Page 3300 - Week 10 - Thursday, 25 September 2014

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The title of Harijs’s exhibition, Amber to Ochre, highlights the respective precious commodities found in Latvia and Australia that were highly prized and hotly traded. In Renaissance times, pieces of Baltic amber, perhaps millions of years old, were dissolved to act as varnish for paintings and musical instruments. In Australia, red and yellow ochres from the famed Western Australian Wilgie Mia underground mine were traded as far as Queensland for thousands of years.

Australians affiliate the use of ochres with Indigenous art, but as Victoria Finlay reminds us in her book Colour, ochre or iron oxide was the first colour paint. It has been used on every inhabited continent since painting began, and it has been around ever since on the palettes of almost every artist in history.

Working with ochre collected in situ has helped Harijs to recognise and respect the significance of ochre in Aboriginal society. Using collected ochre also explores that tension in Australia between our views of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artwork.

I say that we can step above that tension. Landscape, our wide brown land, has power, and will inevitably pull all Australians towards the views that have prevailed here for the last 40,000 years.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

The Assembly adjourned at 5.50 pm until Tuesday, 21 October 2014, at 10 am.

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