Drawings about Djang: Drawings on paper by Jimmy Bireyula, 1983

Interest in the drawings made by Aboriginal' people and collected by anthropologists as a feature of their research of graphic representation is increasing. Of particular concern is the status of these collections as intercultural artefacts commissioned by the anthropologist and produced by the Aboriginal artists in order to teach about their cultural life. At issue is the appropriate manner of characterising the relation of this new activity in respect to older, and more local, cultural tropes. This study addresses a set of drawings made by jimmy Bireyula, a Kuninjku language speaker, for the author in 1983. The works are intercultural in terms of the context of their production and the new uses of the materials supplied by the anthropologist and yet also develop established aesthetic and representational forms that are distinct to Kuninjku understanding of the powers of the Ancestral² realm.