Gela Nga-Mirraitja Fordham, Aboriginal artist (c1935-2006)
mj...@btinternet.com
Gela Nga-Mirraitja Fordham*, c1935-2006
It was a long way from his birthplace of Bamdibu in central Arnhem
Land, but Fordham's visit to Sydney Harbour was an epiphany for the
Aboriginal artist. It was the unlikely site of his Rembarrnga people's
account of the time before and after the coming of the white man to
Australia: the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
It was an odd conjunction of events and beliefs. Fordham was in Sydney
for the first showing at the Sydney Biennale of the Aboriginal
Memorial, a collection of 200 log coffins that was to become a central
display at the National Gallery of Australia, and which commemorated
200 years of occupation of Australia. It was an explicitly political
event at which he sang mortuary songs.
At the same time he was witnessing a mythic bridge, constructed by "the
old Captain Cook before Adam and Eve", and seeing the place where, his
people say, the old Captain Cook had successfully battled with Satan.
He was standing at a site that, Rembarrnga tradition has it, preceded
the coming of the "new Captain Cooks": the age of the white man.
Gela Nga-Mirraitja Fordham, who was born around 1935 and has died at
Katherine in the Northern Territory, was a prolific Aboriginal painter,
sculptor and storyteller who came to public attention relatively late
in life. It was not until 1983 that he produced his first major bark
paintings. His death last month marked the end of a unique flowering of
talent, which traversed shared and disparate visions of black and white
Australian history and knowledge.
His early years were spent growing up with his parents and siblings in
remote bushland, though he remembered taking the three-week "foot walk"
to the tin mining settlement of Maranboy, near Katherine, three or four
times during the war years before his family settled at Tandangal, near
present-day Barunga.
It was a time of living a traditional life, which he remembered with
great affection. On bush trips many years later he would remark, on
crossing the border, "we're leaving the Territory now, away from
government land - this is Arnhem Land", as if it were a completely
different domain. And in so many ways, it was.
In his teens he took up the life of a stockman, working cattle stations
south to Newcastle Waters and west to the Victoria River Downs, taking
the English name Fordham from the family that ran Gorrie Station. In
the 1960s and 1970s he spent most of his time at Maningrida on the
Arnhem coast, working as a grader driver and helping to build Guyun,
one of the first outstations in the region.
In the late 1970s he moved to Beswick, 100 kilometres east of
Katherine, unsuccessfully trying to establish an outstation at his
birthplace.
>From apparently nowhere, Fordham began painting for sale in 1983: a
sudden efflorescence of bold ochres on bark, uncluttered by the fine
cross hatching often thought to typify Arnhem Land art.
The subject matter was something else again, more reminiscent of
animation story boards than Aboriginal iconography. Very rarely did he
paint ritualised images of "dreamings": his was a cosmos that embraced
histories such as the bombing of Darwin, or the murderous 1903 cattle
drives through Arnhem Land by the Eastern and African Cold Storage
Company.
Others would tell of the coming of Christianity, and its melding with
traditional Aboriginal law. Yet others were more didactic - combining a
taxonomy of birds of his homelands with the clan groups and country
names to which every species belonged.
Then, of course, there was the story of Captain Cook - the "good"
Captain Cook who preceded the guns and killings of the "new Captain
Cooks", a painting documented by Penny McDonald in the 1988 film, Too
Many Captain Cooks.
Sadly, many of these early paintings were destroyed in the 1998
Katherine floods. However, Fordham's output from the late 1980s was
extraordinary. Moving into Katherine around this time, he branched out
from log coffins to exquisite sculptures: Mimi figures and tricksters
such as Balangjarlngalayn spirits. Further into the 1990s works on
canvas and paper were exhibited and collected nationally and
internationally: bold, stark images on plain pipeclay or ochre grounds.
But above all, Fordham was a storyteller and teacher. He was fond of a
drink, and I have vivid memories of him at the club at Beswick at
sundown, bringing in his latest bark painting wrapped in an old sheet.
He would tell, declaim - even preach - his latest stories. It would be
a performance for all, with laughter and good humour, and with
catcalls, disagreements and elaborations from his countrymen.
At times in song, at others spoken in a mixture of Rembarrnga, Creole
and English, his stories were lyrical reflections of his homelands. As
he said once of the call of a bird found only near his birthplace: "It
sings out, 'baidjadjabobok, baidjadjabobok baidjadjabobok,
baidjadjabobok'; he's calling right out into the country, like a
shanghai."
Fordham took his storytelling to many parts of Australia, often as a
dancer with the Bamyili dancers, as well as through his art. They were
stories worth telling to us all. He is survived by his wife and
extended family.
Chips MacKinolty
*At his family's request, and according to tradition, the given names
of the artist have not been published. Gela Nga-Mirraitja refers to his
skin and clan names respectively.