Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri Analysis

How does art convey a meaningful narrative through the use of symbolism?

Art gives the capability for a person to communicate their opinions or tell stories. Artists use a variety of mediums to convey their beliefs, attitudes and values about the world. Art can vary in its level of subtlety when trying to depict what the artist would like to convey. All artistic movements are comprised of representations. Whether the artwork is conveying emotion or a physical object, it cannot do either without using something to represent the artist’s intentions. The use of symbolism in art can be a very powerful way to represent the artist’s perception or interpretation of something. The use of symbols in art can be particularly effective when the artist
He was born on Napperby Station, three hours North West of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Like most young Indigenous men in his situation, he spent his early years working as a stockman, receiving no formal education. He became a talented wood carver, and started working at his local school teaching wood carving. It was at this school in 1971 Geoffrey Bardon, a local art teacher gathered a group of local men to create a group called “The Painting Men”. Possum Tjapaltjarri was somewhat reluctant and was one of the last to join the group. The group started with large murals on the the school walls and then snowballed from that point on. Possum Tjapaltjarri soon established himself as a superior member in the painting group. A 2004 exhibition by The Art Gallery of New South Wales spoke of him as “...an expert wood-carver who took up painting long before the emergence of the Papunya Tula School in the early 1970s. When Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri joined this group of ‘dot and circle’ painters early in 1972 he immediately distinguished himself as one of its most talented members and went on to create some of the largest and most complex paintings ever produced”. (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2004). The Group “The Painting Men” later became renamed as Papunya Tula Artists, where Possum Tjapaltjarri was chairman from
However with the use of their Hieroglyphic symbols the Egyptian people created an alphabetic system similar to that of our present day English alphabet. This allowed the Egyptian people to send messages between each other and record information for future generations to learn from, all through the means of art. The symbols used by the Egyptians in their hieroglyphic alphabet are different to that of the Australian Aboriginal art works. Egyptian hieroglyphs consist of small symbols and figures. The figures include humans in varying positions, animals and a range of shapes and patterns. The variety of Egyptian hieroglyphs is immense. They were not just alphabetic symbols, but also included syllabic symbols and occasionally even determinative symbols the latter portrayed the words meaning itself. None of this would be possible without the vast number of artistic symbols used by the Egyptian scribes who created these intellectual works of