This multi faceted project is an investigation through written and studio research of the complexities of interactions that took place between Lutheran missionaries and Indigenous people at such places as Hermannsburg mission. The study uncovers dialogues and cross-cultural exchanges that led to shifts in understandings of Indigenous Australian cultural practices. It also explores the creation of a place and a cultural space that was occupied by both Lutheran missionaries and Indigenous people, as well as the space between what is generally regarded as binary oppositional perspectives of negative and positive effects of Lutheran missions in Central and South Australia. This has been conceptualized through form, texture and media in a new body of artwork. Whilst clay is predominantly used within this body of studio work to refer to Indigenous cultural practices, to the land and to media introduced by the Lutheran missionaries and mission workers, there are also other significant objects that have been in the Heidenreich family for generations and which create a link between past and present. / "Contact 2002" refers to individual identities (Lutheran and Indigenous), whilst the spaces in between vessels allude to exchanges and dialogue that took place in and around the missions. "Exchange 2003" is suggestive not only of the physicality of interactions that occurred within Lutheran missions such as Hermannsburg, but considers the psychological and spatial consequences of such encounters. / The space created by the presence of the Lutheran church and other buildings built by the early missionaries at Hermannsburg is the focus of "Space/Place 2002", which is also indicative of the interactions which took place in such structures. / The documentation and transliteration of Aboriginal languages by some of the Lutheran missionaries is explored through "Land and Language 2002", in which the importance of the land as teacher and classroom as well as oral traditions for the Indigenous people prior to the arrival of the Lutheran missionaries is also referenced. Accounts of specific documentation of Indigenous Australian languages and the collection of Indigenous cultural objects are represented in "Sand 2002" and "Recollections (of Namatjira) 2003" is suggestive of insights given to the broader Australian public into Aranda cultural and visual art practices. / Exchanges and dialogue that occurred between the Lutherans and the Indigenous people at Hermannsburg is explored again through "Thread(s) 2003", which gives reference to traditions and activities encountered by Indigenous men and women as a result of the presence of the missionaries and their wives. Flour, tea and sugar were materials/ provisions that were sources of exchanges between the Indigenous people and the missionaries and this has been explored in "Cultural Exchanges 2003", whilst in "Zum Andenken 2003" exchanges of knowledge are investigated further. / Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2003.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267661 |
| Creators | Waters, Kylie. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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