Aboriginal symbols are an essential part of a long artistic tradition in Australian Aboriginal Art and remain the visual form to retain and record significant information.
Aboriginal people used symbols to indicate a sacred site, the location of a waterhole and the means to get there, a place where animals inhabit and as a way to illustrate Dreamtime stories.
To understand and appreciate Aboriginal symbols (or iconography) imagine how you would indicate, record and recall essential information or place names or events in a non material world.
Since Aboriginal people travelled vast distances across their country, significant information was recorded using symbols in regular ceremony. Sand painting and awelye (body painting) ceremonies kept the symbols alive and remembered. Later, these symbols were transformed into a more permanent form using acrylic on canvas but the meanings behind the symbols remains the same.
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal paintings from the Central and Western Desert art regions in Central Australia are rich in aboriginal symbols.
Generally the symbols used by Aboriginal Artists are a variation of lines, circles or dots. Similar symbols can have multiple meanings and the elaborate combination of these can tell complex Aboriginal Dreamtime Stories. Combining the stories the Aboriginal artist tells about the painting with an understanding of the meaning behind the symbols, will lead to a greater appreciation of the work.
This painting by Denis Nelson Jupurrula is a good example of an Aboriginal painting rich in Aboriginal symbols. This painting is titled Kangaroo, Rain, Flying Ant, Possum Dreaming. The bottom left of the painting shows the kangaroo tracks around a campfire (white circle). The ...