan convey that their love for each other is as enduring as their imagery. Dyson wrote:

There is no soft beatitude in Death:
Death is but Death;
Nor can I find
Him pale and kind
Who set that endless silence on her
Death is but Death! [2.]

Romancing the skull is an exhibition both for lovers and for lovers of skulls. These enthralling objects will be on display in Ballarat until January 28th 2018.

Will Dyson, Why did I do it?
Ruby Lind, Death (1907)

 

References

Vane Lindesay, Australian Dictionary of Biography

Will Dyson, ‘Death is but Death’ in Poems in memory of a wife, [London: Cecil Palmer, 1919]

‘Winja Ulupna’: Public Health Posters as Visual Culture

Ainslee Meredith

Winja Ulupna is an Aboriginal women’s residential drug and alcohol recovery house based in St Kilda. Established in 1976 through Australian Government investment in residential rehabilitation programs controlled by Aboriginal communities, as distinct from State rehabilitation units (Brady 2002), Winja Ulupna, or ‘women’s haven’, was also the first rehabilitation house in Australia specifically for Aboriginal women. As an early example of an Aboriginal women’s run program providing culturally sensitive alcohol and drug services, the poster highlights the importance of community-controlled residential programs in the broader context of a continued denial of the right of self-determination for Indigenous Australians by governments at that time. Designed by Health Productions in 1991 (the art department of the Health Promotion Unit, for the Government of Victoria), the poster is also significant in terms of the history of government-sponsored poster design to disseminate public health messages.  Continue reading “‘Winja Ulupna’: Public Health Posters as Visual Culture” →

‘Picturing Black Australia’

Jimmy Yan 

The 1988 Australian bicentenary was marked by its contradictory history and dual claims for national attention. There was the assertion of settler-colonial nationalism and, in response, a vigorous revival of the movement for Aboriginal land rights and self-determination. In the wake of the indigenous boycott of the celebrations, the Australian Film Institute (AFI) compiled a package of 23 independently-produced films examining various aspects of Aboriginal history, culture and memory. The collection, entitled Picturing Black Australia, the program predominantly comprised Aboriginal-produced films and spanned a breadth of genres ranging from animated short films to feature-length documentaries. Eschewing kitsch derivations of Aboriginality, the films also centred upon realistic portrayals of Aboriginal survival and resistance.[1] Continue reading “‘Picturing Black Australia’” →

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