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| A study of the early transitional art of Barambah/Cherbourg Settlement in QLD |
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| Conclusions |
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Conclusions
The study of the early transitional artifacts of Barambah/Cherbourg is still in its infancy. Until the report produced by Paul Tacon et al1 and the accumulation of a collection of artifacts by Scott Rainbow, the odd Cherbourg artifact that turned up was assumed to be the work of a single talented individual.
The Rainbow Collection has demonstrated that there was almost certainly a small industry at Cherbourg producing these artifacts for resale. The variations in quality, design, materials used and subject matter, indicate that a number of talented artists were recording their experiences on portable objects.
Tacon et al1 notes that some of the objects they examined from early museum collections had 'degenerate modern' written on them by past curators because they were adorned with skillfully produced and faithfully rendered figurative imagery. R.B Phillips2 notes 'Past generations of ethnologists and art historians not only have failed to recognize the mediating role of souvenir and other transcultural arts but also have actively devalued them, damning them as acculturated and therefore "degenerate," and as commercial and therefore inauthentic'.
The artifacts of Cherbourg are anything but „degenerate?. Given that most aboriginal history is transmitted orally (unlike white written history), the artifacts of Cherbourg are the equivalent of books or snapshots of aboriginal experience in the early 20th century and are thus an important addition to Australian history.
Scott Rainbow September 29, 2009
1 Paul S. C. Tacon, Barrina South, Shaun Boree_Hooper (2003). Depicting cross-cultural interaction: figurative designs in wood, earth and stone from south-eastern Australia. Archaeology in Oceania. 38:2 pp 89-101.
2 Phillips, R.B. and C.B. Steiner (eds.). 1999. Unpacking culture: art and commodity in colonial and postcolonial worlds. University of California Press, Berkeley.
